The Happy Family hesitated and glanced at one another. Then Cal
spoke truthfully.
"You're it," he said bluntly, with a secret desire to test the
temper of this dark-skinned son of the West.
Miguel darted one of his swift glances at Cal, blew out his match
and threw it away.
"Oh, how funny. Ha-ha." His voice was soft and absolutely
expressionless, his face blank of any emotion whatever. He merely
spoke the words as a machine might have done.
If he had been one of them, the Happy Family would have laughed
at the whimsical humor of it. As it was, they repressed the
impulse, though Weary warmed toward him slightly.
"Don't you believe anything this innocent-eyed gazabo tells you,
Mr. Rapponi," he warned amiably. "He's known to be a liar."
"That's funny, too. Ha-ha some more." Miguel permitted a thin
ribbon of smoke to slide from between his lips, and gazed off to
the crinkled line of hills.
"Sure, it is--now you mention it," Weary agreed after a
perceptible pause.
"How fortunate that I brought the humor to your attention,"
drawled Miguel, in the same expressionless tone, much as if he
were reciting a text.
"Virtue is its own penalty," paraphrased Pink, not stopping to
see whether the statement applied to the subject.
"Haw-haw-haw!" roared Big Medicine, quite as irrelevantly.
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