"How are you, sir?" There was nothing in the dignified restraint of the Major's response to indicate that his vocal cords ached for exercise and he was fairly quivering in his eagerness for an ear to talk into. There was a silence in which he removed a nose bag, bridled and shoved a horse against the tongue.
"Back, can't ye!"
"Nooned here, I reckon?"
The Major thought of his chickenless handout and his face clouded.
"I et a bite."
"Thought maybe you was in trouble when I first see you."
"Had a hot box, but I don't call that trouble." He added humorously: "I can chop my wagon to pieces and be on the road again in twenty minutes, if I got plenty of balin' wire."
The cowboy laughed so appreciatively that the Major inquired ingratiatingly: "I bleeve your face is a stranger to me, ain't it?"
"I don't mind meetin' up with you before. I've just come to the country, as you might say."
The Major waited for further information, but since it was not forthcoming he ventured: "What might I call your name, sir?"
The cowboy shifted his weight uneasily and hesitated. He said finally while the red of his shiny sun-blistered face deepened perceptibly: "My name is supposed to be Teeters--Clarence Teeters."
As a matter of fact he knew that his name was Teeters, but injecting an element of doubt into it in this fashion seemed somehow to make the telling easier. Teeters was bad enough, but combined with Clarence! Only Mr. Teeters knew the effort it cost him to tell his name to strangers. He added with the air of a man determined to make a clean breast of it: "I'm from Missoury."
The Major's hand shot out unexpectedly.
"Shake!" he cried warmly. "I was drug up myself at the foot of the Ozarks."
"I pulled out when I was a kid and wrangled 'round considerible." Teeters made the statement as an extenuating circumstance.
"I took out naturalization papers myself," replied the Major good-humoredly. "My name is Prouty--Stephen Douglas Prouty. You'll prob'ly hear of me if you stay in the country. The fact is, I'm thinkin' of startin' a town and namin' it Prouty."
"Shoo--you don't say so!" In polite inquiry, "Whur?"
"Thur!"
Mr. Teeters looked a little blank as he stared at the town site indicated.
"It seems turrible fur from water," he commented finally.
"Sink--drill--artesian well--maybe we'll strike a regular subterranean river. Anyway, 'twould be no trick at all to run a ditch from Dead Horse Canyon and get all the water we want." He waved his arm at the distant mountains and settled that objection.