Sentence:  When we came abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a <WSD>mangy</WSD> skin with a pendent tail— something that looked a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Worn and squalid-looking; bedraggled or decrepit.