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Whoever this man was - new or not - had clearly been set to do all mannerism of busy work. A moment before he'd been kicking at a freshly driven tent stake to make sure it wasn't going to come popping out of the ground if someone leaned on the rope. He had a sledgehammer with the base on the earth and he was leaning heavily on it as if unbalanced as he poked at the stake with the toe of his boot. From the way he started when addressed, he clearly hadn't been expecting anyone to come up for a chat.

"Jo," he said, clearing his throat and putting his weight back onto both feet. He kept a firm hold on the sledgehammer though. "Jo's better than Johnson Ma'am - no one's used the full name in a real hellofalong time." He hesitated, and then added another "Ma'am" for good measure. It wasn't like he was exactly on the top of the food chain here and he sure as heel didn't want to go getting on anyone's bad side right from the start; you never knew who was gonna give you s**t for being a little cheeky. More importantly, he was pretty damn sure most anybody in the area could get him kicked right back out of the place if they really wanted to and it had taken a fair bit of arguing and smooth talking to get this far.

Besides, the woman sounded a little irritable and tired of looking for him, so might as well put on a smile for the trouble. Jo brushed the palm of his hand across the front of his shirt a little self-consciously before offering it out to her. "Nice to meet you, I suppose."

Fighting off a bit of a grin - and it really looked awkward anyway, seeing as he'd been squinting out from under the brim of his cap - Jo cleared his throat a little. "Just the one," he muttered, thumbing off to the side where, indeed, there was a fairly mule faced little pony, all speckled and dusty, tied off in the square of a tent's shade.

The pony was nibbling at the grass around his feet, apparently perfectly content to stand around like a leashed dog. He snorted and wiggled around a little, lifting his head then and again to watch someone skirt across the midway or to start at a flag snapping in the breeze overhead, but given the circumstances the little animal seemed remarkably well behaved in the new setting. He stamped all four of his little feet impatiently and then dropped his attention back to the sparse grass in the immediate area.

Jo bit in the inside of his cheek and glanced back at the woman, taking the offered slip of paper and stuffing it into the back pocket of his trousers. "Real nice to meet you. I'm-- well, guess you already know and all." He shrugged a little crookedly. "That's Specks over there," he added quickly, nodding off at the pony. "But he doesn't cause too much trouble, so I don't think you've got to worry about him too much."

Hopefully.

Glancing down at the sledgehammer as if suddenly remembering it was there, he shifted a little and got a better grip on the handle. "Not exactly busy, Mrs. Grete. Is it Mrs.? Miss?" He wavered a moment, shrugged and kept on. "Anyway, just helping out." Well, exageration. Jo got the feeling just about everyone in the Cirque was kicked to busy work to start, though.

Jo glanced away briefly, eyes cutting up to the sun. "Nothin' wrong with too many men I suppose," he offered absently if a little thickly because, you know, awkward - and probably enough to make a less attentive man blush up to his eyeballs.

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck absently, quickly rolling with change of subject as conversation rolled back to horses and work.

"My Ma had a horse farm up in the East. Uh. In America, I mean." Because he'd learned quickly that not everyone here knew where the hell he was talking about if he said 'East.' Hell, maybe Grete didn't even know, not that she would have looked out of place there but... -- well damn, it was kind of hard to tell. "Dad was there too sure, but I don't think even he ever thought he was running the place." And that sent him grinning a little crookedly and leaning a little more heavily on the sledgehammer. He probably wasn't going to be using it to hit stakes in the ground for a few more minutes so there was no reason why he couldn't turn it into a makeshift crutch for the time being; his leg had started getting tired anyway.

"Actually." And Christ if he didn't feel weird actually taking her up on her offer... "The little b*****d is getting fidgety," he muttered and motioned to the little b*****d in question. The pony cocked an ear at them expectantly. "I mean, you don't gotta, but I don't think he'd be to against getting a little attention. Haven't had a chance to give him too many scratches behind the ears lately."

Rocking his weight off the sledgehammer, Jo hefted it up into both hands again and actually got back to work sitting stakes. The whole swinging heavy objects made conversation a little tougher, but it wasn't something he was too broken up about to stop either.

