“They’re about the fiercest animals there, aren’t they?” one of the boys asked.
“Well,” drawled the traveling man, working his cigar over to the corner of his mouth and contemplating2 the boys in the shrewd way he had. “I don’t know about that. The wallerpagoes are pretty ructious. But they don’t bother you unless you bother them. Now you take a skehinkum, one of the big kind——”
“You mean the kind with the whitish black fur?” Warde Hollister laughed.
The traveling man worked his cigar over to the opposite corner of his mouth and looked at Warde with an expression of humorous skepticism. “Don’t you learn about them in the boy scouts4?” he asked.
“Oh, positively,” said Warde. “They’re all right is long as you don’t feed them on gum-drops.”
The traveling man was having the time of his life with the three boys. They called him the traveling man because they thought he looked and talked like one. They had ventured to ask him his business and he had told them that it was starting revolutions in South America. He had even hinted that he was in a plot to blow up the Panama Canal, and had asked them not to mention this to their parents. He had said that if they kept his secret he might later let them in on a scheme to restore North America to its rightful owners, the Indians. “Wrap it up and we’ll take it and deliver it to them,” Warde Hollister had said.
Throughout the long journey they had wondered and speculated as to what and who this amusing stranger really was. And they had decided5 in conference that he was a traveling salesman. He seemed to have a hearty6 contempt for the boasted prowess of boy scouts, but the three boys did not dislike him for that. In the pleasant art of jollying they had been able to hold their own. And he seemed to like them for that. But he would not take them seriously.
They had told him about tracking and signaling and outdoor resourcefulness and woods lore7 and he had been pleased to poke8 fun at them about their skill and knowledge. He had appeared to derive9 much entertainment from this pastime. Pee-wee Harris (Raven and mascot) would have been able to “handle” him, but unfortunately Pee-wee was not on this trip. So the responsibility for defending the dignity of scouting10 fell to Warde Hollister, Edwin Carlisle and Westy Martin.
“And bandits?” Westy asked.
“What could be sweeter?” said Eddie Carlisle.
“Things have to be civil to suit you, hey?” the traveling man said. “Anything uncivilized: and——”
“We’re asking you if it’s true that there are train robbers and men like that in the park?” Westy said.
“Sure there are,” said the stranger. “Where do you suppose they buy their post cards to send home?”
The three boys seemed on the point of giving him up as a hopeless case.
“Why? Do you want to go hunting them?” the stranger asked.
“We wouldn’t be the first boy scouts to help the authorities,” Warde said.
This seemed to amuse the traveling man greatly. He contemplated13 the three of them with a kind of good-humored, sneering14 skepticism. Then he was moved to be serious.
“Well, I’ll tell you how it is,” he said. “The Yellowstone Park is really two places; see? There’s the wild Yellowstone and the tame Yellowstone. The park is full of grizzlies and rough characters of the wild and fuzzy west but they don’t patronize the sightseeing autos. They’re kind of modest and diffident and they stay back in the mountains where you won’t see them. You know train robbers as a rule are sort of bashful.
“You kids are just going to see the park and you’ll have your hands full, too. You’ll sit in a nice comfortable automobile16 and the man will tell you what to look at and you’ll see geysers and things and canyons17 and a lot of odds19 and ends and you’ll have the time of your lives. There’s a picture shop between Norris and the Canyon18; you drop in there and see if you can get a post card showing Pelican20 Cone21. That’ll give you an idea of where I’ll be. You can think of me up in the wilderness22 while you’re listening to the concert in the Old Faithful Inn. That’s where they have the big geyser in the back yard—spurts once an hour, Johnny on the spot. I suppose,” added the stranger with that shrewd, skeptical23 look which was beginning to tell on the boys, “that if you kids really saw a grizzly24 you wouldn’t stop running till you hit New York. I think you said scouts know how to run.”
“We wouldn’t stop there,” said the Carlisle boy; “we’d be so scared that we’d just take a running jump across the Atlantic Ocean and land in Europe.”
