You never would
have suspected, just to look at him through the fancy grating of his window,
how he thirsted for that kind of adventure which fiction writers call
red-blooded. He had never had an adventure in his life; but at night, after he
had gone to bed and adjusted the electric light at his head, and his green
eyeshade, and had put two pillows under the back of his neck, he read--you
will scarcely believe it, but it is true--he read about the James boys and
Kit. Carson and Pawnee Bill, and he could tell you--only he wouldn't mention
it, of course--just how many Texans were killed in the Alamo. He loved gun
catalogues, and he frequently went out of his way to pass a store that
displayed real, business- looking stock-saddles and quirts and spurs and
things. He longed to be down in Mexico in the thick of the scrap there, and he
knew every prominent Federal leader and every revolutionist that got into the
papers; knew them by spelling at least, even if he couldn't pronounce the
names correctly.
He had come to Albuquerque for his lungs' sake a few years ago, and he still
thrilled at the sight of bright-shawled Pueblo Indians padding along the
pavements in their moccasins and queer leggings that looked like joints of
whitewashed stove-pipe; while to ride in an automobile out to Isleta, which is
a terribly realistic Indian village of adobe huts, made the blood beat in his
temples and his fingers tremble upon his knees.
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