Big Medicine snorted and forgot his immediate intentions toward Andy, just as Miguel, perhaps, intended that he should do.
“You wouldn’t dast come along, if we did,” he glowered. “I’d camp there alone for a month, far as I’m concerned, if there was any grub, by cripes!”
“That shows how much you know about the place,” put in Pink, siding with Andy. “Unless somebody’s packed it away lately, there’s all kinds of grub left. Maybe the flour, and bacon, and beans is gone, but there’s enough pickles and stuffed olives to last—”
“Olives!” cried the Native Son, and looked back longingly at the rugged bluff which marked One Man Coulee. “Say, does anybody belong to them olives?”
“Nobody but the ghost,” grinned Pink. “We bought him twelve lovely tall bottles, just to please Jimmie; he told us there wasn’t any sale for stuffed olives in Dry Lake, and he offered ’em to us at cost. We did think uh taking all he had, but we cut it down to twelve bottles afterward. And Olafson never ate a darned olive all the time he was there!”
“And they’re there yet, you say?” It was plain that Miguel was far more interested in the olives than he was in the ghost.
“Sure, they’re there.” Pink was not troubling to warp the truth, as Miguel decided, after a sharp glance. “The stuff all belonged to Olafson, and the shack belongs to the Old Man. And when Olafson went crazy over the wind, and froze to death,” he stipulated distinctly, with a challenging glance at Big Medicine, “we all kept thinking at first he’d come back, maybe. But he never did—”
“Exceptin’ his ghost, by golly!” put in Slim unexpectedly, with a belated snort of amusement at the idea.
“I’d rather,” sighed Miguel, “have a dozen bottles of stuffed olives than a dozen kisses from the prettiest girl in the State.”
“Mamma! they’re easier to get, anyway. If you want ’em that bad—”