"Not running from anything, just don't have much of anywhere else to go I guess." He probably would have shrugged dismissively if it wasn't for the whole sledgehammer thing. He paused, kicked at the stake to make sure it was in the ground properly.

The pony meanwhile was absolutely reveling in all the attention. Snorting a little, he let his eyelids droop and his ears flick lazily back and forth as Grete scratched in the little hollows behind them. Jo grinned a little crookedly at the pair of them.

"Yeah, lived on the farm until I was sixteen then I booked it upstate to work with an uncle in a printing gig until that folded over and died and ended up home again. Lots of time around horses. Trained them later after the war."

Jo hesitated, staring hard at the stake he'd put in the ground. "Bad enough," he said at length as he migrated down a few feet and stuck another stake down an inch or so in the ground, straightened, and set about knocking it home with the flat face of the hammer, legs braced a little awkwardly to get the right leverage.

"Uncle moved out to Colorado anyway, probably did better because of it once the stock market crashed." Jo snorted a little between the rhythmic 'ping, ping!' of the sledgehammer against the head of the stake. He spared a glance in Grete's direction -- well, the pony's really.

"Nah, Specks is from California," he explained, as if she knew where any of that was. "Some kid's pony that they got tired of I guess. Picked him up cheap at the track the first summer I was there. Kind of...a hobby, I guess." Jo hesitated and stopped trying to drive the stake down from a second. He fidgeted a little where he stood - less with his lower half and more just a slight shift of the shoulders - as if thinking something over.

"He does tricks," he said less-than-suddenly, clearly trying to mask his hopefulness that Grete would pursue that particular aspect of the conversation above other things.

That and, hell, he'd never had a problem with showing off something good.

It was with an almost palpable sense of relief that he ditched the sledgehammer, letting it drop to the ground away from him with a thud. He swung his bad leg around, limping over the few strides to the pony and Grete.

"I guess so, yeah. I mean, it's probably what got us in the door in the first place but -- yeah. That's why." It probably wasn't a good idea to just go rambling at some woman he'd just met about his insane plans. That kind of craziness, the rambling kind, tended t scare people away didn't it? "Anyway, a few steps should be okay. He doesn't go much of anywhere really." Jo shrugged and reached forward to catch Specks by the rope halter and to untie the lead from the knot under the pony's chin.

Specks shook his head a little, snorting and stamping his feet as Jo tugged him out a little farther into the open and, more importantly, a little out of Grete's personal space. Just in case.

"Alright. It's not very impressive," he forewarned. "So don't get too excited or nothing." clearing his throat a little, Jo turned back to the pony who seemed to be waiting patiently for something. Jo held up five fingers on one hand, two on the other. "Usually we'd use colored rings or something I guess, but in a jam... Specks, what's five plus two?"

After a moment, the pony bowed his head and started rapping at the ground with one hoof, the picture of determination. Or maybe just greediness, seeing as the moment he'd banged out seven taps with his foot, he looked up with the clear expectation of being fed something. Muttering and rolling his eyes, Jo dug a piece of peppermint out of his pocket and offered it out to the pony who quickly gobbled it up out of his palm.

"Spoiled," Jo muttered under his breath. "He can tell colors and the like too. And, you know, the basic stuff like going up on two legs."

"Not a whole lot," he said a little regretfully, suddenly a little nervous that maybe it wasn't enough. There had to be tons of animals that could do all manner of things without hoops and colored rings. It back the space between Jo's shoulders itch uncomfortably with paranoia, something he hastily shoved down and put a lock on. He distracted himself by rubbing his thumb along the inside of Speck's ears, frowning down at the space between the pony's ears as he tried to think of something else to do.

Luckily, Grete seemed to be offering a fairly decent scapegoat. Jo glanced over at her, taking hold of Speck's halter in the process. The pony snorted and stamped his feet, shook his head and danced around a little in anticipation of going Somewhere. He'd clearly started to get tired of standing in the same place for so long.

"I guess we could hoof it over there now - might as well check before you get busy doing other things. Sides, I'm pretty damn sure there'll still be stakes to stuff in the ground when I get back." Jo grinned over at her a little crookedly.