There was a slight, a very slight, exulting note in his voice and I saw the faces of the men on the outside of the crowd turn to observe the speaker. I thought the man who had set this ball a-rolling looked a trifle perturbed, but Apache was not looking at him. He lay back in his chair, gazing before him with a calm face. "Then again," he said leisurely, as though he had the whole night to himself, "if I meet a man who sees it and asks why I wear it, I know that he is the sort of man about whom people say here,—in the language of the country,—'Don't worry about him; he 's a hog from Ontario and never been out of the bush before!'"
There was a strained silence after these words. Some of the more self-reliant men broke it with a laugh. The most were silent.
"I'm a hog—eh? You call me a hog?" cried the man, after looking on the faces of those who sat around. I think he would have swallowed Apache Kid's speech without a word of reply had it not been spoken before so large an audience.
"I did not say so," said Apache Kid, "but if I were you, I would n't make things worse by getting nasty. I tried to josh a man myself this afternoon, and do you know what I did? I called in on him to-night to see whether he had savveyed that I had been trying to josh him. I found out that he had savveyed, and do you know what I did? I apologised to him——"
"D' ye think I 'm going to apologise for askin' you that question?"
"You interrupt me," said Apache Kid. "I apologised to him, I was going to say, like a man. As to whether I think you are going to apologise or not—no."
He turned and scrutinised the speaker from head to toe and back again.
"No," he repeated decidedly. "I should be very much surprised if you did."
"By Moses!" cried the man. "You take the thing very seriously. I only asked you——" and his voice grumbled off into incoherence.
"Yes," said Apache Kid. "I have a name for being very serious. Perhaps I did answer your question at too great length, however."