Halfaman’s freckled face went red to the ears, and he winked with one eye and then the other at his partner, pleading to be released.
“Miss Canby,” The Falcon went on, “this is my partner, Halfaman Daisy.”
The girl was holding out her ready hand, and Halfaman wriggled toward her and covered it with his own, removing his cap and promptly dropping it—stooping for it, stubbing his toe on a greasewood root buried in the sand, making a spectacle of himself, and realizing it painfully.
“Ma’am,” he said, straightening at last, “how’s each paltry division this mornin’? Please’ ta meet you, ma’am.” Then he stood as if he had been ordered to be shot at sunrise.
“Are you a stiff, Mr. Halfaman?” the girl asked, ingenuously.
“Oh, sure—worse’n that.”
“‘Halfaman’ sounds like a puncher name,” she informed him. “You look like all man to me. Why do they call you that?”
“Well, you see, ma’am, I’m one o’ the begatters. I’m Phinehas; and Phinehas begat Abishua. First Chronicles, sixth chapter—that’s where the begatters are. Now, you couldn’t call a bird Phinehas and look pleasant, could you, ma’am? So my old pardner, his name was Holman, and the stiffs they got to callin’ me Halfaman just for a kid.”
“Tell Miss Canby about the begatters, Halfaman,” suggested The Falcon. “Perhaps she doesn’t understand.”
With a look of seriousness Halfaman scraped his bedraggled cap to one side of his kinky head.