He stood in the saloon door with the dust of the streets of Dos Cervezas Pequenas still swirling2 about scuffed3, range-rider's chaps. His left hand held open the weatherbeaten swinging door. The right hovered4 over the worn peachwood butt5 of the Colt holstered on his right thigh6.
The slate-gray eyes, emotionless, swept the crowd bellied7 up to the bar, and stopped at one man. When he spoke8 it was flat, but with the ring of tempered steel, and every man but that one drew back out of range. "I want you, Dirty Jake," the big man said. "Now."
Dirty Jake shot him into doll rags, naturally.
Dirty Jake Niedelmeier was, you might say, the most feared ribbon clerk in the Territory. Easily the most.
I remember him from the early days, from the first day he came to town, in fact. I remember because he got off the stage just as I was leaning out the window nailing up my brand-new shingle9, and my office was and still is upstairs next to the stage depot10. I was down on the boardwalk admiring it, all shiny gold leaf on black like the correspondence school promised:
Hiram Pertwee, M.D.
His voice broke in on me, all squeaky. "Beg your pardon," he said, "where's the YMCA?"
Well, that isn't the usual sort of question for here. I turned around. There he was, a scrawny little runt about knee-high to short, wearing a panama hat, a wrinkled linen12 duster and Congress gaiters.
He wasn't especially dirty then, of course, only about average for a stage passenger. He kind of begrudged14 his face, with little squint15 eyes and a long thin nose, a mustache like a hank of Spanish moss16 and just about chin enough to bother shaving. Under his duster he wore a clawhammer coat, the only alpaca one I ever saw, and I never from that day out saw him wear any other. He stood there looking like he'd never been anyplace he really cottoned to, but this might just be the worst.
I was just a young squirt then and not above funning a dude. I told him the YMCA was around the corner, two doors down and up the back stairs at the Owl17 Hoot18 Palace. He nodded and went the way I told him.
That was, and still is, Kate's Four Bit Crib. The girls there wear candy-striped stockings and skirts halfway19 to the knee, and their shirtwaists are open at the neck. Dirty Jake didn't speak to me for three years.
He wasn't Dirty Jake then, though, just Jacob Niedelmeier, fresh from selling ribbons and yard goods in Perth Amboy, New Jersey20 and hot to find a fortune in the hills. He'd been a failure all his natural life. This was a new beginning, for a man 34 who was already at the bitter end and looking for the path back. Gold was the way, he figured. He was going to get it.
But he didn't. He was back flat broke and starving in four months.
He spent the next seventeen years behind the notions counter at Martin's Mercantile, selling ribbon and yard goods and growing old two years at a time. I think it tainted21 his mind.
Leastways, from the time I got to know him, some fourteen years gone, he's been what you might say, a queer actor. At first, when the store closed at sundown he'd take off for the near hills with a pick and a sack, still seeking for color somebody might have missed. After a while he didn't bother with the gear. He just moseyed around all that rock mostly, I suppose, to be away from people.
Truth to tell, people were beginning to avoid him anyway. He was getting kind of gamy over the years, and cantankerous22 generally.
Maybe it's kind of funny we got more or less friendly but doctors and ribbon clerks aren't so all-fired far apart. They both have to do with people and their ways, and like to get shut of both now and then. Every couple of months I'd go along with him up in the hills, to get the sick smell out of my nose. Night air and a night sky can be pretty fine if you've been looking at tongues and such long enough.
Going out like that, we didn't say much. I preferred it that way since Jake Niedelmeier was a boob.
A smart man can get on tolerably well with an idiot if both just have sense enough to keep their mouths shut. One time he didn't was when he brought along a bottle of rye. He got started and was going on to beat the band, yapping about how life was a cheat and someday everybody'd respect Jacob Niedelmeier, until finally I lost patience and told him that while I treasured our association beyond pearls I'd chuck him off a cliff if he didn't shut the hell up. I was nice about it, and after that it was like I said, tolerable.
