"That's real singin', if yuh ask me!" "Shut up!" grunted Shorty, and prodded Dirk into silence so that he would miss none of the song.
Since Buddy had left the pink-apron stage of his adventurous life behind him, singing songs to please other people had been as much a part of his life as riding and roping and eating and sleeping.

He had always sung or played or danced when he was asked to do so--accepting without question his mother's doctrine that it was unkind and ill-bred to refuse when he really could do those things well, because on the cattle ranges indoor amusements were few, and those who could furnish real entertainment were fewer.

Even at the University, coon songs and Irish songs and love songs had been his portion; wherefore his repertoire seemed endless, and if folks insisted upon it he could sing from dark to dawn, providing his voice held out.
Hen sat with his big-jointed hands hanging loosely over his knees and listened, stared at Bud and grinned vacuously when one song was done, gulped his Adam's apple and listened again as raptly to the next one.
The others forgot all about having fun watching Hen, and named old favorites and new ones, heard them sung inimitably and called for more.
At midnight Bud blew on his blistered fingertips and shook the guitar gently, bottom-side up.
"I guess that's all the music there is in the darned thing to-night," he lamented.

"She's made to keep time, and she always strikes, along about midnight." "Huh-huh!" chortled Hen convulsively, as if he understood the joke.

He closed his mouth and sighed deeply, as one who has just wakened from a trance.
After that, Hen followed Bud around like a pet dog, and found time between stable chores to groom those astonished horses, Stopper and Smoky and Sunfish, as if they were stall-kept thoroughbreds.