"Fix it so's your horses'll step on their feet if they don't do
what I say!" Then, from his shining saddle, he watched the
throngs slinking away. "I guess they know who I am NOW!"
CHAPTER XI. THE TONIC
These broodings helped a little; but it was a severe morning, and
on his way home at noon he did not recover heart enough to
practice the bullfrog's croak, the craft that Sam Williams had
lately mastered to inspiring perfection. This sonorous
accomplishment Penrod had determined to make his own. At once
guttural and resonant, impudent yet plaintive, with a barbaric
twang like the plucked string of a Congo war-fiddle, the sound
had fascinated him. It is made in the throat by processes utterly
impossible to describe in human words, and no alphabet as yet
produced by civilized man affords the symbols to vocalize it to
the ear of imagination. "Gunk" is the poor makeshift that must be
employed to indicate it.
Penrod uttered one half-hearted "Gunk" as he turned in at his own
gate. However, this stimulated him, and he paused to practice.
"Gunk!" he croaked. "Gunk-gunk-gunk-gunk!"
Mrs.
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