"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.
"He-he-he," supplemented the silver-trimmed one.
Big Medicine stopped laughing suddenly, reined his horse close to the other, and stared at him challengingly, with his pale, protruding eyes, while the Happy Family glanced meaningly at one another.

Big Medicine was quite as unsafe as he looked, at that moment, and they wondered if the offender realized his precarious situation.
Miguel smoked with the infinite leisure which is a fine art when it is not born of genuine abstraction, and none could decide whether he was aware of the unfriendly proximity of Big Medicine.

Weary was just on the point of saying something to relieve the tension, when Miguel blew the ash gently from his cigarette and spoke lazily.
"Parrots are so common, out on the Coast, that they use them in cheap restaurants for stew.

I've often heard them gabbling together in the kettle." The statement was so ambiguous that the Happy Family glanced at him doubtfully.