“Grab a root and pull!” Bowers urged with all the hospitality he could inject into his voice, as the guest squeezed in between the table and the sideboard. “Jest bog down in that there honey, pardner—it’s something special—cottonwood blossoms and alfalfy. And here’s the turnips!”
Conversation was suspended until a pan of biscuits had vanished along with the fried mutton, when Bowers, feeling immeasurably better natured, inquired sociably as he passed the broom:
“Where have I saw you before, feller? Your countenance seems kind of familiar.”
The stranger looked up quickly.
“I don’t think it. I’m a long way off my own range.”
He averted his eyes from Bowers’s puzzled inquiring gaze and focused his attention upon the business of extracting a suitable straw from the politely tendered broom. When he had found one to his liking, he leaned back and operated with a large air of nonchalance.
“You’re fixed pretty comfortable here,” he commented, as his roving eye took in the interior of the wagon.
“'Tain’t bad,” Bowers agreed, prying into the broom for a straw that was clean, comparatively.
“Is them all kin o’ yourn?” The stranger pointed to a wire rack suspended from a nail on the opposite side of the wagon in which was thrust some two dozen photographs, fly-specked and yellow, while the cut of the subjects’ clothes bore additional evidence of their antiquity.