Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/193

 by his conveyance and regalia. He wore a well-filled cartridge belt and six-shooter, while a horse hair watch chain draped across a buckskin waistcoat, ornate with dyed porcupine quills, gave an additional Western flavor to his costume. His beaded gauntlets reached to his elbow, and upon occasions like the present he wore moccasins. There was a black silk handkerchief around the neck of his red flannel shirt, and if the rattlesnake skin that encircled his Stetson did not bring a scream from the lady dudes when they caught sight of it. Teeters would feel keenly disappointed.

"I can wrangle dudes to a fare-ye-well and do good at it," Teeters had declared to the Major. And it was no idle boast, apparently, for Tetters stood alone, supreme and unchallenged, the champion dude-wrangler of the country.

"It's a kind of talent—a gift, you might say—like breakin' horses or tamin' wild animals," he was wont to reply modestly when questioned by those who followed his example and failed lamentably. "You got to be kind and gentle with dudes, yet firm with them. Onct they git the upper hand of you they's no livin' with 'em."

Five years had brought their changes to Teeters as well as to Prouty.

He was still faithful to Miss Maggie Taylor, but a subtle difference had come into his attitude towards her mother. He was less ingratiating in his manner, less impressed by the importance of her father, the distinguished undertaker; less interested in her recitals of her musical triumphs when she had played the pipe organ in Philadelphia. Her habit of singing hymns and humming which had annoyed him even in the days when he was merely tolerated, actually angered him.

Now, as the four horses attached to the old-fashioned