“Aw, you stuck to it there was all the makin’s of a ghost,” Happy defended awkwardly, and wished that Andy Green had not overheard the yarn he told Miguel. “Sure, there’s a ghost!” He fell back a step that he might wink at Big Medicine, and so enlist his sledge-hammer assistance. “I leave it to Bud if we didn’t hear it, one night—-”
“And seen it, too, by cripes!” Big Medicine enlarged readily and shamelessly. “Standin’ right in the door, playin’ the fiddle to beat a straight flush.” He glared around the little group with his protruding eyes until his glance met the curious look of Cal Emmett. “You was with us, Cal,” he asserted boldly. “I leave it to you if we didn’t see ’im and hear ’im.”
Cal, thus besought to bear false witness, did so with amiable alacrity. “We sure did,” he declared.
“Funny you never said a word about it before,” snapped Andy, with open disbelief in his tone.
“We thought nobody’d believe us if we did tell it,” Big Medicine explained.
“Pity yuh don’t always think as close to the mark as yuh done then,” Andy retorted.
“How do yuh know there ain’t a ghost?” Big Medicine demanded with some slight rancor, born not of the argument, but of temporary ill feeling between the two. “Is it because yuh know, by cripes, that yuh lied last winter?”
Andy’s lips tightened. “I’ve heard about enough of that,” he said, with a flash of anger. With the cabin in sight, and recalling the tragedy of that night, he was not in the mood to wrangle good-naturedly about it with any one—least of all with Big Medicine. “I didn’t lie. I’m dead willing to back what I said about it with my fists, if—”
Big Medicine twitched the reins to ride close, but Miguel’s horse sidled suddenly and blocked the move. Also, Miguel smiled guilelessly into the angry eyes of Big Medicine.
“Will you fellows come back with me to-night, then, and see the ghost?” he asked lightly. “Or don’t you dare tackle it again?”