"Desperado" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew all 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 ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... that the desperado put up a stiff fight against Diggs and myself and, warming up to the subject, I went into the details of a hand to hand struggle that made them all shiver and ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of 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 myself in my jacket to fling off the water; Queequeg, my fine friend, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... to the words of the desperado, but bending forward on the horse with his full weight, drove his spurs deeply into its flanks. Startled and stung with pain, the noble animal, at one wild bound, leaped far beyond where Bill and his friends stood, and in a second more sped in ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... of his nature, Carlos made two mad attempts on Frank's life, both of which were baffled, and then the young desperado was forced ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... 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 his life. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... therein that short but sweet digression, against black-mouthed Parker, wherein the gracious author takes out his own soul, and sets before thine eye, the image of God impressed thereon; for while he deals with that desperado by clear and convincing reason, flowing natively from the pure fountain of divine revelation, he hath the advantage of most men, and writers too, in silencing that proud blasphemer of the good ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... pleasure to see the sable younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more unctuous sayings—how he would fit the tit bits to the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the seniors—how he would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some young desperado, declaring it "must to the pan again to be browned, for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating"—how he would recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of cracking their teeth, which were ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... himself, and I am thinkin' that we can use that eighty dollars in our business and teach the fellow a good lesson all ter wonce. What breaks me up more than anythin' is that he told Brady to hunt me up and tell me on the quiet that there was a reformed desperado going with me who used to be known by the name of 'Fightin' Harrison.' Worked me into the job too, see? What do ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... three captains 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 affection, enclosing one from ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... 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.
... 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
... 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
... far was to regard every newcomer to the town with a steely eye of distrust; to watch each one furtively, to shadow him in his walks, and to believe during his sojourn that he might be "Red Mike, alias James K. Brown, wanted for safe-breaking at Muskegon, Michigan; reward, $1000," or some like desperado. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... do you mean, or rather what did you mean, by daring to marry any honest man, and of all men—Aaron Rockharrt? It was the most audacious challenging of destruction that the most reckless desperado could venture ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... been an apothecary. He carried 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the theft of a horse and buggy, although all the 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
... world!" cried Dan Anderson. "They've got out. You can't keep them in. How did Charlie Allen get killed over at Sumner? Woman in it. When the boys arrested this fellow Garcia over at the Nogales, what was it all about? A woman. What set the desperado Arragon on the warpath so the boys had to kill him? That was a woman, too. What made Bill Hilliard kill Pete Anderson? Woman moved in within fifty miles of them on the Nogales. Here's Curly; good man in his profession. Night-wrangler, day-herder, bog-rider, buster, top-waddy—why, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... 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 ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... 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 only two classes of humanity—fools and rogues. The respectable ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the apprehension and arrest of a notorious young desperado who hails to the name of Deadwood Dick. His present whereabouts are somewhat contiguous to the Black Hills. For further information, and ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... 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, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... was even placed on public exhibition. As many, it was stolen by moonshiners. For 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
... held, 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 whom were mounted. Their path led almost directly north, to the Licking ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... on to the present. Tom was dead: I flourished, a comfortable cumberer of the earth; Jaffery was doing something idiotically desperate somewhere or the other—he was a war-correspondent by trade (as regular an employment as that of the maker of hot-cross buns), and a desperado by predilection—I had not heard from him for a year; and now Adrian—if indeed the Adrian Boldero of the review was he—had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... 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
... 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 were, they saw nothing to fear in meeting ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... everything, and never embarks in any enterprise unless he has weighed the consequences and can carry it through to a successful termination!" replied the desperado, with an assumption of stern dignity that was in harmony with his stalwart form and reckless air. "But, come," he continued, sinking his tone of bravado, and speaking in the same easy, polite manner which Charley had specially noticed when he addressed Tom and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... 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.
... 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
... to those which seem outwardly the coarsest, superstition wields a power the normal mind can scarcely comprehend. Murphy might be spiritually as cringing a coward as he was physically a fearless desperado. Hampton had known such cases before; he had seen men laugh scornfully before the muzzle of a levelled gun, and yet tremble when pointed at by the finger of accusation. He had lived sufficiently ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... that quality which I think I have encountered in only one other man—Bob Howland—a mysterious quality which resides in the eye; and when that eye is turned upon an individual or a squad, in warning, that is enough. The man that has that eye doesn't need to go armed; he can move upon an armed desperado and quell him and take him prisoner without saying a single word. I saw Bob Howland do that, once—a slender, good-natured, amiable, gentle, kindly little skeleton of a man, with a sweet blue eye that would ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Sutherland and Caithness, prevailed upon Murdo Riabhach, Kintail's illegitimate son, to join him, and, according to one authority, became "a common depredator," while according to another, he became what was perhaps not inconsistent in those days with the character of a desperado - a person of considerable state and property. They often "spoiled" Caithness. The Earl of Cromarty, referring to this raid, says that Paul "desired to make a spoil on some neighbouring country, a barbarous ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... caught myself saying, as if from far away, perfectly calm and composed, and in English that was almost academic—"my dear man, put up your gun and I will go with you quietly. I am only a tramp and not a desperado." ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... instant 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 ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Card shark and desperado that he was, his consummate aplomb nobody could deny, except Daniel, now capering and swaggering and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Already, lawlessness is discouraged. Not so very many years ago, piracy was carried on openly in these seas. Mr. Romilly gives a very interesting and curious account of one of the last pirates, a desperado known as 'Bully Hayes,' once a boatman on the Mississippi. This man began life by robbing his father, and soon afterwards made his appearance on the Pacific coast the proud proprietor of a fifty-ton ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... understood in Babylon that Daniel sets thy power at defiance, and thy decision in this matter is watched for by tens of thousands; and if this Daniel escapes the punishment of the law, we may as well burn up our statute books and give absolute liberty to every ruffian and desperado. Law and order will be at an end, the union of the provinces will be forever dissolved, and confusion and desolation shall follow. The question now to be settled is not, 'How came this law to be enacted?' ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... roared. "Ladies and gentlemen don't be frightened. This young man is no desperado, but he has been fighting them off down in front on the engine during the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... The desperado broke out in fresh denials and curses, but he feared the ridicule of the Indian would bring the laughter of his admirers down on him. Nor was he keen to try a pistol duel. He remembered too well the attack he had once headed on an emigrant train ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... effort, he conquered himself; the villainous 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 much as ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... acted on generous impulse, and the unforeseen result had been to save this desperado from justice. But the worst of it was that she could not find it in her heart to regret it. Granted that he was a villain, double-dyed and beyond hope, yet he was the home of such courage, such virility, ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... the greatest terrors of the Old Santa Fe Trail was the half-breed Indian desperado Charles Bent. His mother was a Cheyenne squaw, and his father the famous trader, Colonel Bent. He was born at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and at a very early age placed in one of the best schools that St. Louis afforded. His venerable sire, with only a limited education ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... 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, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... surprised him 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.
