“Aw, if he don’t want to believe it he don’t have to,” Happy Jack intercepted Big Medicine’s belligerent speech. “Chances is them olives’ll stay where they’re at a good long while, though—if Mig-u-ell has to get ’em after dark.”
Miguel smoked while he rode ten rods. “I offered to come and listen to the ghost fiddle his fastest,” he observed at last, “and not one of you fellows took me up on it. To-night I’ll come alone and get those olives. I guess I can carry twelve bottles all right.”
“It’s no use to-night,” Cal Emmett objected. “It’s only on moonlight nights—” He looked a question at Big Medicine.
“Moonlight it’s got to be. There ain’t a moon till—”
“I can find stuffed olives any old kind of a night.” Miguel blew the ashes from his cigarette. “It’s the olives I want, amigo. I don’t give a whoop for your ghost.”
“Aw, I betche yuh dassent come when it’s moonlight, just the same,” cried Happy Jack. “I betche ten dollars yuh dassent.”
It would be tiresome to repeat all that was said upon the subject thereafter. So slight a thing as Happy Jack’s wrongful desire to lie as convincingly as could Andy Green, led the whole Happy Family into a profitless and more or less acrimonious argument. Each man, according to his nature, and the mood he happened to be in at the moment, took up the discussion. And speedily it developed that the faction against Miguel, Andy Green, and Pink included every man of them save Weary, who would stand by Pink regardless of the issue.
It was nearly noon, and they were hungry, and headed toward camp; but despite their haste they argued the foolish question of whether the cabin in One Man Coulee was haunted. Six of them maintained stubbornly that it was—for Irish began to side with Happy Jack just because he did not like the Native Son very well, and that ironical smile of Miguel’s irritated him to a degree; and Jack Bates also espoused the ghost because he scented an opportunity for excitement. The minority, composed of Miguel, Pink, Andy Green, and Weary, confined themselves largely to sarcasm—which is the oil which feeds fastest the flames of dissension.
It was foolish, to be sure; just as foolish as many other things which men drift into doing. But they, nevertheless, reached that point where, as in the case of Big Medicine, make-believe crowded close upon reality. The four rode together into camp ten paces ahead of the six, and they talked in low tones among themselves mostly. When they did deign to look at the six, their glances were unfriendly, and when they spoke their speech was barbed so that it stung the listeners. And the six retaliated vigorously—the more so because they had been silly enough in the first place to declare their belief in the nonexistent, and had been betrayed into making many ridiculous assertions which they were too obstinate to withdraw; so that once again the Happy Family belied the name men had given it, and became for the time being a bunch of as disagreeable cow-punchers as one could find in four days’ ride.
“Aw, say, I sure would like to put it on them fellers good!” Happy Jack growled to Cal and Jack Bates on the way to the corralled saddle bunch after dinner. Happy Jack was purple with wrath, for a caustic sentence or two spoken in Miguel’s most maddening drawl was yet stinging his ears. “That there Native Son makes me tired! I wisht there was a ghost—I’d sure—”