Читать книгу The Boy Scout Pathfinders; Or, Jack Danby's Best Adventure онлайн

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Soon the boys followed them, and ranged themselves on the grass, listening to the whoppers that the inventive men told. It must be admitted that most of the yarns had some foundation of truth, but on this had been reared an elaborate structure of events that had happened only in the imagination of the man telling the story.

After a while they started singing a rough lumberman’s song, and some of the boys joined in the chorus. Tom’s clear, piercing voice rang out above the thunderous bass of the men like foam on the crest of the wave, and when they had finished, the men gazed at him admiringly.

“That there kid,” said one great, bearded fellow, who at one time had been a cowboy on the western plains, “is sure goin’ to be some shakes as a singer when he grows up. I bet he’ll be in opry some o’ these days. I knew a feller on the Panhandle as could sing like that oncet, but he would borrow hosses as didn’t belong to him, and so we all strung him up one fine mornin’. It sure seemed a shame to strangle that voice of his’n, but it had to be did.”