staff: “That boy will make his mark. It is impossible to defeat an enemy which breeds boys like that.”
The Indians, whom he had passed amicably as he rode out into the New Mexican desert on a burro, seeking the ancient fort, now spurred after him with fell intent and wild scalping whoops. He rode furiously through muttering redskin villages, and found the protection of two cattlemen in the nick of time. The thief who had entered his room at dead of night in New Orleans, and picked up his clothes, and whom he had fought desperately upon the floor, he now pursued naked for seventeen blocks (not five) down Canal Street.
He went several times a week to the moving-picture shows, taking Eugene, and sitting, bent forward in hunched absorption, through two full performances. They came out at ten-thirty or eleven o’clock, on cold ringing pavements, into a world frozen bare—a dead city of closed shops, dressed windows, milliners’and clothiers’models posturing with waxen gaiety at congealed silence.
On the Square the slackened fountain dropped a fat spire of freezing water into its thickening rim of ice. In summer, a tall spire blown in blue sheets of spray. When they turned it down it wilted—that was like a fountain, too. No wind blew.
His eyes fixed on the clean concrete walk, Gant strode on, muttering dramatically, composing a narrative of the picture. The cold steel of new sewing-machines glinted in dim light. The Singer building. Tallest in the world. The stitching hum of Eliza’s machine. Needle through your finger before you know it. He winced. They passed the Sluder Building at the corner of the Square and turned left. Gets over $700 a month in office-rent from this alone. The window on the corner was filled with rubber syringes and thermos bottles. Drink Coca Cola. They say he stole the formula from old mountain woman. $50, 000, 000 now. Rats in the vats. Dope at Wood’s better. Too weak here. He had recently acquired a taste for the beverage and drank four or five glasses a day.
D. Stern had his old shack on that corner twenty years before Fagg bought it. Belonged to Paston estate. Could have bought it
