“The time when Rob got throwed
I thought I sure would bust!
I like to died a-laffin’
To see him chew the dust.
He crawled on that Andy bronc
An’ hit him with a quirt;
The next thing that he knew
He was wallerin’ in the dirt!”
Applause followed the final verse, and for the first time Monty became aware of the size of his audience. “Hello,” he said to the room in general. “Want to sing something? What do they know, Jimmy? How about ‘Sam Bas’? or ‘The Shivaree’? or ‘Black Jack Davey’? Well, what do you know?”
But it appeared that the audience preferred to hear more from Monty, and Monty good-naturedly responded. The game tables were now abandoned and the doorways were empty, and half a hundred inhabitants of Lothrop had closed in around the piano or found points of vantage near by. The big tables, one at each end of the room, were crowded, and swinging feet kept time to the refrains. Monty had to ransack his memory for songs. Now and then the listeners showed a disposition to take part by humming a chorus, but it wasn’t until the soloist had got halfway through “Cantankerous Charlie” that he had the audience with him. They liked that song, for there was a fine swing to the refrain: