A few murderers had come before him for their preliminary hearings, but they'd been of no interest; they were the sort of murderer who pulls a knife in the middle of a barroom argument.

He was a loud, boisterous man, full of "hail-fellow-well-met" attitudes, favoring adventurers in his trade because the additional gold they usually carried made up for the damage their barroom arguments caused.

In May 1849, James McDowell was shot and killed in a barroom argument that he had supposedly started.

"If every barroom argument that ended in a push or a shove became a murder charge, we'd have an awful lot of murders," Mr. Gould said.

We had every kind of question, some serious and some trivial, asked to settle barroom arguments.

It was a face guaranteed to make barroom arguments over batting averages turn bloody.

But a barroom argument with Kinameri gets out of hand; he throws a drink in the reporter's face and shoves him out the door.

He had even been attacked a few times in barroom arguments, when his world had carried him down into the dregs of some slum or port.

There's a long-running barroom argument in New Jersey over whether Republicans or Democrats are more to blame for the state's reputation for corruption.

It was a barroom argument without beer or legal briefs.