“That there ghost may have something to say about them olives,” Happy Jack warned, sticking stubbornly to his story.
Miguel smiled—and there was that in his smile which sent four mendacious cow-punchers hot with resentment.
“Maybe yuh don’t believe in that ghost, by cripes?” Big Medicine challenged indignantly, and gave Miguel a pale, pop-eyed stare meant to be intimidating.
Miguel smiled again as at some secret joke, and made no reply at all.
“Well—don’t yuh b’lieve it?” Big Medicine roared after a minute.
Miguel smiled gently and inspected his cigarette; emotions might surge about this Native Son and beat themselves to a white froth upon the rock of his absolute, inimitable imperturbability, as the Happy Family knew well. Now they rode close-grouped, intensely interested in this struggle between bull-bellowing violence and languid impassivity.
“You don’t believe it yourself, do you?” Miguel inquired evenly at last, rousing himself from his abstraction. “Did you expect me to swallow hook, sinker, and all?”
Big Medicine looked positively murderous. “When I say a thing is so,” he cried, “I expect, by cripes, that folks will take m’ bare word for it. I don’t have to produce no affidavies, nor haul in any witnesses. I ain’t like Andy, here. You’re dealin’ now with a man that can look truth in the face and never bat an eye.”
Miguel smiled again, this time more humanly amused. “I’ve met men before who hadn’t a speaking acquaintance with Dame Truth,” he drawled. “They looked her in the face, too—and she never recognized ’em.”
Big Medicine was at that critical point where make-believe may easily become reality. He had been “joshing” and playing he was mad before; now his glare hardened perceptibly, so that more than one of the boys noticed the difference.