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Adventure
He was a very
sick white man. He rode pick-a-back on a woolly-headed,
black-skinned savage, the lobes of whose ears
had been pierced and stretched until one had
torn out, while the other carried a circular
block of carved wood three inches in diameter.
The torn ear had been pierced again, but this
time not so ambitiously, for the hole
accommodated no more than a short clay pipe. The
man-horse was greasy and dirty, and naked save
for an exceedingly narrow and dirty loin-cloth;
but the white man clung to him closely and
desperately. At times, from weakness, his head
drooped and rested on the woolly pate. At other
times he lifted his head and stared with
swimming eyes at the cocoanut palms that reeled
and swung in the shimmering heat. He was clad in
a thin undershirt and a strip of cotton cloth,
that wrapped about his waist and descended to
his knees. On his head was a battered Stetson,
known to the trade as a Baden-Powell. About his
middle was strapped a belt, which carried a
large-calibred automatic pistol and several
spare clips, loaded and ready for quick work...
 The
Game
Many patterns of carpet lay rolled out
before them on the floor—two of Brussels showed
the beginning of their quest, and its ending in
that direction; while a score of ingrains lured
their eyes and prolonged the debate between
desire pocket-book. The head of the department
did them the honor of waiting upon them himself—or
did Joe the honor, as she well knew, for she had
noted the open-mouthed awe of the elevator boy
who brought them up. Nor had she been blind to
the marked respect shown Joe by the urchins and
groups of young fellows on corners, when she
walked with him in their own neighborhood down
at the west end of the town.
But the head of the department was called away
to the telephone, and in her mind the splendid
promise of the carpets and the irk of the pocket-book
were thrust aside by a greater doubt and anxiety.
“But I don’t see what you find to like in it,
Joe,” she said softly, the note of insistence in
her words betraying recent and unsatisfactory
discussion.
For a fleeting moment a shadow darkened his
boyish face, to be replaced by the glow of
tenderness. He was only a boy, as she was only a
girl—two young things on the threshold of life,
house-renting and buying carpets together...

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