She had started the list for her own benefit. Then had come the request from queer old Hermit Joe to be on the lookout for his son who had gone years ago to Texas. After that, commissions for others followed rapidly. So many people had so many things they wanted her to do in Texas!—and nobody wanted them talked about in Sunbridge.
Slowly, with careful precision, she wrote down this last one. Then, a little dubiously, she read over the list.
See the blue bonnet—the Texas state flower. Find out if it really is shaped like a bonnet.
Bring home a piece of prairie grass.
See a real buffalo.
Find Hermit Joe's son, John, who ran away to Texas twenty years ago.
See an Osage orange hedge.
See a broncho bursted (obviously changed over from "busted").
Find out for Mrs. Miller if cowboys do shoot at sight, and yell always without just and due provocation.
See a mesquite tree.