Luyện nghe bài hát The Shooting of Dan McGrew

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the saloon;
The kid that handles the was hitting a jag-time tune;
of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and the strength of a louse,
Yet he a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched for a clue;
But we his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There's men that just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in
With a face hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops one by one.
I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head -- and there watching him was the that's known as Lou.

His eyes rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a there was no one else on the stool,
So the stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his hands -- my God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains you in with a silence you most could HEAR;
With only the of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck gold;
While high overhead, green, and red, the North Lights swept in bars? --
Then you've a haunch the music meant . . . hunger and night and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished bacon and beans,
But the hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman's --
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as is true --
(God! how ghastly she through her rouge, -- the lady that's known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed, so that you scarce could hear;
But you felt your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That someone had the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it you through and through --
"I guess make it a spread misere," said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost died away . . . it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes blind with blood.
The thought came of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill . . . then the stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a peculiar way;

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my they're true,
That one of you is a hound of . . . and that one is Dan McGrew."

Then I ducked my head, and the lights out, and two guns blazed in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou.

These are the facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say the stranger was crazed with "hooch", and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two --
The woman that him and -- pinched his poke -- was the lady that's known as Lou.