Tinhorn's Daughter
Page 9
slick as a whistle: quickly; easily. [return to text]
sorrel: a horse with a reddish-brown coat. [return to text]
tidy: a small covering, usually ornamental, placed on the backs and arms of upholstered furniture to prevent wear or soiling. [return to text]
tilt course: the tournament grounds on which knights rush at or charge one another, as in a joust. [return to text]
tinhorn: someone, especially a gambler, who pretends to be important, but actually has little money, influence or skill. [return to text]
truck farms: farms growing produce for sale commercially; farms producing truck (vegetables raised for the market). [return to text]
two bits: a quarter; during the colonial days, people used coins from all over the world. When the US adopted an official currency, the Spanish milled (machine-struck) dollar was chosen and it later became the model for American silver dollars. Milled dollars were easily cut apart into equal “bits” of eight pieces. Two bits would equal a quarter of a dollar. [return to text]
vigilantes: citizens banded together in the West as vigilance committees, without legal sanction and usually in the absence of effective law enforcement, to take action against men viewed as threats to life and property. The usual pattern of vigilance committees was to grab their enemies (guilty or not), stage a sort of trial and hang them. Their other enemies were then likely to get out of town. [return to text]
Winchester: an early family of repeating rifles; a single-barreled rifle containing multiple rounds of ammunition. Manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, it was widely used in the US during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The 1873 model is often called “the gun that won the West” for its immense popularity at that time, as well as its use in fictional Westerns. [return to text]
yaller pup: yellow dog; a cowardly, despicable person. [return to text]
ye: the. [return to text]