"Desperado" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from dwelling on the lawless characteristics of the frontier, because they are sufficiently well known. The gambler and desperado, the regulators of the Carolinas and the vigilantes of California, are types of that line of scum that the waves of advancing civilization bore before them, and of the growth of spontaneous organs of authority where legal authority ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Anarchists whom Janzen had presented to the Princess by way of satisfying her momentary passion for revolutionism. This one, though he was a fat, gay, little man, with a doll-like face and childish nose, which almost disappeared between his puffy cheeks, had the reputation of being a thorough desperado; and at public meetings he certainly shouted for fire and murder with all his lungs. Still, although he had already been compromised in various affairs, he had invariably managed to save his own bacon, whilst his companions were kept under lock and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... my shed! Oh, for my quiet hole! for Furry, and Oddity, and my peaceable companions!" thought I. "What folly it was to venture into the world with such a guide as this desperado, Whiskerandos!" ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... had come near pulling it all down again, like an ungrateful clock, in order to introduce a chapter in which Richard Skill (who was always being decoyed somewhere) should be decoyed on board that lonely hulk by Lord Bellew and the American desperado Gin Sling. It was fortunate he had not done so, he reflected, since the hulk was now required for ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... "how will this suit you? I'll go down to my stateroom and stop there until we land in Italy; and, if you like, just to be on the safe side with such a desperado as I am, you can put a guard outside my door. But first, you'll send a sheaf of marconigrams for me in both directions. You're welcome to read them, of course, before they go. Then when we get to Naples, my friend, Mr. Herriott, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the photograph of his betrothed in a pocket-book, and remarked that it did not do her justice. The cut of his head stood out from among the passengers with an air of startling strangeness. The first natural instinct was to take him for a desperado; but although the features, to our Western eyes, had a barbaric and unhomely cast, the eye both reassured and touched. It was large and very dark and soft, with an expression of dumb endurance, as if it had often looked on desperate circumstances and never looked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentlemanly consideration for the public. Exercise was ever his temporary specific for these incurables. Flinging off his coat, he cast away the cynic style engendering or engendered by them. He and Weyburn were for a bout. Sir John Randeller and Mr. Morsfield were at it, like Bull in training and desperado foiled. A French 'maitre d'armes,' famed in 'escrime,' standing near Captain Chiallo, looked amused in the eyes, behind a mask of professional correctness. He had come on an excursion for the display of his art. Sir John's very sturdy defence was pierced. Weyburn saluted the Frenchman as an acquaintance, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Shouts rose higher and higher, till at last a pistol shot resounded, and the ladies that had crowded to the front windows plainly distinguished the cry, "The Judge is killed! Jim Burns has shot Judge Pierce!" and the mob rushed toward the mouth of Danville street in pursuit of the desperado, a noted character of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... "they told me in Florence that he was a 'road agent' and desperado, but there did not seem to be anyone else, and my orders were peremptory, so I took him. I knew the ponies could pull us through, by the looks of them; and road agents are all right with army officers, they know they wouldn't get anything if ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... a comrade in that fashion was abhorrent even to the slack conscience of this desperado. So he grudgingly hefted the burden of the senseless figure and plodded under its weight ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... enlistment had been complied with; that their pay was going on; that they had no special favor to expect, and certainly were not in the way to obtain any by such a rude manner of application. As the fellow became outrageously insolent, the Captain drew his sword, which the desperado snatched out of his hand, broke in two pieces, threw the hilt at him, and made off for the barrack, where, taking his gun, which was loaded, and crying out "One and all!" five others, with their guns, rushed out, ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... stream, known as Sulphur Creek, has the honor, or the dishonor if you choose, of being the first desperado of the Yellowstone, but one so much greater than its two petty imitators of human times that there is no comparison of misdeeds. Sulphur Creek stole the lake from the Snake River and used it to create ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... "A desperado named Vandemark, well known to the annals of local crime as 'Cow Vandemark,' was arrested last Wednesday for leading the riots which have cleaned out those industrious citizens who have been jumping claims in this county. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... appeared—fine big Dogs they were. Their distant intention no doubt was to dash right at the old Wolf; but his fearless front, his sinewy frame and death-dealing jaws, awed them long before they were near him, and they also joined the ring, while the desperado in the middle faced this way and that, ready for any ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "Don Desperado Walked on the Prado, And there he met his enemy. He pulled out a knife, a, And let out his life, a, And fled for ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... still uncaught, and even one or two men of whom others spoke not too highly, like Craven, and "that man Gleason," to whom Blake would not speak at all. Then there were Steele and Kelly from Wickenberg and Date Creek, and Strong was to come up from Almy, bringing with him in chains the desperado, 'Patchie Sanchez, secreted by his own people when charged with the killing of the interpreter, but tamely sold when a price was set on his head. And the commander sent still another missive to Archer, whom the luckier general held in especial ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... and whirls with a flash of teeth. The sun gleamed on the barrel of Andy Lanning's rifle, and these men rode back in silence, feeling that they had witnessed one of those prodigies which were becoming fewer and fewer around Martindale—the birth of a desperado. