The face was clean-shaven, accentuating a jaw, heavy, brutal, aggressive. His head was also shaven, and every bump on his villainous cranium stood forth like a promontory on a level plain. His eyes were heavy-lidded, lazy, sleepy-looking, like the eyes of a lion.
The nose had been broken and was crooked; his thick lips had been battered in many fights until they were shapeless, and the mouth was simply an ugly gash across his face. And to complete the adornment, one ear was “tin” and the other was cauliflower, both permanently disfigured and disfiguring.
Conko Mukes moved in his chair as if burdened by the heavy weight of his muscles, and his heavy-lidded eyes glowed yellow in the dim light of the saloon as he glared around him. Again his voice boomed:
“Hey! Am eve’ybody done hauled off an’ died? Come out here, Skeeter Butts—whut’s hidin’ you?”
“I guess dis is my move-up,” Skeeter remarked as he pocketed a handful of silver which he had been counting behind the bar and came to the table.
Conko watched the diminutive darky until he stopped by his table. Then the lazy, lion-like eyes glowed with a yellow fire, and with a slapping motion of his monstrous hand he exclaimed:
“Shoo, fly, don’t bodder me!”
Skeeter Butts cackled like a nervous hen, fluttered well out of reach of that hand, and snickered:
“Lawd, Conko, you sho’ is one powerful funny man! Dat gits you a free-fer-nothin’ drink. You is better’n a show-actor.”
“You done kotch de lizard by de tail, son—kotch him de fust time,” Conko informed him in deep, rumbling bellow. “I is a holy show!”