Well, sir, about two years ago he came into my office while I was darning up some fool borax miner that'd got himself kicked square in the bottle on his hip. Jake stood in the corner picking his teeth while I finished. After the borax miner limped out he spoke up.
"Comin'?" That was all the invitation he ever gave.
"I guess," I said. I sloshed the suture needle in a basin, gave it a couple of swipes on the hone stone and threw it in my satchel23. That miner had a tough rind.
Jake went out first. I closed the door behind us, not locking it, of course, because our night marshal was kind of my relief surgeon whenever I was on calls. He was a Secesh hospital orderly during the Rebellion. He was better with a saw than with sewing, but he could tie up most wounds well enough to do till I got back.
Jake and I set out south up the mountain trail, but pretty soon it hit me he was heading someplace considerable more directly than we usually did.
Sure enough, he took off at an angle from the trail after a bit. We struck up into some fairly woolly country. He wasn't following any sign I could see, at least not by moonlight, but he kept going faster until I was plumb24 out of wind.
We were in the hills overlooking Crater25 Lake when we came to kind of an amphitheater in the rocks, some twenty feet across. He stopped at the edge of it and stood staring in, silent and breathing catchy26.
Me, I just chased my own breath for a while, then looked too and saw what he was aiming at. Right in the middle, shining pale in the moonshine like nothing else does, was a pile of old, old bones. Jake, I saw, had seen it before. It was scaring him yet.
Old bones, sir, are still bones. I've seen and set my fill. But after I got a good look at these they scared me too.
There were four skeletons altogether, all nicely preserved, and only three of them were men. Indians, I mean. You could tell that from the shreds27 of buckskin. Two of them still had weapons near their right hands: one a stone knife, the other a lance. And the top of each of the three skulls28 had been shot clean away.
At least, half of the top had, and the same half on all three. Almost the entire os frontale and ossa parietalia on the left side was gone on each one. I hunkered down to see closer, while Jake stood back and shook.
I struck a sulphur match and saw something else about those three redskin skulls. The edges where the bone was gone weren't fractured clean like a bullet or a club would do. They were charred30.
The three were sprawled31 around the fourth skeleton and that was the one gave me the vapors32. It was more or less man-shaped. But it wasn't a man, that I know. I don't believe I care to find out what it was. Instead of ribs33 there was a cylinder34 of thin bone, and it had only one bone in the lower leg. What there was for a pelvis I've never seen the like, and the skull29 was straight out of a Dore Bible. There was a hatchet35 buried in that skull.
The bones of the right arm were good and hefty, and it had two elbows. The left arm was about half the size—not crippled, but smaller scale. Like it was good for delicate work and not much else.
About ten inches from the widespread six fingers of its right hand was what you knew right off was a weapon even if it did look like an umbrella handle.
I was just reaching down to touch it when that fool Jake made his move.
He'd been standing36 behind me, closer I bet than he'd ever got before, staring down at that fourth skeleton and making odd noises. I tell you, it was something for a medical man to see. Suddenly he grunted37 like he was going to be sick. He snatched up a femur from one of the Indians and swung it up to smash that fourth skeleton to smithereens.
Well, sir, quicker than the eye could see the umbrella handle smacked38 itself into the palm of that bony hand, sending fingers flying in six directions. It hung there in the air against what was left, trained dead on Jake's head, and it hummed.
The femur dropped from Jake's right hand like he'd been shot. He hadn't, though, because he was still wearing his skull and by that time running. Soon as he did, the umbrella handle flopped39 over and just lay there, the hum dying away.
When it stopped the place was pretty quiet, because Jake was off in the rocks and I was going over some things I wanted to say to him immediately I was able to talk again. That fourth skeleton had the fastest draw I'd ever seen.
The question wasn't as all-fired pip-witted as Jake was capable of. It took me upwards41 of three weeks to work out why a weapon that could draw and aim itself didn't shoot too.
I'd heard a little clink when the weapon flew into the skeleton's hand. It came from a metal disk that lay in its palm, toward the heel of the hand.
The disk was thin and only about as big as a two-cent piece. A mate to it was set in the butt of the umbrella handle, convex where the other was concave.
Going at it kind of gingerly, I slid the disk in my vest behind my watch and put the umbrella handle in my right coat pocket.
It was a key-wind repeater with a gold hunting case, that watch, and I worried about it every step down the mountain. I walked a good four hundred yards behind Jake all the way back into town, just to be on the safe side. We didn't linger, either. We wanted lights.
By the time I got the two objects locked in my rolltop my heartbeat in anybody else would have had me telling the sexton to start his hole. I prescribed bed for me, told Jake, who hadn't hardly even drawn42 breath the whole time, to go to hell and retired43.
Next day a squabble came up over some borax rights upcountry. I didn't get to open that rolltop for a time. Then one early morning coming back in the buggy from a house-call in Pockmark, forty-odd miles north, I got to worrying again at the umbrella handle and those dead Indians.
Seems like four, five times a week some chunkhead hunkers down hard with his spurs on. When I got to the office that night there was one waiting—a bad one, Spanish rowels—and Jake was sprawled in my chair, picking his teeth with my spare scalpel. I patched up the chunkhead, took the scalpel from Jake and rinsed45 it off and watched him suck his teeth for a while. It began to look like he was going to be stubborn. So finally I said: "Say, Jake."
He grunted. "Jake," I said, "I think I've got that dingus figured." He snuck a glance over at the desk so I knew he knew what I meant, but he was busy pretending that wasn't what he came to talk about.
"I think it's a gun that can read minds like a gypsy," I said. Jake still looked bored, so I took the umbrella handle out of the rolltop and waved it at him. He dove off the chair and started rolling for the door.
"You damn fool," I said, "it won't go off." I was reasonably certain it wouldn't, but I laid it back down by the disk gently anyhow and sat in the chair. I've only got the one chair, on the theory that anybody who isn't bad enough to lie on the table is well enough to stand. Jake edged over and stood like a short-legged bird on a bobwire fence. "It kin13 whut?" he said.
"It can read minds," I said. "You were going to bash those bones. The gun knew it and trained square on your head. You remember?"
He remembered. "And those Indians," I went on. "You remember them? The left side of the head on each of them was blown off."
I hauled down a roller chart of the human skeleton, first time I'd done that since I don't know when.
"This up here is the brain," I said. "We don't know a hell of a lot about it, but we do know it's like a whole roomful of telegraphers, sending messages to different parts of the body along the nerves. They're like the wires. This left hemisphere—right here—sends to the right side of the body. Don't fret46 about why, the nerves twist going into the spinal47 cord.
"Okay. We know, too, that the part of the brain that sends to the arm is right here, in the parietal lobe48. Right under the chunk44 of skull that was shot off on those three Indians."
"Shaw," Jake said, perching on the table. The old billy-goat was beginning to get impressed, even if he didn't have any notion of what I was talking about.
I didn't have exactly much notion either, but I kept on. "The brain works by a kind of electricity, same kind as in the telegraph batteries at the depot. This gun," I tapped the umbrella handle and Jake started off again, but caught himself, "has some sort of detector49, a galvanic thermometer that senses electrical messages to the nerves."
From here on in it was pure dark and wild hazard. "Obviously," I said, "whenever one of those signals goes from this cerebral50 motor area here in the left hemisphere down to make the weapon hand move, it must be a special signal this gun was built to catch. Just like a lock is made for one particular key.
"And near as I can figure, the gun has to be able to tell when that move coming up is going to be dangerous to the man holding it. Stands to reason if it can tell when a brain's signalling a hand, it can tell too if that brain is killing-mad. Some people can do that, and most dogs.
"So, if it senses murderous intent and a message to the weapon hand to move, it moves too, and faster.
"It homes on this disk like a magnet right into the hand of the gent that owns it, and aims itself plumb at the place the signal is coming from." I tapped the chart. "Right here."
I poked51 the gunk out of a corncob, packed it and lit up before going on. Jake stared at the umbrella handle like a stuffed owl.
"Now, that fourth skeleton we saw sure as hell isn't human. He isn't from anywhere on this green earth, or I miss my guess. Might even have something to do with Crater Lake there, years ago. But we aren't likely to find out.
"But we do know that he fought three Indians that probably jumped him all at once. And he killed every one of them with this gun before he fell."
That brought Jake up short.
The Territory is kind of violent generally, and anybody or anything good along that line would be bound to have the sober respect of a ninny like Jake.
I dug up an old glove, and used spirit gum to stick in its palm the little disk from the skeleton's hand. I pulled the glove on my right hand, and stood up with my hand about a foot over the umbrella handle.
"Okay," I said, "kill me."
He was so orry-eyed by then he damn near did it just to be obliging. But then the recollection of the night on the mountain, and the three Indians with their heads shot off, sifted52 through and he shied off. "Hell no," he hollered, "I seen that thing go before! I ain't about to get my head blowed to bits!" And he went on.
Well, it took me the best of two hours. I showed him the two studs on the underside that most likely were a safety device. I explained how probably the gun wouldn't go off unless somebody was holding it with a finger between those studs, which was why it didn't shoot when it went into the skeleton's hand that night. I finally got him by telling him if I was right, we'd wire the fourth skeleton together, take it back East and earn a mint of money on the vaudeville53 stage showing the fastest cadaver54 in the West.
"Mr. Bones: Faster than Billy the Kid and Twice as Dead," I said we'd bill it. Jake, he thought that was a lovely idea, and decided55 to go along.
Fourteen times that eternal jackass raised his right arm at me, while I held my own gloved right hand over the weapon. But he didn't have any real heart for it, and fourteen times the gun just lay there. Then I got a mite57 impatient, and kicked him in the kneecap. That fifteenth time he was truly trying.
Skinny as he was he'd have driven me clear through the floor, except that umbrella handle jumped into my glove and aimed dead at his forehead, snarling58 like a cougar59. More correctly, the left side of his forehead. If I hadn't braced60 my index finger out stiff, that fifteenth time would've had him a dead man.
Jake froze like a statue and hung in the air staring at the gun, snarling away in my hand. Finally I pulled the glove off with the gun still stuck to it, and flung it on the desk.
Then Jake gave me the sixteenth, and by the time I got up again he was gone and the gun and the glove with him.
Next morning the borax squabble blew up again. What with miners getting stomped61 I didn't get to bed for a week, much less have a chance to find out where Jake and that damned weapon had lit out for. By the time I did, it was too late. Jacob Niedelmeier, the ribbon clerk, after seventeen years was on his way to glory as the legendary62 Dirty Jake.
I got the start of the story from a drifter, name of Hubert Comus. He'd got into kind of a heated discussion in a saloon south a ways that ended with him and this other man going for their hardware. Hubert got his Merwin & Bray63 .42 out and, being a fool, tried fanning it. Of course it jammed and he laid the heel of his hand open clear to the bone.
Twasn't the hand bothering Hubert, though. Like most, the other man missed him clean, but when the barkeep threw them both out Hubert lit sitting on the boardwalk and took a six-inch splinter clear through his corduroys.
While I was working on him he told me about Jake.
A man, it seems, had turned up in a little settlement called Blister64, about two days down the line. Nobody noticed him come in, except that he was wearing one glove, a shiny clawhammer coat and Congress gaiters. The general run in the mining camps doesn't wear Congress gaiters.
He got noticed, though, when he showed up in a barroom wearing a pearl-gray derby with an ostrich65 plume66 in the band, and carrying a rolled-up umbrella under his arm. The little devil had stuck the shaft67 of a regular umbrella in the muzzle68 of the skeleton's weapon.
It turned out he'd bought the derby that the storekeeper there had planned to be buried in. Where the ostrich plume came from I never did find out.
"He come right in the swingin' door an' stood there," Hubert said over his shoulder, "lookin' at the crowd. Purty quick they was all lookin' right back, I kin tell you. That feather fetched 'em up sharp. Take it easy back there, will you, Doc? Then Homer Cavanaugh, the one they called Ham Head, he bust69 out laughing. He laughed so hard he bent70 over double, and the rest of the boys was just beginnin' t'laugh too when the little feller picked up a spitoon and dumped it down Ham Head's neck.
"The boys got mighty71 quiet then. Hey, easy, Doc, will you? Ham Head straightened up and his face went from red as flannels72 to white, just like that. He stood glarin' at the little feller for a couple of ticks, openin' and closin his fists, and then that big right hand went for the Smith & Wesson in his belt.
"Well, it was a double-action pistol and had a couple notches73 in the grip, but Ham Head never cleared it. I never even seen the little feller draw, but there was Ham Head fallin' with half his noggin shot away. Gently, will you, Doc, gently!
"The little feller stood leaning on his umbrella, lookin' down at him. 'What was that man's name?' he says. 'Ham Head Cavanaugh,' somebody says back. 'Ham Head Cavanaugh,' the little feller says, 'he's the first.' Then he shoves the umbreller back under his arm and goes out. We never saw him again.
"Some say it was a bootleg pistol he used, or a derringer in his sleeve. And some say he had a pardner with a rifle in the street, but there wasn't nobody there. I was standin' as close to him as I am to you, Doc, and I swear—it—was—that—um—breller—OW!"
Ham Head Cavanaugh was the first. I had kind of a personal interest in Jake and his weapon, so I kept track. There was Curly Sam Thompson, Big John Ballentine, Redmeat Carson, Uriah Singletree and twelve others known of, all dead within eighteen months. Any man Jake could hoorah into a fight. With never a chance to get his right hand on iron before his head gave the signal and got blown off. He took them all on. And he never lost—because he couldn't.
Yet when he came back to see me last April it wasn't to brag75. He was in trouble. I looked up from a customer, a damn fool that'd sat on a gila monster, and there he was, sneaking76 in the door bare-headed like a whipped hound, not the cock of the walk in the whole Territory. He slid into the back room like a shadow, and the man I was working on never even knew he'd come.
When I went in afterward77 the lamp was out, the shade was down and he was in a corner, nervous as a jackrabbit an eagle just dropped in a wolf den11. "Buried my derby under a pile of rock up in the mountains," he whispered. "Look," and he held out his glove.
It was plumb worn out. The little metal disc was hanging on by a strand78 of spirit gum, and the fabric79 of the palm was in shreds.
I looked at him for a minute without saying anything. He was still wearing the clawhammer coat, over B.V.D. tops, but it looked like he'd been buried weeks in it and dug up clumsy. He had on greasy80 rawhide81 breeches and battered82 cowhand83 boots for shoes. He had a month's beard on his lip and he stunk84.
This here was legendary Dirty Jake, no question about it.
"Get a new glove," I said.
"Nope," he answered, "no good. Last week in Ojo Rojizo I took the glove off to scratch and right then a man braced me. He threw me in a horse-trough when I wouldn't fight. I want you to fix me up good.
"I want you to open my hand up and set the dingus just under the skin, and sew it up again. Knew a feller did that with five-dollar gold pieces cuz he didn't like banks. Worked fine till he got a counterfeit85, and it killed him.
"I'll lay low in the hills till the hand heals. No problems after that."
No problems? Maybe so, but I'd been doing some thinking. Still, I kept my mouth shut and did what he wanted, and he slunk off with no thanks. Don't guess I really had any coming.
After he left I got out my tallybook and ticked off the men Dirty Jake had killed: One Eye Jack56 Sundstrom, Fat Charlie Ticknor, Pilander Quantrell, Lobo Stephens, Alec the Frenchman Dubois, some jackass Texas nobody even knew and the rest, all men whose brains had telegraphed a special signal to Jake's gun before it reached their own right hand. Well, there was a new pistolero in town.
A month and a half later I was craned around, trying to lance a boil of my own, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Dirty Jake go by under my window. He'd dug that hat with the ostrich plume out from under the rocks, his hand was healed, he was swinging his umbrella and he didn't so much as look up. He was headed for the Owl Hoot Palace. I decided the boil'd wait.
Less than five minutes later I heard the shots, two of them. A second later Jubal Bean, swamper at the Owl Hoot, came pounding up the boardwalk and hollered in the door:
"Doc, better come quick. Dirty Jake just took a couple slugs in the chest and he never even got to draw!"
I took my time. "It was just a matter of odds," I said. "Who got him?"
"The new one," Jubal said, "the man they call Lefty."
Well, a couple more weeks to bleach86, a little wiring, and I'll be heading East. Look for the billboards87:
MR. BONES
The Fastest Draw in the West
"Faster than Billy the Kid
and Twice as Dead"
presented by
HIRAM PERTWEE,
M.D.
All I've got to do is figure how to keep getting mad at Jake.
The End
The End
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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scuffed
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| v.使磨损( scuff的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚走 | |
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hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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thigh
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bellied
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| adj.有腹的，大肚子的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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shingle
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| n.木瓦板；小招牌(尤指医生或律师挂的营业招牌)；v.用木瓦板盖（屋顶）；把（女子头发）剪短 | |
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depot
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| n.仓库，储藏处；公共汽车站；火车站 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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begrudged
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| 嫉妒( begrudge的过去式和过去分词 )； 勉强做； 不乐意地付出； 吝惜 | |
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squint
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| v. 使变斜视眼, 斜视, 眯眼看, 偏移, 窥视; n. 斜视, 斜孔小窗; adj. 斜视的, 斜的 | |
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moss
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owl
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hoot
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| n.鸟叫声，汽车的喇叭声； v.使汽车鸣喇叭 | |
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halfway
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jersey
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tainted
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cantankerous
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satchel
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plumb
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| adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深 | |
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crater
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catchy
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| adj.易记住的，诡诈的，易使人上当的 | |
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shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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charred
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| v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦 | |
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sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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vapors
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| n.水汽，水蒸气，无实质之物( vapor的名词复数 )；自夸者；幻想 [药]吸入剂 [古]忧郁（症）v.自夸，（使）蒸发( vapor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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cylinder
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| n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸 | |
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hatchet
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| n.短柄小斧；v.扼杀 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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smacked
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| 拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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flopped
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| v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的过去式和过去分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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chunk
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| n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量） | |
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rinsed
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| v.漂洗( rinse的过去式和过去分词 )；冲洗；用清水漂洗掉（肥皂泡等）；（用清水）冲掉 | |
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fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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spinal
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| adj.针的，尖刺的，尖刺状突起的；adj.脊骨的，脊髓的 | |
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lobe
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| n.耳垂，（肺，肝等的）叶 | |
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detector
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| n.发觉者，探测器 | |
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cerebral
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| adj.脑的，大脑的；有智力的，理智型的 | |
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poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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sifted
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| v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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vaudeville
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| n.歌舞杂耍表演 | |
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cadaver
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| n.尸体 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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mite
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| n.极小的东西；小铜币 | |
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snarling
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的现在分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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cougar
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| n.美洲狮；美洲豹 | |
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braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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stomped
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| v.跺脚，践踏，重踏( stomp的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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bray
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| n.驴叫声, 喇叭声；v.驴叫 | |
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blister
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| n.水疱；(油漆等的)气泡；v.(使)起泡 | |
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ostrich
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| n.鸵鸟 | |
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plume
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| n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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flannels
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| 法兰绒男裤； 法兰绒( flannel的名词复数 ) | |
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notches
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| n.（边缘或表面上的）V型痕迹( notch的名词复数 )；刻痕；水平；等级 | |
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yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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brag
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| v./n.吹牛，自夸；adj.第一流的 | |
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sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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rawhide
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| n.生牛皮 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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cowhand
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| n.牛仔，牧牛工 | |
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stunk
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| v.散发出恶臭( stink的过去分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透 | |
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counterfeit
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| vt.伪造，仿造；adj.伪造的，假冒的 | |
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bleach
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| vt.使漂白；vi.变白；n.漂白剂 | |
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billboards
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| n.广告牌( billboard的名词复数 ) | |
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