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... strong man, and in a state of madness, no one dared to approach him. They tried to starve him into submission; but finding he was not to be subdued in that way, they sent for Friend Hopper, as they were accustomed to do in all such difficult emergencies. He went boldly into the cell, looked the desperado calmly in the face, and said, "It is foolish for thee to contend with the authorities. Thou wilt be compelled to yield at last. I will inquire into thy case. If thou hast been unjustly dealt by, I promise ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... everywhere. Here you will see the most luxurious castles, cathedrals, convents, villas and estates; there you will find the most desolate huts of the moujiks and lonely hermit caves in the wilds of Siberia. Here you will meet the most selfish chinovnik, the most fanatic desperado or reckless bureaucrat; there you face the noblest men and women, supermen, physically and mentally. You will find that all Russian life is full of such mental and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... to think," the desperado added, "that you can come here and make a gun-play on our deputy. We get along all right with him and I reckon we ain't going to stand for any cow-thieves from Lincoln County ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... waited on his uncle, General de Gons, and, presenting a loaded pistol, threatened to shoot him unless he would immediately advance him five hundred crowns. The general, though a brave man, well knew what a desperado he had to deal with, and gave a draft for the money, at the same time expostulating with him freely on his conduct. The young madman rode off triumphantly with his ill-gotten cheque. In the evening, passing the door of Mr Fletcher, he determined to call on him, and began by telling him how ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... a recognized hero of the British public, which on one occasion had presented him with a testimonial for his capture of a desperado who had been terrorizing the East End of London. But Merrington disdained such tokens of popular approval. He regarded the public, which he was paid to protect, as a pack of fools. For him, there were ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... and married again, and that my taking his name could do no harm. I accepted their kindness; they gave me my first start in business, which brought me here. It was not much of a deceit," she continued, with a slight tremble of her pretty lip, "to prefer to pass as the widow of a dead desperado than to be known as the divorced wife of a living convict. It has hurt no one, and it has ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... expression left his face; the storm of rage subsided. Great incentive there must have been for him thus to repress his emotions so quickly. He looked long at her with sinister, intent regard; then, with the laugh of a desperado, a laugh which might have indicated contempt for the failure of his suit, and which was fraught with a world of meaning, of menace, he left her without so ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... together through the streets on their way to the Hippodrome. Emile was a bad advertisement for the secrecy of his profession, for he looked a typical desperado. His velvet coat had the air of having been slept in for weeks, and had certainly never been on terms of acquaintanceship with a brush; and, besides the usual Anarchist badge, a red tie, a blood red carnation ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... cigarette and sat back in his chair with a smile of mockery. His attitude brought up the superfluous flesh about his chin and the roll of fat at the back of his neck. With his moustache en croc, and his shoebrush hair, I have rarely beheld a more sensual-looking desperado. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the two foreigners sprang at him. One, swinging the porter off his feet, seized the newcomer's right arm, and, helped by his comrade, endeavored to force him back into the vehicle. The effort failed, however, so the second desperado drew a knife and plunged it deliberately into the unfortunate man's neck. It was a fearsome stroke, intended both to silence and to kill, and, with a gurgling cry, its victim collapsed in the grip of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... horrible prompting—arising out of his former cowardice—made him feel for the jack-knife with which one murder had already been committed. Their stock of provisions was so scanty, and after all, the lives of the woman and child were worth more than that of this unknown desperado! But, to do him justice, the thought no sooner shaped itself than he crushed it out. "We'll wait till morning, and see how he shapes," said Frere to himself; and pausing at the brushwood barricade, behind which the mother and daughter were clinging to each ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... dared but say, "Forever," and shout it at him! She was desperate enough to try her chances at shooting him if she but had the pistols, and was sure they were loaded—a desperate chance indeed against the best shot on the Pacific coast, and a desperado at that. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... playing an engagement somewhere in the wild West, Junius Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a particularly undeserving fellow, the name of him unknown to us. The man, as it seemed, was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer, and highwayman—in brief, a miscellaneous desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort of person likely to touch the sympathies of the half-mad player. In the course of nature or the law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist even as a reminiscence in the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... across to reenforce the other sides of the circle. At one point the outlaws had already broken through the circle of wagons. Kid Wolf sent three screaming slugs toward them, and they fell back in disorder, leaving one desperado stretched ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... the boys greeted this bare-faced declaration, and Susy quite shivered at the idea of having taken two bites out of the apple of such a hardened desperado. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... does not appear like a desperado or outlaw," he thought. "There is nothing to distinguish him from the majority of men one meets in ordinary intercourse. He is a problem to me, I ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the morning, hot August; wind a mere lull, but southernly if any. Small Hussar pickets ride to right of the main Army March; to keep the Cossacks in check: who are roving about, all on wing; and pert enough, in spite of the Hussar pickets, Desperado individuals of them gallop up to the Infantry ranks, and fire off their pistols there,—without reply; reply or firing, till the word come, is strictly forbidden. Infantry pours along, like a ploughman drawing his furrow, heedless of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... find him a suitable wife with a dowry. When his military service was over he was going to be a waiter. When he volunteered this bit of information Emmy gave a cry of surprise. This dashing, swaggering desperado of a ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... to the store, and found pretty much all the men folks—and they were not numerous around there, the houses or cabins being rather scattering—getting ready to go down the river (Missouri) some ten miles, to see a notorious desperado "stretch hemp." My friend Captain V——, the storekeeper, was about to go along too, and proposed that we should mount and accompany him, or—stay and tend store. We accepted the latter proposition, as we were in ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... bloodthirsty desperado, by whose unconscious aid Maunders had contrived to get the Marquis into his power, was back in the Bad Lands, earning his living by hunting as he had earned it before the fatal June 26th when the Marquis lost his head. There ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... stuff, when who should come on the scene but our little party, and that makes 'em all nervous, 'cause Monty's a bad man to be up against. Remember: she claimed that she knows Monty and he knows her. She means by that that he knows she's a desperado, and she thinks he'll draw the line at a trip that promises murder and blackmail and such like dirty work. So she puts a scare into us with a view to our throwing a scare into him. If I scare any one, it's going to be that dame herself. I'll not ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone. Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... says the man put on the true look of a desperado, resolved on mischief if opposed: but that, after pausing a moment, he began, with a kind of humorous anger, to rub the side of his face, as if it were benumbed] Faith, on recollection, I believe I got a bit of a cold last night, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... sang out a deriding voice that set the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all the evenin' papers—oh, yus! ''Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a desperado. Brave constable has 'arf a quid's worth out of an infuriated ruffian!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her to see that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Deadwood during the summer with the exception of occasional visits to the camps. On the 2nd of August, while setting at a gambling table in the Bell Union saloon, in Deadwood, he was shot in the back of the head by the notorious Jack McCall, a desperado. I was in Deadwood at the time and on hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting and found that my friend had been killed by McCall. I at once started to look for the assassian and found him at Shurdy's butcher shop and grabbed a meat cleaver and ...
— Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane • Calamity Jane
... girl there was a double-barreled pistol, loaded and ready for instant use; and it was not there for ornament. Both girls had been trained to use the rifle and the pistol; and never, since Iola's frightful experience with the Mexican desperado, Padilla, some three years before,[1] had either girl been permitted to ride, even a short distance from the house, without having one or both of these weapons with her. Consequently, trained and armed as they ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... to see her picture in the "studio" at the House by the Lock, I was doubly surprised to see it in a locket worn by a young desperado on the other side of the world. Impulsively I withdrew my hand which held the ornament, with the feeling that the man had no right to it—that I could not ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... but I will when I've got through with ye," replied the desperado with brutal coolness. "I'll take some more o' that meat—an' don't you let it burn, neither. Where's the sugar for the coffee? I'll get a bigger club if ye don't look spry," and so the tramp was served with his meal. "Now ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "He is a desperado, my dear; a wild, reckless spirit who has no regard for law and order. Of course, if these men are after him, you will tell them he ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... her course indicated in the verbal order of the flag-officer. Christy felt that he had had a narrow escape from death, or at least a severe wound, at the hands of the desperado who had invaded his cabin. Flanger had escaped, after he had been put on board of the flag-ship, with the assistance of Galvinne; and he appeared not to have taken the trouble to render the same service to his confederate. The ships' ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... he exclaimed, "I don't want to be potted out here by any wild huntsmen, or Northern desperado, or ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... her brave part in the capture of the famous desperado. But Cap was too sincerely sorry for Black Donald to ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... his official career and perhaps his life hung in the balance. To fail of arresting the desperado was to brand himself a bungler and to expose himself to the contempt of other sure-shot ruffians. However, having faced death many times in the desert and on the range, he advanced steadily, apparently undisturbed by the warnings he ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... struck up the desperado's arm just in the nick of time, thus preventing a terrible crime. But the end was not yet. There were five more bullets in the cylinder of the weapon, as the lad knew ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... the desperado reigned, A tyrant on the waves; While they whose blood his hands had stained, Went down ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... the desperado heretofore referred to, publicly proclaimed that he had fought for the land, had run the McGinnises from the county, and if anyone bid for the land against him he would kill him on sight. Even his co-conspirators would not brook his displeasure. The land was sold on his bid, no one dared oppose ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... September, 1861, sacked and in part burnt Humboldt, for which dastardly and quite unwarrantable deed, James G. Blunt, acting under orders from Lane, took speedy vengeance; and the world was soon well rid of the instigator and leader of the outrage, the desperado, John Matthews.[109] ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... inevitable effect. A great number of adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very much the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which kept away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly-opened goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the individual adventurer. It was a field for elaborate machinery, which could only be provided by capital. Managers, engineers, miners, technical experts, and the tradesmen and middlemen ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and his Wife, decent bodies both, were wofully frightened at the behaviour of this Desperado; but I was not to be frightened by such Racketing. I bade him put up his Toothpick, giving him at the same time a Back-Hander, which drove him into a Corner, where he crouched, snarling like a Wild-beast, but offering to do me no hurt. Then I asked what the To-do was about, and was told that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... dull work indeed to a boy who was longing to stand sword in hand on a blood-stained deck, in a gory uniform trimmed with skulls and cross-bones, and order his enemies to be thrown one by one into the sea. "The shark awaits your car-casses!" spouted the imaginary desperado with a vicious snap of his teeth; and when Aunt Greg interrupted by asking him to bring in an armful of kindling, he glared at her like the Red Rover himself. Poor Aunt Greg! how little she guessed what ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... and see. They explained the causes which led to his expulsion from school after school. They tracked him to Australia, and unearthed dark secrets in his life out there which would have made the bushranger Kelly reject him from his historic gang. Finally, they brought him back to England a ruined desperado, intent on getting at his relative's wealth by fair means or foul. The robbery of her jewels was only part of his scheme. By killing her he obtained the whole of her wealth at once. Then a victim became necessary—a stalking-horse ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... "The bay and harbour are defended by batteries, formerly consisting of upwards of a hundred pieces, but lately suffered to fall into decay. These batteries received extensive additions after the alarm caused by the descent of the notorious Paul Jones in 1778. This desperado, who was a native of Galloway, and had served his apprenticeship in Whitehaven, landed here with thirty armed men, the crew of an American privateer which had been equipped at Nantes for this expedition. The success of the enterprise was, however, frustrated by one ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... desperado, 'and I think he has had just a lang enough lease o 't, when he's for betraying honest folk that come to spend siller ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... expression of the keenest satisfaction. "I could have cried. I called him a worm, a bug, a boll-weevil; but he said he had a family and didn't intend to be shot up by some well-dressed desperado." ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... treadmill,—a viciously brutal invention,—of bread and water and dark cells and the rest of the barbarities which society hit upon with such singular perversity as a means of humanising its derelicts. The prison record of Smith, the "revengeful desperado" who spent half a year in solitary confinement, is probably of as mild a punishment as ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... asked if he thought Jimmy Governor (a notorious desperado who had given the New South Wales police much trouble) ought to be hanged. "Baal. No fear hang 'em; ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... drunken creature beyond it. His nerves grew tense, and every muscle in his frame tightened. He saw the beginning of the grooves in the barrel of the pistol and the gray cones of the bullets at the side in the cylinder; he saw the cruel, black, drunken eyes of the young desperado. It was all in a flash. He had not a chance for ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... all right, Kid," says Bennett to me. "You be the terrible desperado that I'm bringin' home after a bloody fight, where you wounded Martin and me, and 'most escaped. You'll have ev'ry rancher's wife givin' you flowers and weepin' over your youth and kissin' you good-bye. In the mornin', when we're ready to go and I'm about to fix up the vouchers for our host, you ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... of his nature, Carlos made two mad attempts on Frank's life, both of which were baffled, and then the young desperado was forced to ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... privately making known to the leading nobles that it was his design to marry the queen, and for securing their concurrence in the plan. They concurred; or at least, perhaps for fear of displeasing such a desperado, said what he understood to mean that they concurred. The queen heard the reports of such a design, and said, as ladies often do in similar cases, that she did not know what people meant by such reports; there was no foundation ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... good-looking desperado, who called himself Captain Gunn of Gunn, and who was locally somewhat irreverently known as the very Gunn of very Gunn. This gentleman, whose former career had been of a most remarkable order, was, on the annexation of the country, found in the public prison charged with having committed ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... made clearer and louder by the sudden cessation of chatter among the visiting group. Jones, who seemed to have come to his grating when the suppressed laughter sounded in the dark corridor, heard every word of the official's speech. He was no longer the bearded desperado Jack had seen in the melee at Rosedale—there was a certain distinction in the poise of the head, an inborn gentility in the impassive contemplation with which he met the furtive scrutiny of the curious visitors. Jack he eyed with something of surprise, but when Dick pushed suddenly ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an Indian's. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... Mora for sitting on a step quietly conversing with a friend. Charles resisted an absolutely unlawful attack, and a gun fight followed. Both Mora and Charles were shot, but because Mora was white and Charles was black, Charles was at once declared to be a desperado, made an outlaw, and subsequently a price put upon his head and the mob authorized to shoot him like ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... cordial hospitality extended by Yusuph Effendi, an Assyrian gentleman, the charg'e d'affaires of the consulate for the time being, Colonel E—, the consul, having left recently for Trebizond and England, in consequence of numerous sword-wounds received at the hands of a desperado who invaded the consulate for plunder at midnight. The Colonel was a general favorite in Erzeroum, and is being tenderly carried (Thursday, September 3, 1885) to Trebizond on a stretcher by relays of willing natives, no less than forty accompanying him ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... out all German professors and to abjure German science. The doings of every scapegrace in an American university, of every silly woman in Chicago, of every blackguard in New York, of every snob at Newport, of every desperado in the Rocky Mountains, of every club loafer anywhere, were served up as typical examples of American life. The municipal governments of our country, and especially that of New York, were an exhaustless quarry from which specimens of every kind of scoundrelism were drawn and used ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... was populous. For'ard, rifle in hand, among the Raiatean sailors, stood a desperado whom Mauriri announced was Raoul's brother. Aft, by the helmsman, stood another. Attached to him, tied waist to waist, with slack, was Mataara, the old Queen. On the other side of the helmsman, his arm in a sling, was Captain Glass. Amidships, as before, ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... audience after yielding to temptation.[29] This, of course, does not refer to deeds of violence which are really not only excusable but actually right, in the circumstances—like the killing of an attacking desperado ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... train, and one of the robbers, who was doubtless new at the business, caught the passing engine and climbed into the cab. The engineer, seeing the man's masked face at his elbow, struck it a fearful blow with his great fist. The amateur desperado sank to the floor, his big, murderous gun rattling on the iron plate of the coal-deck. Yank, the engineer, grabbed the gun, whistled off-brakes, and opened the throttle. The sudden lurch forward proved too ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... believe that this wharf a few months before had been the scene of a bloody tragedy which involved the shooting of "Soapy Smith," the renowned robber and desperado. On the contrary, it seemed quite like any other town of its size in the States. The air was warm and delightful in midday, but toward night the piercing wind swept down from the high ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... Both his middle fingers had been taken off at the second joint, and his feet had lost the third right toe, the fourth left toe, and the end of one hallux. His back, also, had sustained a severe injury, which had retarded his growth. This animal we called "The Desperado." ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... grew heavier. The horses had to slow down to a walk and the wheels sank deep into the sand, which now lay in long ridges, like waves, where the last high wind had drifted it. Two hours brought the party to Pedro's Cup, named for a Mexican desperado who had once held the sheriff at bay there. The Cup was a great amphitheater, cut out in the hills, its floor smooth and packed hard, dotted with ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general .. joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object. Queequeg, said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and I was still shaking ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... political episode were personal. Hamilton had again thwarted the ambitions and incurred the deadly enmity of an embittered political desperado. A challenge followed and was accepted. On a summer morning, July 11, 1804, at Weehawken across the Hudson, the rivals faced each other for the last time. Hamilton threw away his fire: Burr aimed with murderous intent, and Hamilton fell mortally ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the prisoners at once, all except Hinkey," Sergeant Noll reported back to his chum and to Lieutenant Prescott. "The leader of the gang is a half-popular fellow with some classes here in the mountains. Despite the fact that he's a desperado, he is often surprisingly good-natured, and always game when he loses. His name is Griller—Butch Griller, he's called. His crew are called the Moccasin Gang, because Griller has always preferred that his men wear moccasins instead of shoes. Shoes may give out in the wilds, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... engaged in conversation, some in a loud, braggadocio, swaggering tone, others in low, murmuring voices, audible only to themselves, and still others in confidential whispers. Of those who have figured heretofore in the incidents of this story, we may mention the hard-featured, desperado-looking fellows who had conceived a dislike to Duval, as being very earnestly engaged in some matter among themselves, doubtless of a vile character; it would seem, too, from their manner, that others ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... open boats and roared together for pity and release. Then, for the first time, I was able to see how cruelly Czerny's gun had dealt with them in the darkness of the night. It was horrible to see the bloody limbs, the open wounds, the matted hair, the gaping faces of these creatures of a desperado's mad ambition. The boats themselves were splintered and hacked as though heavy hatches had beaten them. I could wonder no longer that they called the truce; and yet, knowing why they called it, what was I to do? Let them set foot on the plateau, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... picture of you," she went on, "coming over here armed cap-a-pie to do battle for the romance of money. Already we were picturing to ourselves poor Dreadnought Phipps, the first of your victims, seeking for an asylum in the Stock Exchange Almshouses; and the other desperado—what was his name? Skinflint Martin?—on his knees before you while you read him a moral lecture on ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shooting a watchman named Twyford, on the night of July 22, 1806. An alibi was set up in defence, and though it was unsuccessful, circumstances afterwards came to light tending to prove that though Matsell was a desperado of the worst kind, who had long kept clear of the punishments he had deserved, in this instance he suffered for another. There was a disreputable gang with one of whom, Kate Pedley, Matsell had formed ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... usual accompaniment of saloons, dance halls and faro banks. There was a vigorous expulsion of gamblers in the early fifties and an incident occurred which quite possibly supplied the inspiration for Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." A notorious gambler and desperado, and his accomplice, demurred. Whereupon the irate miners placed them on a burro, and with vigorous threats punctuated by a salvo of revolver shots fired over their heads, drove them out of camp. They disappeared over the hill upon ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... countrymen—stood before Judge Hall, and quelled the tumult and indignant murmurs of the multitude by telling him that 'the same arm which had defended the city from the ravages of a foreign enemy should protect him in the discharge of his duty?' Is this the conduct of a lawless desperado, who delights in trampling upon Constitution, and law, and right? Is there no reverence for the supremacy of the laws and the civil institutions of the country displayed on this occasion? If such acts of heroism and moderation, of chivalry and submission, have no charms ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... and had the satisfaction of helping a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape through some of the meshes of the law. "You're a lucky {p.199} scoundrel," Scott whispered to his client, when the verdict was pronounced. "I'm just o' your mind," quoth the desperado, "and I'll send ye a maukin[111] the morn, man." I am not sure whether it was at these assizes or the next in the same town, that he had less success in the case of a certain notorious housebreaker. The man, however, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... servant of his will. It's a sort of national trait, you know, very much like the way we English bury our heads in the sand when we hear unpleasant truths. The last thing Fischer wants is advertisement, and yet he goes to some of his Fourteenth Street friends and unearths a popular desperado to get rid of me. The fellow happens most unexpectedly to fail, and now Fischer has to face a good many awkward questions and a good deal of notoriety. No, I don't ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... camp a mile or so away. The belt of open snow-space between it and him was all too narrow for his liking. Well he knew how swiftly Jean could move, how certainly he could strike when the need arose. But for this Bill had done murder that night, as surely as ever softly treading human desperado in the dead of night has done murder at a bedside. As it was he thought he must fight. Well, he was prepared. Nay, his bowels yearned for it just as strongly as any dog's bowels had yearned for fresh-killed meat that ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... luggage. Stepping into a skiff, they were rowed to a launch, and a few moments later were gliding swiftly around the long rock-rib that guards the harbor, a copper-hued bandit at the wheel, a Nubian giant at the engine, and an evil, yellow-faced desperado sprawling ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... stop a mob! Can Jack Fairfax stop a mob! Well, I should smile! Ex-desperado—nineteen scalps on his string. ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... order to rob; and the extraordinary outrages constantly perpetrated in the "Wild West" of the United States, in the shootings, "holding-up" of passenger trains, wrecking of express cars by dynamite, bank robbery, and the like exploits of the Anglo-American desperado, to steal, are unknown to the temperament of the Spanish-American. The latter are creatures of impulse, and lack the "nerve" for a well-planned murderous exploit of the above nature. Nor are they capable of the lynching, burnings of negroes, and race riots which characterise those parts of the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... tables, the latter game being then the rage in every settlement from Dawson to the coast. I mention the bar, as it was the scene of a somewhat amusing incident, which, however, is, as a Klondiker would say, "up against me." About this period a "desperado" of world-wide fame named Harry Tracy was raising a siege of terror in the State of Oregon, having committed over a dozen murders, and successfully baffled the police. We had found Dawson wild with excitement ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... he wheeled upon the other, who already had his hand upon his revolver, and before he could fire, his own finger touched the trigger, and the desperado fell. ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... Rogers, desperado, outlaw, and fugitive from justice, went to the wheel, and as he steered he smiled again, grimly and painfully, for ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... as it did in the Southern States of America before the Civil War;[79] no doubt there were plenty of idle ruffians in the city, ready to steal, to murder, or to hire themselves out as the armed followers of a political desperado like Clodius; but the simple necessities of the life of those who had no slaves of their own gave employment, we may be certain, to a great number of free tradesmen and artisans and labourers of ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... the very last apparition Reginald could have looked for. He had given up all idea of seeing the young desperado any more. ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... matters.' But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, 'I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.' Or, 'I intend to subvert by force the government of the United ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Card shark and desperado that he was, his consummate aplomb nobody could deny, except Daniel, now capering and swaggering and twirling ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... party of reform, the latter the representative of the older Turkish military and patriotic spirit which Abdul Aziz had incensed by his subserviency to Russia. A few days later the deposed Sultan was murdered. Hussein Avni and another rival of Midhat were assassinated by a desperado as they sat at the council; Murad V., who had been raised to the throne, proved imbecile; and Midhat, the destined regenerator of the Ottoman Empire as many outside Turkey believed, grasped all but the highest power in the State. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... defend themselves, one marine was killed and the remainder of the guard severely wounded. As the unfortunate marine fell into the hold of the proa, the pirate chief seized his musket and fired it at the officer standing at the gangway. Another desperado, lunging his spear through the after-port of the brig, mortally wounded the master. The pirates then cut the hawser, and seizing their paddles, made off for the shore. The boats were immediately manned and sent ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... City, too! Willie stayed out by the barb-wire fence; he didn't dast to go in. When I come out I found him ready to cry. That desperado has sure got the heart of a woman. I reckon he'd commit a murder for that ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... anguish with a tale of disruption told to a turn. The Island did not hold more loyal devotion than his for Dictator Jaffier, to hear Monkhouse tell it; and how Celestino Rey had reached his ripe years, with such hatred in the world, was by no means the least of Equatorian novelties.... Here was a desperado in the sere, shaking for the need of drink, when he first appeared to Bedient. On the final forenoon of the latter's stay at the Inn, he sat with Monkhouse in the big carriage doorway on the street-level. The old man ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... The rage for new names especially,—names which do not adorn the sacred page, nor carry us back to the times and faith of our fathers, but which have gained notoriety in the world of fiction, and associate us with the lover's affrays and with the desperado's feats,—these are the names which Christian parents too often seek with avidity for their children. If you were to judge their homes by these names, you would think yourself in a Turkish seraglio, or amid the voluptuous scenes of a Parisian court, or in the bosom of a heathen family. What, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... of the man was different. He was a desperado, one of the dashing, reckless kind—more famous along the Pecos and Rio Grande than more really desperate men. His attire proclaimed a vanity seldom seen in any Westerner except of that unusual brand, yet it was ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... headed some one of the many small riots against Rome which were perpetually sputtering up and being trampled out by an armed heel. There had been bloodshed, in which he had himself taken part ('a murderer,' Acts iii. 14). And this coarse, red-handed desperado is the people's favourite, because he embodied their notions and aspirations, and had been bold enough to do what every man of them would have done if he had dared. He thought and felt, as they did, that freedom was to be won by the sword. The popular hero is as a mirror which reflects ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... it?" remarked Bill Black, presently. Bill could not keep quiet for long. He was a typical Texas desperado, had never been anything else. He was stoop-shouldered and bow-legged from much riding; a wiry little man, all muscle, with a square head, a hard face partly black from scrubby beard and red from sun, and a bright, roving, cruel eye. His shirt ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... would tell of cracking cribs and cops and doing time; Or else when he was flush of funds he'd carelessly explain He'd biffed some bloated bourgeois on the border of the Seine. So gentle and polite he was, just like a man of peace, And not a desperado and the terror of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... only endeavoring to turn the eye of justice from the guiltless to the guilty when I entreat you to look elsewhere for the culprit who committed this deed." Pausing, she held her two hands out before him. "It must have been some common burglar or desperado; can you not bring him, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... well. Upon my soul, before we got to Holland I was not very clear in my own mind what my past had been. Indeed the danger was that the other side of my mind, which should be busy with the great problem, would get atrophied, and that I should soon be mentally on a par with the ordinary backveld desperado. ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... to the widower's house and hide there till the time for a train to Paris. Once safely in that city, Barbara felt it would be a weight lifted from her mind, for she really was not very happy at sharing in an enterprise which, even to her inexperience, seemed more fitted for some desperado than a sane ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... meerschaum in the streets, however, is very inferior form. The proper smoking is a briar, and, remember, it is not smart to have a new pipe. So soon as he buys it, the Blade takes his pipe home, puts it on a glowing fire to burn the rim, scrapes this away, burns it again, and so on until it looks a sullen desperado of a pipe—a pipe with a wild past. Sometimes he cannot smoke a pipe. In this case he may—for his stomach's sake—smoke a cigarette. And, besides, there is something cynical about a cigarette. For the very young Blade there are certain makes of cigarette that burn well—they are mixed with ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... changed completely every few hundred miles. After leaving Irkutsk we soon discovered that we were in enemy territory, and the few weeks, and in some cases days, that had elapsed since the retirement of the Bolshevik Commissars had left the country the prey of the desperado. Let there be no mistake, Bolshevism lived by the grace of the old regime. The peasant had his land, but the Russian workman had nothing. Not one in a thousand could tell one letter of the alphabet from another. He was entirely neglected by the State; ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... years now, it had remained in secret. Marshal Stone yearned to recapture the Burns still. There was no reason whatsoever for believing it to be in the possession of Hodges, yet it might as easily be with that desperado as with another. There was at least the possibility. The marshal, as he rode north before the dawn next morning, felt a new kindling of hope. It seemed to him almost certain that the opportunity was at hand to satisfy one ambition at least by putting Hodges behind the bars. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... was a judge and was holding court in a small settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judge ordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare approach him. "Call a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." But they also shrank with fear ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... hungry De Launay, "these stories have many endings after so many years. It was long after D'Albret was killed that we came into this country. It was spoken of at the time as a great mystery by some, and by others it was regarded as a settled affair. One side would have it that a man who was a desperado and a murderer had done it, while others said that it would never be known who had shot him. There is only this that I know. A man named Banker, who spends all his time searching for gold, has spent year after year in searching the Esmeraldas for D'Albret's mine and, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... evidence seemed to indicate that I was absolutely afoot and weary at the time, and didn't have the outfit concealed about my person. I languished in the calaboose for twenty- four hours, and might have remained there indefinitely if the real desperado hadn't been captured in the nick o' ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... are credibly informed, that what injuries he received on the night of the raid upon Red Wing were purely accidental. There were some in the company, it seems, who were disappointed at not finding the black desperado, Nimbus Desmit, who was organizing his depraved followers to burn, kill, and ravish, and proposed to administer a moderate whipping to the fellow Eliab, who was really supposed to be at the bottom of all the other's rascality. These few hot-heads burst in the door of his ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... forty years ago a policeman was shot to death by a murderer, followed over a thousand miles. He knew that the criminal would shoot; but it was the rule of the Mounted Police not to fire first. Wounded, he killed his man, then died. And there was the case of the desperado who crossed the border, and was eventually captured and held by an immense force of American police and military. They awaited a regiment of the Police to conduct the villain back to trial. Two appeared, and being asked, "Where is the escort?" replied, "We are ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... desperado you gentlemen are trying to saw off on me," Graham directed, meeting the smile with another and offering ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... gathering. They, beatified, pale, unstrung by this calm acceptance of what he had opposed bitterly two years, sat down foolishly, and listened to the pompous utterance of pompous phrases in praise of dead heroes and a living poet. Thought and speech failed together. If only some desperado would break in upon him and try to kill him! if the house would take fire, or a riot begin in the street! The old man finished his reading, congratulated the poet, blessed the pair in the old-fashioned style, informed ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... to by name, and then under the initials "X. X."; but it had plainly been floated for the first time into the business at a period of great depression some six years ago. The name of a distinguished Royal personage had been mentioned by rumour in connection with this sum. "The cowardly desperado" - such, I remember, was the editorial expression - was supposed to have escaped with a large part of this mysterious fund still in ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you to make such a request. When you can say 'must' to us, we shall hear you, but not till then; so, my old fellow, if you be not satisfied, why, the sooner we come to short sixes the better," was the response of the desperado. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... think I don't know those wild mountaineers? They are perfectly chivalrous, and I could feel a great deal safer in leaving my wife in care of that desperado than with one ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... would assuredly have run Michele right through the heart. The ex-bravo, on now becoming aware by the light of the torches whom he had been molesting, stood as if petrified, his eyes almost starting out of his heady "a painted desperado, on the balance between will and power," as it is said somewhere. Then, uttering a fearful scream, he tore his hair and begged for pardon and mercy. Neither the Pyramid Doctor nor Pitichinaccio was seriously injured, but they had ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... pushed it aside, qualifying the harsh movement with some insincere endearment, and went to Richard's room and walked in blindly, saying: "I must whip you—you've broken the law, and if you do that you must be punished." Out of the darkness before her came the voice of the tiny desperado: "Very well. It was quite worf this. Mother, I'm ready. Come on and whip me." She pulled down the blinds and set herself to the horrid task, and kept at it hardly, unsparingly, until she felt she had really hurt him. Then she said, with what seemed to be the last breath in her ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... and Kesteven. What meant this news, that Hereward of St. Omer was come again, and an army with him? That he was levying war on all Frenchmen, in the name of Sweyn, King of Denmark and of England? He is an outlaw, a desperado, a boastful swash-buckler, thought William, it may be, to himself. He found out, in after years, that ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... seen that in no sense does Flamineo resemble Iago. He is not a traitor working by craft and calculating ability to well-considered ends. He is the desperado frantically clutching at an uncertain and impossible satisfaction. Webster conceives him as a self-abandoned atheist, who, maddened by poverty and tainted by vicious living, takes a fury to his heart, and, because the goodness of the world has been for ever lost ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Virginian, covering the desperado with his pistol, and glaring upon him with determined eye. Palafox, unable to escape, nonchalantly bit a chew of ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... upon the desperado, crushing him flat to the ground. With a sprawling kick he sent Craddock's gun far out of reach, and they closed, with the weapons nature had given them, for the last struggle in the drama ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... to decide whether it were best for a hundred and eighty men to pursue five hundred Indians and Canadians, through a region where every mile presented the most favorable opportunities for concealment in ambush. Gerty was a desperado who was to be feared as well as hated. Contrary to the judgment of both Colonels Todd and Boone, it was decided to pursue the Indians. There was no difficulty in following the trail of so large a band, many of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... Stolen Treasure," which, with a high-flown name, and a most melodramatic and commonplace ending, shows yet great power in the delineation and grouping of characters. The young school-girls are as real as those of Charlotte Bronte; and although the typical maidenly desperado is present,—lying and cheating with such hopeless obviousness that it seems as if they must all have had to look very hard the other way to avoid finding her out,—yet there is certainly much promise and power in the narrative. Let us hope that the modesty of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... With desperate disloyalty, Slavery struck down all political safeguards, and appealed to arms. The nation has risen again, ready to meet it with any weapons, sure to conquer with any Twice conquered, what further claim will this defeated desperado have? If it was a disturbing element before, and so put under restriction, shall it be spared when it has openly proclaimed itself a destroying element also? Is this to be the last of American civil wars, or only the first one? These are the questions which will haunt men's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... regarded this startling scene with amazement. When in answer to her eager questions the new-comers told her that the young desperado whom she had so nearly admitted to her house was a horse-thief, who, but a short time before, had stolen the animal now tied to her front fence, at the point of a revolver from the man who was leading him to water, she said she ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... fair sons and daughters to an undemonstrable creed. The heavy air of ecclesiasticism still hangs over her. The priests and monks who accompanied every sanguinary expedition of the Conquistadores, ready at all times to absolve any desperado who might slay a harmless Indian in the name of Christ, have their successors to-day in the astute and untiring sons of Rome, who conserve the interests of Holy Church within these battered walls and guard their ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mutiny. They gathered together in the retired parts of the ships, at first in little knots of two and three, which gradually increased and became formidable, joining in murmurs and menaces against the admiral. They exclaimed against him as an ambitious desperado who, in a mad fantasy, had determined to do something extravagant to render himself notorious. What obligation bound them to persist, or when were the terms of their agreement to be considered as fulfilled? They ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... been brought to a close by Jim Cummings leaping from the car, the train moved on, and left him alone, the possessor of nearly $100,000. The game had been a desperate one, and well played, and nervy and cool as he was, the desperado was forced to seat himself on a pile of railroad ties, until he could regain possession of himself, for he trembled in every limb, and shook as with a chill. He pulled himself together, however, and picking up his valise, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... fashionable admirers, had tried her fascinations on the great orator. He had escaped complete subjugation, but he had been flattered by the attention of the seductive beauty, and was ready to help her brother out of his difficulty. Clodius was not yet the dangerous desperado which he afterward became; and immorality, though seasoned with impiety, might easily, it was thought, be made too much of. Caesar himself did not press for punishment. As president of the college, he had acquiesced in their decision, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... and peaceable character, no suspicion attached to him of being concerned in the matter. Arming himself, he went into the main street of the village, and entering one of the principal saloons, confronted the desperado. The latter must have seen in Ned's eye that he meant mischief, for he made a motion as if to draw a weapon; but before he could do so, he was seized by the throat, and thrown to the ground with the full force of Ned's muscular arm. Other "vigilants," to the number of about twenty, closed ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... still more, as did his bearing. His face was dark, his eye was dark and penetrating and passionate; his mouth was reckless and weak, his build was graceful, and his voice was low and even—the voice of a gentleman; he was the refined type of the Western gentleman-desperado, as Crittenden had imagined it from fiction and hearsay. As the soldier turned away, the old Sergeant saved him the question ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... black infinity above and below; and before my eyes, now grown familiar with the peculiar darkness, stood Lord Ernest Belville, waiting for Raffles to emerge with full hands and unsuspecting heart! Taken so horribly unawares, even Raffles must fall an easy prey to a desperado in resource and courage scarcely second to himself, but one whom he had fatally underrated from the beginning. Not that I paused to think how the thing had happened; my one concern was for ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... for one of the ruined English companies. (The big owners lost everything, as you know. The country was up in arms against them; they could not protect their own men.) Malaby's employers were friends of the Benedets, and had asked a place with them for their liegeman. He was a desperado with a dozen lives upon his head, but men like Norwood Benedet and his set would have been sure to make a pet of him. One could see how it all had come about, and what a terrible publicity such a name associated with hers would give a girl for the ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... me?" growled the desperado, uncomfortably, for he was satisfied that the weapon was loaded, and Tom looked as if ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... give his full name, Vicesimus—Turner, a brother of the Judge, a man of desperate character, come into the bar-room, throw back his Spanish cloak, draw forth a navy revolver, and level it at me. Seeing the movement, he had thrown himself between me and the desperado and carried me off. These good offices on the part of Mr. Broderick filled me with a profound sense of gratitude. For years afterwards I thought and felt as if there was nothing I could do that would be a sufficient return for his kindness. On his account I took much ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... Winchesters stood ready to guard the barracks, which were slated for attack by the mob. Johnston, a magistrate, was there to read the Riot Act if necessary. In a few minutes there was a shot. Steele got up and went to the window. Craig and Walters were dragging the prisoner across the bridge, the desperado fighting like a demon, and a scarlet woman following them with cries and curses. Fury and Fane were in the rear trying to hold back the gang of some three hundred men. Steele called on Johnston to come with him to read the Riot Act and then rushed out, got a rifle from one of the guard, and ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... on the scene but our little party, and that makes 'em all nervous, 'cause Monty's a bad man to be up against. Remember: she claimed that she knows Monty and he knows her. She means by that that he knows she's a desperado, and she thinks he'll draw the line at a trip that promises murder and blackmail and such like dirty work. So she puts a scare into us with a view to our throwing a scare into him. If I scare any one, it's going to be that dame herself. I'll ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... book is in the Edinburgh for January, 1830, with this reference to Lamb's criticisms: "Captain Singleton is a hardened, brutal desperado, without one redeeming trait, or almost human feeling; and, in spite of what Mr. Lamb says of his lonely musings and agonies of a conscience-stricken repentance, we find nothing ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... being a lady had, she thought, nothing whatever to do with her stealing a necklace, if she happened to like necklaces. She considered herself a lady, but she could also see herself, under temptation, doing a desperado's deeds. Not stealing a necklace: that was tawdry larceny. But she could see herself trapping Esther in a still place and cutting her dusky hair off so that she'd betray no more men. For she began to suspect that Alston Choate, too, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown |
