Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/35

 "My name is supposed to be Teeters — Clarence Teeters.

As a matter of fact he knew that his name was Teeters, if 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. I 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 Missouri."

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 considerable." Teeters made the statement as an extenuating circumstance.

" I took out naturalization papers myself," replied the Major goodhumoredly. "My name is Prouty — Stephen Douglas Prouty. You'll probably 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 sol" 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.