“What would you really do now if you met a bandit?” the stranger asked. “Shoot him dead I suppose, like Deadwood Dick in the dime25 novels.”
“We don’t read dime novels,” said Westy.
“But just the same,” said Warde, “it might be the worse for that bandit. Didn’t you read——”
“All right, you can laugh,” said Westy, a trifle annoyed.
The stranger stuck his feet up between Warde and Westy, who sat in the seat facing and put his arm on the farther shoulder of Eddie Carlisle who sat beside him. Then he worked his unlighted cigar across his mouth and tilted27 it at an angle which somehow seemed to bespeak28 a good-natured contempt of the boy scouts.
“Just between ourselves,” said he, “who takes care of the publicity29 stuff for the boy scouts anyway? Who puts all this stuff in the newspapers about boy scouts finding lost people and saving lives and putting out forest fires and plugging up holes in dams and saving towns from floods and all that sort of thing? I read about one kid who found a German wireless30 station during the war——”
“That was true,” snapped Warde, stung into some show of real anger by this flippant slander31. “I suppose you don’t know that a scout3 out west in Illinois——”
“You mean out east in Illinois,” laughed the stranger. “You’re in the wild and woolly west and you don’t even know it. I suppose if you were dropped from the train right now you’d start west for Chicago.”
The three boys laughed for it did seem funny to think of Illinois being far east of them. They felt a bit chagrined32 too at the realization33 that, after all, their view of the rugged34 wonders they were approaching was to be enjoyed from the rather prosaic35 vantage point of a sightseeing auto15. What would Buffalo36 Bill or Kit37 Carson have said to that?
The traveling man looked out of the window and said, “We’ll hit Emigrant38 pretty soon if it’s still there. The cyclones39 out here blow the villages around so half the time the engineer don’t know where to look for them. I remember Barker’s Corners used to be right behind a big tree in Montana and it got blown away and they found it two years afterward40 in Arizona.”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
grizzlies
|
|
| 北美洲灰熊( grizzly的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
contemplating
|
|
| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
scout
|
|
| n.童子军，侦察员；v.侦察，搜索 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
scouts
|
|
| 侦察员[机，舰]( scout的名词复数 )； 童子军； 搜索； 童子军成员 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
hearty
|
|
| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
lore
|
|
| n.传说；学问，经验，知识 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
poke
|
|
| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
derive
|
|
| v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
scouting
|
|
| 守候活动，童子军的活动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
spurt
|
|
| v.喷出；突然进发；突然兴隆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
testily
|
|
| adv. 易怒地, 暴躁地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
contemplated
|
|
| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
sneering
|
|
| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
auto
|
|
| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
automobile
|
|
| n.汽车，机动车 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
canyons
|
|
| n.峡谷( canyon的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
canyon
|
|
| n.峡谷，溪谷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
odds
|
|
| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
pelican
|
|
| n.鹈鹕，伽蓝鸟 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
cone
|
|
| n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
wilderness
|
|
| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
skeptical
|
|
| adj.怀疑的，多疑的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
grizzly
|
|
| adj.略为灰色的，呈灰色的；n.灰色大熊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
dime
|
|
| n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
outright
|
|
| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
tilted
|
|
| v. 倾斜的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
bespeak
|
|
| v.预定；预先请求 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
publicity
|
|
| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
wireless
|
|
| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
slander
|
|
| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
chagrined
|
|
| adj.懊恼的，苦恼的v.使懊恼，使懊丧，使悔恨( chagrin的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
realization
|
|
| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
rugged
|
|
| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
prosaic
|
|
| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
buffalo
|
|
| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
kit
|
|
| n.用具包，成套工具；随身携带物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
emigrant
|
|
| adj.移居的，移民的；n.移居外国的人，移民 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
cyclones
|
|
| n.气旋( cyclone的名词复数 )；旋风；飓风；暴风 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
afterward
|
|
| adv.后来；以后 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |