United States or Saint Kitts and Nevis ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And Sam and Archie, I could see, were working over to finish the Aurora's new crew, and would've got 'em, too, but Argand, inside the bar, picks up a bung-starter, sneaks down and gives Sam and Archie a couple of slick taps over the ear, and down they went just slid feet first away from the bar and on to the floor, flat and as they slid Argand reaches over and grabs the turkey out of Sam's hand.
A bartender, coatless, red-faced, grasping in one hand a heavy bung-starter as if it were a weapon of defense; a gambler, sleeves rolled up, five cards clutched in nervous fingers; half a dozen sailors, vaqueros, a ragged miner or two and several shortskirted young women of the class that had recently drifted into the hectic night-life of San Francisco. All were whispering excitedly.
So he is a hard bird to name with a single name; he is a stone-breaker, coppersmith, and bung-starter, and even then he is not completely named, for when he is close by you find that there is a soft, deep, melodious quality in his thump, and for that no satisfying name occurs to you.
Then the perspiring bierbischof fills it from the naked keg, and you carry it to the table of your choice, or drink it standing up and at one suffocating gulp, or take it out into the yard, to wrestle with it beneath the open sky. Roughnecks enter eternally with fresh kegs; the thud of the mallet never ceases; the rude clamour of the bung-starter is as the rattle of departing time itself.
"Non! Non! De treize! De, w'at you call t'irten she repe't! A'm git mor' as seex hondre dollaire " The proprietor lumbered heavily from behind the bar and Benton noted that the thick fingers closed tightly about the handle of a bung-starter.
Indeed, the three car-loads of dripping and bedraggled humanity, meekly side-tracked under the guarding bayonets of the one company of infantry left at the fort, found not a sympathetic eye among the lookers-on. An ambulance had carted off to the hospital four or five, whose battered skulls bore witness to the hammering powers of big Milligan and his bung-starter.
A saloon-keeper rushes out with a bung-starter and hits a sailor on the head. An alderman bites off a sailor's ear. An athletic sailor fells the first six foes who advance upon him. A shot is fired. The long line at the polls dissolves as if by magic. The judges of election disappear out the back door. There is nothing for the unoccupied alderman to do but to place 400 Lockwin ballots in the box.
"Drop that mallet!" The words came softly, but with an ungentle softness that was accompanied by a boring, twisting motion of the gun muzzle as it pressed deeper into his midriff. The bung-starter thudded upon the floor. "Now let's get the straight of this," continued the Texan. "Hey, you Greaser, if you c'n quit talkin' long enough to say somethin', we'll find out what's what here.
I knew they had caught me lying on Slavin, with my hand grasping the knife-hilt, and, someway, I couldn't think of anything just then but how to get out of there into the open. I 've seen vigilantes turn loose before, and knew what was likely to happen!" "Sure. Recognize anybody in that first bunch?" "Big Jim, the bartender, was the only one I knew; he had a bung-starter in his hand."
His grey eyes were almost black as they gleamed over the levelled revolver barrels, and his clipped moustache fairly bristled. "Not a step, you!" he muttered. "What's the matter, Lacy? Do you want to die in your tracks? Mike, all I desire is an excuse to make you the deadest bung-starter in Colorado. Put down that gun, Carter!
Word Of The Day