Hoodoo Eyes.
The swinging doors of the Hen-Scratch saloon fell apart and Conko Mukes walked in.
He was a large man and, to look at, very impressive.
The negroes in Tickfall had never seen clothes like his, so large in stripe and so variegated in color. On either lapel of his coat was a large, brassy emblem of some secret lodge.
On the middle finger of each hand was a rolled-gold band ring nearly an inch wide. Across the vast expanse of his sky-muckle-dun-colored waistcoat was a gangrened near-gold watch-chain like the cable chain of a Mississippi River steamboat, and a charm suspended from it was constructed of the talons of an eagle.
His ponderous feet shook the floor as he walked across the saloon and seated himself at a table. Removing his stove-pipe hat, he placed that upon one chair, kicked another chair from under the table on which to deposit his feet, and leaned back in a third chair, with his gorilla-like arms resting comfortably across the back of a fourth. The barroom appeared to be empty.
“Hey, dar! Come here—eve’ybody!” he bellowed.
Skeeter Butts peeped at Conko Mukes around the corner of the bar behind which he was sitting.
The black face which he beheld advertised unmistakably what Conko Mukes was. It was the mug of a typical prize-fighter.