United States or Isle of Man ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
You're nothing but a cheap skate, a tin-horn gambler, run down at the heels. All right. I'm through with you. Lieutenant Fraser, from Texas, can come along and collect whenever he likes. I'll not protect a false alarm like you any longer." Struve looked at him, as a cornered wolf might have done. "What will you do?" "I'll give you up to him. I'll tell him to come in and get you.
This fellow is a tin-horn." "He did run cattle once, years ago. I think he was quite well off, but drank and gambled it away. Papa told me all about it, but I found out he was the man by accident. He is the one I am really afraid of." She stopped, her eyes deserting his face, and stared out into the darkness. He waited, feeling vaguely that he had not heard all she intended to say.
There was little choice left. The girl would never make an appointment with him except through necessity, and it was manifestly his duty to protect her from observation. Two of the men sitting there were strangers; the others he knew merely by sight, a tin-horn gambler called Charlie, and a sutler's clerk. His decision was swift, and characteristic.
There were sold likewise myriads of toy-guns discharging corks by compressed air with a loud pop, and myriads of toy-swords, and countless tiny bugles, the constant blowing of which recalled to me the tin-horn tumult of a certain New Year's Eve in New Orleans.
In Alaska, at that time, there were no rascals and no tin-horn gamblers. Games were conducted honestly, and men trusted one another. A man's word was as good as his gold in the blower. A marker was a flat, oblong composition chip worth, perhaps, a cent. But when a man betted a marker in a game and said it was worth five hundred dollars, it was accepted as worth five hundred dollars.
You are in no condition, this morning, to talk with a gentleman. However, you are my guest. Have a cigar?" The horseman's eyes twinkled. He admired the young Easterner's coolness. Not so the constable. "See here, you swindlin' tin-horn shell-shover, you cough up where Overland Red is or there'll be somethin' doin'. You doped that booze yesterday, but you can't throw no bluff like that to-day."
I never saw the time when he wasn't stretchin' his neck after some flossy typist or other, and as sure as a new one with the least hint of hair bleach showed up it would mean another affair for Lester. Maybe you know the kind. And he sure dressed the part, on and off. The Tin-Horn Sport Cut clothes that you see advertised so wide must be made and designed 'special for Lester.
"Say," I leaned over toward him, "wouldn't it have saved wear and tear if you'd told me at the first that you knew Skeels couldn't be Clayte?" "Oh, but, Jerry, you were so sure! And Skeels wasn't possible for a minute never in his little, piking, tin-horn life!" I don't believe I had seen Worth so happy since he was a boy, playing detective.
"It stood to reason that taking money off'n a man who'd play such a game was inhumanity in the first degree, so when Pete's last dollar departed I entered that horse-race with a gun, just as I had no business to, and I says to the tin-horn, 'Look-a-here, you put that money across the board, or I'll play a tune on you, and so he shouldn't think I was interferin' out of an idle curiosity, I pointed the weapon at him.
Pete dimly remembered Boca's white face and the room went black. Malvey strode forward. Old Flores dropped the neck of the shattered bottle and stood gazing down at Pete. "The good wine is gone. I break the bottle," said Flores, grinning. "To hell with the wine! Let's pack this young tin-horn out where he won't be in the way." But as Malvey stooped, Boca flung herself in front of him.
Word Of The Day