A false name might mean future embarrassment, and he was so far from home that his father would never hear of him anyway.

But his hesitation served to convince every man there that Birnie was not his name, and that he probably had good cause for concealing his own.

Adding that to Dirk Tracy's guess that he was from Jackson's Hole, the sum spelled outlaw.
The Muleshoe boys were careful not to seem curious about Bud's past.
They even refrained from manifesting too much interest in the musical instruments until Bud himself took them out of their cases that evening and began tuning them.

Then the half-baked, tongue-tied fellow came over and gobbled at him eagerly.
"Hen wants yuh to play something," a man they called Day interpreted.
"Hen's loco on music.

If you can sing and play both, Hen'll set and listen till plumb daylight and never move an eyewinker." Bud looked up, smiled a little because Hen had no eyewinkers to move, and suddenly felt pity because a man could be so altogether unlikeable as Hen.