... continued on 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' companies of the two steamers were inclined to converse, ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... desirable class. The banks of the Mississippi River had long been hiding-places for pirate bands, whose exploits were notorious, and the "half-breed tract" was a known place of refuge for the horse thief, the counterfeiter, and the desperado of any calling. The settlement of the Mormons in such a region, with an invitation to the world at large to join them and be saved, was a piece of good luck for this lawless class, who found a covering cloak in the new baptism, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the detectives to where "Red Mike" lay sprawling on the ground. Electric torches held by other detectives put the desperado's prone figure in an arc ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 of the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... though not suspecting foes were near. The three men, by a sudden effort, burst open the door, rushed upon Bettys, and seized him in such a manner that he could make no resistance. He was then pinioned so firmly that to escape was impossible; and so the desperado, in spite of all his threats, was a tame and quiet prisoner, and no one hurt in taking him. Bettys then asked leave to smoke, which was granted; and he took out his tobacco, with something else which he threw into the fire. Cory saw this movement, and ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... back, nor I never assassinated no one; but that's neither here nor there. I'm not in a place where I can expect people to pick out their words; but, as he says, I am a bad lot. He says I have enjoyed a reputation as a desperado. I am not bragging of that; I just ask you to remember that he said it. Remember it of me. I was not the sort to back down to man or beast, and I'm not now. I am not backing down, now; I'm taking my punishment. Whatever you please ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 heart-shattered ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the deeds of brigandage, in crimes committed in dark caves and lonely mountain paths, was there perpetrated a fouler murder; seldom in the sensational records of human depravity do we find the desperado of parricidal guilt under the delicate frame of girlhood. Yet was she rather an instrument in the hands of avenging Heaven than a monster of moral iniquity. At that moment the cup of iniquity was full for the wretch who had long tested the mercy of God. That Providence ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... 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, which makes me ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... walked 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
... be a struggle for them all, having at their head a man like the Ironworker. Even if his sister should incline toward another, the fortunate one would be compelled to settle accounts with Pere, the glorious desperado, and must put him out of the way. Great things were going to be seen. The courting of Margalida was already discussed in every house in the cuarton; her fame would spread throughout the whole island; and Pepet smiled ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that in this same month of 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, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... 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, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... 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
... Brazos City could boast of some tough citizens, and among them was Red Jimmy Murphy, a noted desperado, and as smart a rough as ever pulled a gun. He and two of his pals were in the Gold Dollar every day and night, and after looking the ground over they concluded that the plant could be raised. No sooner had this been settled to their satisfaction ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... moral, or acquired courage, is a very different thing. A man who is fortunate in the world and has a sacrifice to make, if he conducts himself with spirit, is also more entitled to our admiration than a mere desperado. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lovers. The part he has to play in the tale is to appear to be a cutthroat of the worst type, without doing a single thing to merit his reputation. It is asking too much of human credulity to believe that a really good man could long sustain the character of a remorseless desperado by merely making faces. This improbability, moreover, is most marked in the tales which are designed to teach a lesson. A double disadvantage is the result. The story is spoiled for the sake of the moral; and the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... lawless career this supernaturally gifted desperado, having collected a band of followers, fastened round their ankles such heavy weights that they were at first totally unable to move; but, as the fruit of continual exertions, they by-and-by managed to creep a few paces, later on they were able to walk easily, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... for the nearest town. There he asked for tidings of a certain Black Jack, and there he got what he wanted in heaps. Everyone knew Black Jack—too well! There followed a brief summary of the history of the desperado and his countless crimes, unspeakable tales of cunning and ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... that the American people were determined to drive 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 ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... that they will blow her up," Will said; "but probably, as they have not done so already, her captain and most of her officers are killed, for it would require a desperado to undertake that job." ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... foundations for malicious fabrications. Daylight was frankly amazed at the new interpretation put upon all he had accomplished and the deeds he had done. From an Alaskan hero he was metamorphosed into an Alaskan bully, liar, desperado, and all around "bad Man." Not content with this, lies upon lies, out of whole cloth, were manufactured about him. He never replied, though once he went to the extent of disburdening his mind to half ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... a prayin' man myself. But when a man kneels down in the bushes an' talks humble an' respectful to his God, an' then rises up an' jumps at the enemy, it's time for that enemy to run. I'd rather be attacked by the worst bully and desperado that ever lived than by a prayin' man. You see, I want to live, an' what chance have I got ag'in a man that's not only not afraid to die, but that's willin' to die, an' rather glad to die, knowin' that he's goin' straight to Heaven an' eternal joy? I tell you, young man, that ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... paradoxical character of the notion could not fail to please a mind monstrous even in its native {274} Germany, where mental excess is endemic. Richard, for a moment brought to bay, is himself again. He vaults into the saddle, and from that time his career is that of a philosophic desperado,—one series of outrages upon the chastity ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... 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 been so soundly cudgelled that they could neither move nor ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 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 from the ruffian. "Call me, then," said Jackson; ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... had been surprised 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 return it to ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... broken on this flank, Kid Wolf ran 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 desperado to whom Crux referred was one of those terrible human monsters who may be termed a growth of American frontier life, men who, having apparently lost all fear of God, or man, or death, carry their lives about with hilarious ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... he does not commit crime in 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 ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... remaining on deck? And having thus far carried our somewhat foolhardy adventure prosperously through, it was scarcely worth while to endanger its ultimate success by courting risks in which the remarks or questions of a drunken desperado might at any moment ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... The nation rose and conquered it with votes. 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... station we had our hold-up; the cut-and-dried, melodramatic sort of thing you read about, or used to read about, in the early days, with a couple of Winchesters poking through the scrub pines to represent the gang in hiding, and one lone, crippled desperado to come down to the footlights in the speaking ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... judged by his past, was no bad prototype of a character in that class of fiction; regarded in his present guise, as he sat opposite her in the dining car of the Orient Express, he looked the most harmless desperado that ever ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... have ridden far, and I am not of a mind to go back." He crowded his horse forward, the more so as he saw approaching another band of men from the encampment. He could only hope that they might be of a class not quite the same as this desperado. A moment later these riders ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... 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 thee it shall be remedied." This kind and ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... of his story was already complete in his mind, he 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
... her father died she read in the paper of a young desperado, handsome and well-dressed, who held up a New York jeweller at the point of a gun and relieved him of five thousand dollars' worth of diamond rings. The story was made remarkable by a detail. An old woman was sitting at the corner, grinding a hand-organ, and ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... 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, was well aware that no skill could have baffled the clear ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... long sigh, but made no answer. His thoughts were doubtless serious enough, as he recollected that heavy stone which Jeff had not dared drop while descending from the tree; also the ugly look of the desperado's face. ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... some of our troubles; we could not have in a small state, for instance, those enormous illusions about men or measures which are nourished by the great national or international newspapers. You could not persuade a city state that Mr. Beit was an Englishman, or Mr. Dillon a desperado, any more than you could persuade a Hampshire Village that the village drunkard was a teetotaller or the village idiot a statesman. Nevertheless, I do not as a fact propose that the Browns and the Smiths should be collected under separate tartans. Nor do I even ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... freight 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 much for a weak link, and the train parted, leaving ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... "are the two best companies of the regiment to be kept at bay by a single desperado? Shame on ye, fellows! If his hands are too many for you, lay ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seemed, had broken away from the boat, carrying along with him half of the harpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony of the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the lone mounted desperado .. Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay wherever he went. But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... have been anticipated in Rome, would have been averted by the timely appearance of the Romans in Spain. Hannibal had by no means the intention of sacrificing his Spanish "kingdom," and throwing himself like a desperado on Italy. The time which he had spent in the siege of Saguntum and in the reduction of Catalonia, and the considerable corps which he left behind for the occupation of the newly-won territory between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, sufficiently show that, had a Roman army ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... desperado, 'and I think he has had just a lang enough lease o 't, when he's for betraying honest folk that come to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... insight into Kells and his kind, she had to meet him with all that was catlike and subtle and devilish at the command of a woman. She had to win him, foil him, kill him—or go to her death. She was no girl to be dragged into the mountain fastness by a desperado and made a plaything. Her horror and terror had worked its way deep into the depths of her and uncovered powers never suspected, never before required in her scheme of life. She had no longer any fear. She matched herself against this man. She anticipated him. And she felt ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... that this young desperado is always victorious. I have known the tip of his nose to be in a state of unpleasant redness for weeks together. I have known him to come home frequently with no brim to his hat; once he presented himself with only one shoe, on which occasion his jacket was split up the back in a manner that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... 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, and, at the distance of about ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... bi pir—a lion without a saint, is a favourite Persian epithet, when applied to a desperado, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... his. He was too heedless of his good name, and too blind to the truth that though right and wrong may be near neighbours, yet the line that separates them is of an awful sacredness. If Robespierre passed for a hypocrite by reason of his scruple, Danton seemed a desperado by his airs of 'immoral thoughtlessness.' But the world forgives much to a royal size, and Danton was one of the men who strike deep notes. He had that largeness of motive, fulness of nature, and capaciousness of mind, which will always redeem a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... so terrorized that they were afraid to interpose any objections to his conduct. As soon as he learned that, Paul was in a rage and remarked that the citizens might submit to such intrusion, but he would not. The desperado, who had gone out of the room for a few moments, returned and was met by the angry navigator, who caught him by the neck, threw him bodily out of the room and kicked him down stairs. That cuffing did the fellow some good for it had ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... burglars made great excitement in Damietta, and the part taken by Ben Mayberry once more placed his name in everyone's mouth. It was he who discovered the criminals, and was the direct means of securing the desperado, Dandy Sam, the ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... around the green table. They seemed to see a frowzy desperado, shaggy as a bison, in a red shirt and jackboots, hung about the waist with an assortment of six-shooters and bowie-knives, and standing against a background ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Now, strange change, they are in Tom Cribb's parlor, where they don't seem to be a whit less at home than in fashion's gilded halls: and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors' legs previous to execution. What hardened ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches! What compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain! Now we haste away to merrier scenes: to Tattersall's (ah gracious powers! what a funny fellow that actor ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the reporters who were "covering" this effort. "Lola Montez in the chapel pulpit is good fun," was the conclusion at which one of them arrived; and another headed his column, "A Desperado in Dimity." ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... 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 had already penetrated into seas untraversed by a sail, and where man ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... coach crept by his place of concealment in the wayside brush, to elude the sheriff of Monterey County and his posse, who were after him. He had not made himself known to his fellow-passengers, as they already knew him as a gambler, an outlaw, and a desperado; he deemed it unwise to present himself in his newer reputation of a man who had just slain a brother gambler in a quarrel, and for whom a reward was offered. He slipped from the axle as the stage-coach swirled past the brushing branches of fir, and for an instant lay unnoticed, a scarcely distinguishable ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Santa Rosa, one of my occasional hearers was John I—. He was deputy-sheriff of Sonoma County, and was noted for his quiet and determined courage. He was a man of few words, but the most reckless desperado knew that he could not be trifled with. When there was an arrest to be made that involved special peril, this reticent, low-voiced man was usually intrusted with the undertaking. He was of the good old Primitive Baptist stock from ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... "And one you may never cease to regret. What do you know of that man? Of his character; of his antecedents? He may be the veriest desperado for all you know." ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... go to press, an imperfect account of Black Harry's latest outrage reaches us from Elreno. Ten days ago this youthful desperado was unknown to fame, but within that number of days he has left a red trail from the Texas Panhandle to the Canadian River. He began by raiding Moore's ranch, and killing a cowboy, and he and his band of desperadoes, which he calls his 'Braves,' have robbed and plundered and burned and murdered ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... This gentle, sad little woman, in the rusty black gown, the daughter of his oldest friend, the wife of Benton Sharp! Benton Sharp, one of the most noted "bad" men in that part of the state—a man who had been a cattle thief, an outlaw, a desperado, and was now a gambler, a swaggering bully, who plied his trade in the larger frontier towns, relying upon his record and the quickness of his gun play to maintain his supremacy. Seldom did any one take the risk of going "up against" Benton Sharp. Even the law officers were content ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... desperado emerged on tiptoe from Kenealy's cabin, just as Macbeth does from the murdered Duncan's chamber: only with a pair of boots in his hand instead of a pair of daggers; got into the moonlight, and finding himself uninterrupted, assumed the whistle of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... produced the 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 ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Dick, whose fame as a desperado had spread far beyond the borders of the State of Washington. With such men as these we were destined to win back our native land. They were a wild lot, but each of them was a hero: farmers, hunters, workmen from shop and factory, ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... 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
... 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
... consequences of this 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 ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... have refrained 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 was absent. ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner |
