FORE:The sun had gone down and the night was at hand. The train had stopped to take on a supply of wood from a pile by the roadside. Some of the boys were helping pitch the heavy sticks onto the engine, the rest ware skylarking along the tops of the cars in the irrepressible exuberance of animal spirits of boys who had had plenty to eat and were without a care in the world. Harry Joslyn had been giving exhibitions of standing on his head on the runningboard. Gid Mackall had converted a piece of rope he had picked up into a lasso, and was trying to imitate the feats he had seen performed at the last circus. Monty Scruggs, the incipient lawyer, who was proud of his elocutionary talents, had vociferated at the woods they were passing, "Rienzi's Address to the Romans," "The Last Sigh of the Moor," "Absalom," "The Battle of Waterloo," and similar staples of Friday afternoon recitations. Alf Russell, the embryonic doctor, who sang a fine tenor, was rendering "Lily Dale" with much impressment, and little Pete Skidmore was "skipping" the flat hill-stones over an adjacent pond."I didn't mean it, sir," Harry explained. "I was just aiming my gun at things I see along the roadjust trying the sights like. A turkey-buzzard lighted on a stump out there, and I guess I must have forgot myself and cocked my gun, for it went off. Then Gid, seeing me miss, tried to show he was a better shot, and he banged away and missed, too, and then the other boys, they had to try their hands, and they belted away, one after another, and they all missed. I guess we didn't count as we ougther've done on the goin' forward o' the train, because we all struck much nearer than we expected to that nigger on a mule, and scared his mule nigh out o' his skin. We really didn't intend no harm."
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor quam, feugiat vitae.
