B. M. Bower

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Natiff Son makes me tired! I wisht there was a ghost—I’d sure——”
“Oh, there’s a ghost, all right,” Jack Bates stated meaningly; “all yuh got to do is make one.”
“Say, by golly!” Slim, close behind them, gulped excitedly. “Wouldn’t it——”
“Say, don’t let them faces get to leaking,” Cal advised bluntly. “It’s a whole week till the moon’s good. Shut up!” ”

“ Andy, the reins dropped upon the saddle horn, held an imaginary violin cuddled under his chin, and across the phantom strings drew an imaginary bow with slow, sweeping gestures, while his voice went on with the tale, and the Happy Family watched, and listened, and saw what he meant them to see. ”

“ Happy was saying, with ponderous gravity, “is the shack where the old fiddler went crazy trying to play a tune like the wind—or some blamed fool thing like that—and killed himself because he couldn’t make it stick. It’s haunted, that shack is. The old fellow’s ghost comes around there moonlight nights and plays the fiddle in the door.”
The Native Son, more properly christened Miguel, turned a languidly velvet glance toward the cabin and flicked the ashes from his cigarette daintily. “Have you ever seen the ghost, Happy?” ”

“ When, finally, they reached the time and the point of departure, Miguel, like the plains Indians during the fever of horse-racing, was pledged to his hat and his high-heeled boots; while the Happy Family, if they lost, would have plenty of reason to repent them of their rashness. ”

“ Got the olives all right, Miguel? Come and get on your horse. We’ll meet ’em down the trail a ways if we can. And say,” he called over his shoulder, when he was beside his horse again, “you fellows do some going! If you ain’t in bed when we get there, the stuff’s off.” Even while he looked back, Pink and Weary dodged out and vanished in the gloom of the willows.
The Native Son, bearing in a gunny sack twelve bottles of stuffed olives, and on his swarthy face an unstudied grin of elation, was just making ready to mount when Irish and Big Medicine became recognizable in the moonlight below. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Miguel turned and looked back at the group, smiling still. “Happy was telling me about a ghost in that cabin down there.” He flung out a hand toward the place so suddenly that his horse jumped in fear of the quirt. “I say we’ll come back some night and listen to the ghost. Happy says he frequently rides over to hear it play on moonlight nights, and—”
“Aw, g’wan!” Happy Jack began to look uncomfortable in his mind. “I said—”
“Happy? If he thought there was a ghost in One Man Coulee, you couldn’t tie him down and haul him past in a hayrack at noon,” Andy asserted sharply. ”

“ With that wordless understanding common among men who have lived long together, they left the trail and ambled slowly across the prairie in the direction of the Rogers Ranch. And they had not traveled more than half a mile when Miguel, looking back very cautiously, smiled. ”

“ Miguel responded unemotionally, glancing up over his cup. “Have patience, amigo.”
Slim nudged Happy Jack so that he spilled half his coffee and swore because it was hot, caught Big Medicine’s pale-eyed glare upon him, and subsided so suddenly that he choked over his next sentence, which had nothing at all to do with olives, or ghosts, or insane fiddlers.
Men, it would seem, never quite leave their boyhood behind them ”

“ Say, yuh better take them strings off the bow, and make darned sure you ain’t having any tracks, or anything. Let ’em come back and find everything just the way they fixed the plant—and then let ’em put in their spare time figuring the thing out, if they can. They’ll likely come moseying back up here, pretty soon—all but Happy and Slim—so you want to hurry. If you two can beat us home, they’ll never get wise in a thousand years of hard thinking.” He looked the ghost over critically, gave a snort, and painstakingly straightened the bow. ”

“ They’ll think we’ve gone over there to see the girls.”
“If I knew the country a little better——” began the Native Son, and stopped with that.
“If they don’t follow us over the ridge,” spoke up Andy, who had been thinking deeply, “we can go up Antelope Coulee instead of down, and follow along in the edge of the breaks to the head of One Man, and down that; that’s where you’re going, isn’t it? It will be five or six miles farther.” ”

“ It was that which sent them off riding by themselves—to town, they said before they started—early on the first Sunday after the wagons had pulled in to the ranch, there to stand until the beef round-up started. ”