“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: