Old West glossary, no. 52

Montana cowboys, c1910

Here’s another set of terms and forgotten people gleaned from early western fiction. Definitions were discovered in various online dictionaries, as well as searches in Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, Dictionary of the American West, The New Encyclopedia of the American West, The Cowboy Dictionary, The Cowboy Encyclopedia, Vocabulario Vaquero, I Hear America Talking, Cowboy Lingo, and The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

These are from Alice Harriman’s A Man of Two Countries, a political drama set in early Montana, and Agnes Laut’s The Freebooters of the Wilderness, about theft of public lands in the West. Once again, I struck out on a few. If anyone has a definition for “the jigs,” “rastical,” “copper gentry,” “full pelther,” “sternwheeler hat,” “chack up,” or “tum-jack,” leave a comment below.

bally = an intensifier; cf. bloody. “Don’t be a bally fool and buck into a buzz-saw!” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

blind pig = an unlicensed drinking house. “You make the Senator’s job and your job and public service all round a bunco game, a bunco game with marked cards; while we Service and Land fellows act the decent sign for a blind pig.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

buffer = a fool. “Every bar-room buffer in the country side will know it by night.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

by Harry = a mild expletive. “‘By Harry,’ cried Wayland, ‘that mule does smell water.’” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

cartwheel hat = a woman’s hat with a low crown and a wide stiff brim. “Eleanor took a quick glance at her neighbors, all men but the cart-wheel-hat to one side and a little young-old lady opposite.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

catspaw = a person used as a tool by another. “Be sure that she is promised something she thinks worth her while, by Bob or by Moore, for her sudden interest in politics and—Charlie Blair. She is a good catspaw.” Alice Harriman, A Man of Two Countries.

choke off = to silence or get rid of someone, stop a person’s activities. “Choke it off! He’s staying with Missionary Williams at the Indian School, and you know about how much love is lost between Williams and Moyese.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

clockwork = embroidery or woven work on the side of stockings. “She raised her eye lashes and looked the speaker over from the undertaker’s plumes and the gold teeth and the ash colored V of skin to the clock-work stockings and high heeled slippers.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

congé = dismissal, permission to depart. “Father will be furious when he knows that I’ve given Mr. Burroughs his congé.” Alice Harriman, A Man of Two Countries.

dee-fool = damn fool. “One of the first things Moyese told me when I went on his paper was never to monkey with the dee-fool who wastes time justifying himself.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

entryman = one who enters upon public land with intent to secure an allotment under homestead, mining, or other laws. “I didn’t know Senator had his drag net out for parsons as dummy entrymen!” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Everlasting pea

everlasting = flowers or foliage that retains form or color for a long time when dried. “It was the Ranger in his sage green Service suit wearing a sprig of everlasting in his Alpine hat.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

floater = a writer who travels to gather and write up often erroneous impressions. “Bat’s floater was working for a Chicago boomster, who had issued a magazine to boom Western real estate.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

frap = to strike, beat. “The old frontiersman literally avalanched off his broncho and made a dash at the tent flap, frapping it loudly with the flat of his hand.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

frontier knock = a scratching sound made on the flap of a tent. “She had heard the unmistakable voice of Mr. Moore. Had he used that frontier knock?” Alice Harriman, A Man of Two Countries.

Gaillardia suavis

gaillardia = an American flower of the daisy family, cultivated for its bright red and yellow flowers. “The gold of yellow midsummer light dyed in the asters and sunflowers and great flowered gaillardias and golden rod, with an odor of dried grasses or mint or cloves.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

ghost walker = a person who feigns or fabricates an assignment. “ ‘High brows,’ ‘dreamers’ ‘ghost walkers,’ ‘barkers,’ ‘biters,’ ‘muck-rakers!’ Oh, he knew the choice names that lawless greed cast at such as he.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

gird at = to jeer or jibe. “‘N-o,’ hesitated the lawyer, divided between a desire to gird at the doctor, or to soothe his civic pride.” Alice Harriman, A Man of Two Countries.

headlights = false or capped teeth. “The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a pair of tightly perked lips.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

job = to turn a public office or position of trust to personal advantage. “Fight for all the fellows in the Land and Forest Service when they see a steal being sneaked and jobbed!” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

jug through = to deceive, either jokingly and through some illegality. “He stole ’em, those coal lands. He jugged ’em thro’ Land Office records with false entries.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

kiddie = a young person. “What wud A be doin’ goin’ among a lot o’ kiddie boys t’ study Hebrew when A know the language o’ the man on the street?” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Bicyclist in knickerbockers

knickerbockers = knee pants. “All were in blue overalls and shirt sleeves but one; and he was in knickerbockers.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

lazaretto = a building or ship for diseased and quarantined people. “This political trickster, this outcast from European gutters, this huckster of lazaretto morals and bawd houses.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Skunk

Mephitis Mephitica = the skunk. “You would do well to retreat and let the little genus Mephitis Mephitica infect the air for his own benefit.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Mother Carey’s chickens = two people who are sharing living quarters and the payment for them. “Those Rookeries—Mother Carey’s chickens. Do you know what that Rookery gang is? A lot of gambling toughs, remittance doughheads.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

old Adam = unredeemed humanity. “And he whirled the whip with the skill of all the old Adam stirring within him, while the buckboard went forward with a bounce.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

peanut = a person of little significance, influence, or power. “He had dared to interfere with the petty plans of peanut politicians and public plunderers.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Rocky Mountain dead shot = a pancake, flapjack. “They ate their bannocks—‘Rocky Mountain dead shot’ Westerners call the slap-jacks—in silence.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Tunnel workers, 1928

sand hog = a tunnel worker. “Your town hack didn’t know what it meant to be a sand hog under ground for years and come through to daylight like that.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

saw the air = to talk or act indecisively. “A good many of us feel the way you do; but like you, we’re all up in air. Sawing the air doesn’t saw wood.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

sawyer = an uprooted tree held fast by one end in a river. “The dead and broken snags, the ‘sawyers’ of river parlance, fast in the sandbars, seemed waiting to impale the steamboat.” Alice Harriman, A Man of Two Countries.

Silenus and donkey

sheet anchor = a person or thing that is very dependable and relied upon in the last resort. “See those settlers’ cabins at an angle of forty-five? Need a sheet anchor to keep ’em from sliding down the mountain!” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Silenus = in mythology, the oldest, wisest, and most drunken follower of Dionysus. “He was accomplishing absolutely nothing by continuing the struggle, nothing more than a woman yoked to a Silenus hoping to reform him when he daily grew worse under her eyes.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Painting by Joaquin Sorolla, 1909

Sorolla, Joaquin = Spanish portrait and landscape painter (1863-1923). “The walls were decorated with long-necked swan-necked Gibson girls and Watts’ photogravures and Turner color prints and naked Sorolla boys bathing in Spanish seas.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

spotter = a detective, an informer. “Know an engineering chap tramped the Sierras for a hundred miles dogged by a spotter from one of the railroads.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

squiffy = drunk. “‘What was eatin’ Scar Faced Charlie, anyway?’ ‘He’s squiffy.’” Alice Harriman, A Man of Two Countries.

stager = a veteran, an experienced person, someone who has given long service. “Takes an old stager who never had your dude Service suits on his back to know the secrets of these hills, Miss Elanor.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Watts, Happy Warrior, 1884

Texas tickler = a small measure of spirits. “A have n’ beaten since A peddled Texas tickler done up in Gospel hymn books filled wi’ whiskey.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Watts, George Frederick = popular English Victorian painter and sculptor (1817-1904). “Here is the Watts’ ‘Happy Warrior,’ and Dick—listen—I didn’t mean it as a token when I offered to send it up.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

whoop up = an establishment that illegally sold liquor to Indians. “A year or two in the Whoop Up country will season him and be the making of him.” Alice Harriman, A Man of Two Countries.

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Image credits: Wikimedia Commons

Coming up: The Red Pony (1949)