Fighting Blood (Witwer)/Round 12
When all is said and done there is really only two things which a box-fighter must have—a wallop and a heart. Speed, ring generalship and a mastery of hooks, feints and jabs is all great things to bring into the ring with you, but the ability to hit and the ability to take it is actual necessities in the life of a fighter. We've had many a champion with no other assets than these two, but there's been few title-holders which didn't possess both. Another thing, attempting to be a clever boxer has ruined many a ambitious boy with no talent at all for feinting and jabbing, but which might of slammed his way to a title by roundhouse swings alone. Like Battling Long done, for the example.
After I knock out Hurricane Ryan, Nate signs me to fight this Battling Long fifteen rounds to a decision in the land of Jersey City. I am guaranteed forty thousand gulden, with the privilege of taking forty-five per cent of the gross. Long has got to content himself with a paltry fifteen thousand flat and the only guarantee he gets is one from Nate that will serve him up the pasting of his life. Being light-heavyweight champion of the world, I think the man which can take me will be born the day the Gulf of Mexico turns into grape juice. Thinking that way is what makes ex-champions. John L. Sullivan figured himself the clam's garters, wouldn't train for Corbett and was a mark for the slim, cool-headed Gentleman Jim. In turn, the handsome James gazed upon Bob Fitzimmons with contempt and Ruby Robert smacked him much colder than zero. Fitz thought Jefferies a laugh, but the boiler-manicuring cave man just grunted and removed Fritz from his crown. Jack Johnson giggled himself hysterical at Jess Willard's ponderous swings and clumsy rushes at Havana, till Jessica's driven cuckoo by Johnson's kidding in the clinches, knocked Lil Arthur for a row of Mongolian whipped cream containers. Willard, a champion, figured Dempsey a set-up. In fact, just before he climbed through the ropes for the shambles at Toledo, Jess remarked that he hoped he wouldn't have to beat Dempsey up so badly that the bout would kill boxing. And then—Oy, Yoi! Well, I thought this Battling Long was just another boloney and why go through a gruelling training grind for a boloney? What happened? This:
I have never give up the idea of becoming a liquid Edison by inventing a drink which will goal the world and while I'm getting in condition for Battling Long I can't seem to keep my mind on the manly art of assault and battery. The training grind is more monotonous than monotony itself. Up at six a. m., road work, punch the bag, pull the weights, throw the medicine ball, step a couple of rounds apiece with half a dozen sparring partners, shadow box, army setting up exercises, shower, rubdown, bed between eight-thirty and nine. You do that day after day and week after week with a grouchy, cold-eyed manager holding a watch over you and see how long you can keep from going cuckoo!
One night I am laying awake in bed thinking over this and that and wondering just where I will wind up, when the idea of composing this drink begins hammering at my head again. I just can't get rid of this thought and go to sleep. Instead, I find myself turning over various combinations of flavors in my mind till finally I get so excited about the thing that although it's after midnight I jump up and dress and sneak quietly out of the house without disturbing nobody. If Nate knew I was prowling around at this hour of the morning with a important fight only a few weeks off he'd be fit to be tied! I'm bound for the syrup room of Ajariah Stubbs's drug store, because I got a sudden hunch that this night I'll concoct a beverage which will be drank around the world! I got a set of keys which Ajariah give me so's I could come and go whenever I pleased and I let myself in, clear off a table, set out test tubes, vials, jars of syrups and bottles of drugs, a mortar and pestle, etc., and get down to business.
Like before, the first dozen or more experiments results in nothing but punishment for my stomach. I am getting a little sleepy and a whole lot discouraged, when I take one more chance and mix up—well, let's say it was four flavors, two extracts and a harmless drug. The formula is on file at Washington now and I'd rather you'd see it there. Anyhow, I taste this combination without much hope that it's going to be any more successful than the others I've tried, when lo and behold, as the Chinese says, it ain't been down a minute when a pleasant glow spreads all over me. I ain't sleepy no more, in fact, I'm so full of pep'm satisfied that I could go out and ruin a dozen Battling Longs in the same ring! Thrilled to the core by the feeling that I'm standing on the brinks of a great discovery, I take a real good swallow of this stuff and let out a whoop of pure joy. I've done it at last—I have discovered a drink which will give the nation a kick without a headache! No habit-forming drugs, no alcohol, no artificial coloring, and yet it's got a wallop like dynamite. The only thing is, it's a trifle bitter, but I overcome that by adding a little simple syrup and then it's the cat's collar! When two glasses of this has rolled smoothly and deliciously past my pleasantly surprised tonsils, I realize that I have got a radium mine on my hands if this drink is properly advertised and exploited.
In the midst of my wild rejoicing I hear somebody rattling the knob of the back door. I think it's probably Ajariah and I rush to the door and flung it open, crazy to tell somebody what I've just did. Well, it ain't Ajariah, it's no less than a very sleepy looking Nate Shapiro and he greets me with a decidedly angry glare.
"What's the big idea?" he growls, pulling out his watch. "It's nearly three o'clock in the mornin', is this givin' me a square deal?"
"Giving you a square deal?" I says, a bit puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"What do you mean, what do I mean?" says Nate. "You ought to be in the midst of a nightmare in bed instead of fussin' around this trap at this hour of the mornin'! Now you'll be a dead man all day to-morrow and won't be able to work out. That ain't playin' the game with me, kid. If this Long slaps you from under your title, you won't get the money for your next fight and if you don't get the money, where do I get off? You shouldn't ought to be so selfish, Gale, you ought to remember that every time you take a lickin' it hurts me!"
"I'm sorry if it offends you when I get punched in the nose, Nate," I says. "But I think I can promise that will never happen no more after my little debate with Battling Long. Unless I am greatly mistaken, that will be my last fight!"
"Blah!" sneers Nate. "You're dizzy! I've heard that stuff from you before, but"
"But this time it goes!" I butt in. "Nate, I have just fell into a thing which will make me a million bucks before I get through with it and if you don't think it will you're crazy!"
"Listen," says Nate, in open disgust. "If I didn't know different I'd swear you was a hop-head, no foolin'. You got more ideas than Burbank. First thing you know you'll get pinched for tryin' to get blood out of a stone or somethin'. What are you doin' in this joint, anyways?"
For answer I poured out a glass full of my newly invented drink and handed it to him. Nate sniffs it and eyes me suspiciously.
"Smells like it had authority," he says, with a grin. "What is it?"
"What do you care what is it?" I says. "Drink it and you'll have the honor of being the first one to ever taste it, outside of its inventor!"
Nate gives a grunt which don't commit him one way or the other, but he takes a inquisitive sip from the glass. I watch him like a mother watches her first baby learning to walk! Suppose he don't like it? Suppose this drink is a knockout only to me and the bunk to everybody else? Honest, I'm more nervous and anxious while Nate tastes that concoction than I was when I climbed through the ropes to fight Gunner Slade for the world's light-heavyweight championship. My whole future is wrapped up in that glass which the hard boiled Nate holds in his hand as far as that part of it goes, and why shouldn't I be nervous and anxious?
Well, I don't have long to wait for the returns. The first sip Nate takes opens his eyes. He takes a healthy swig, smacks his lips and then drains the glass.
"Wam!" he hollers. "Say—that's the turtle's bicycle! What is it?"
The sleepiness and the grouchiness has disappeared like magic!
"I ain't got no name for it yet," I says, tickled silly at the way it hit him. "I just this minute invented that drink, Nate—laugh that off!"
"Don't stand there arguin' with me," says Nate, holding out his empty glass. "Let's have another shot of that stuff, but don't let me catch you drinkin' none of it—remember you're readyin' yourself for Battlin' Long. As a trainin' exercise, this egg stopped Kid Christopher at Philly last night in one round. It took you four to do the same trick. That's somethin' to think about, hey?"
"No," I says, "it ain't. I never felt better in my life and I'll lay this Long like a pavement! You're a swell manager—instead of telling me I can lick the wide, wide world you're always predicting I'm going to get knocked for a loop. It's a good thing I got plenty of this moral and don't have to look to you for none. It's as harmless as a day old infant. But I can't give you no more till I mix some up."
"Till you mix some up?" says Nate. "What's the idea?"
"I told you I invented this drink, didn't I, dumbell?" I says.
Nate sits on the end of the table and looks at me with awe and admiration.
"I thought you was kiddin'," he says. "I think you are yet, but if you ain't kiddin', you got a money maker here which will make the mint look like it's turnin' out biscuits."
"It's going to take plenty jack to properly launch this, Nate," I says, after a minute. "I'll have to go out end promote a company, probably, and sell stock and"
"I'll take ten thousand bucks worth of stock in it right now!" interrupts Nate, banging his fist on the table. "We'll canvass the town—no we won't either, we'll only let our pals in on this. Hey—mix up a couple more drinks of that stuff and we'll dope a cams paign right here and now which will raise enough pennies to set that drink before the public and make 'em cry for it!"
And we did and they did.
It was five in the morning when we let ourselves out of Ajariah Stubbs's drug store and sneaked home, tired and sleepy but drunk with enthusiasm.
"Kid," says Nate to me before we turned in for a couple hours' nap, "you're brighter than Jackie Coogan and that's a fact! But I suppose this drink you cooked up is goin' to be the end of our partnership. You'll make more money in less time with this punch than you will with the punch in your right hand. Then the next thing, you and Judy Willcox"
"Will get wed,—if I'm lucky!" I finish for him.
"I hate to see that," says Nate, shaking his head. "I hate to see it. As it stands now, you and Judy is just a couple of good friends—you get married and you'll ruin all that. Marriage has busted up more friendships than anything else in the world!"
Then I chased him.
Well, late that same afternoon there is a important conference in the back of Stubbs's drug store. Judy, Ajariah, Spence Brock, Nate and Knockout Kelly is all gathered round me, drinking this thing I've invented and to say they're enthusiastic is a typical case of not telling the half of it. Ajariah, Spence, Nate and Kayo regard me with plain awe, but in Judy's expression there is something more than that—something which makes my heart hop around like—like—well, whatever is in the habit of hopping around. We talk a lot about forming this company to put my drink on the market, about what we'll call it, how much we'll soak the thirsty public for a swallow of it and this, that and the other. Excitement reaches and passes fever heat and there's plenty demands for me to make a speech, but I am no W. Jennings Bryan on a rostrum and that's a fact. I'm satisfied that public speakers is born and not made, yet never the less I am going to take a course in orating along with my other studies, because now that I am set to be a big man in the business world I will doubtless have to bound around to banquets and the like making speeches and I don't want to act like a clown when I do.
The next day I am around to Stubbs's drug store earlier than I ever was when I had to be there to jerk soda in days of yore. As far as my coming brush with Battling Long is concerned I got no more interest in it than I am interested in who killed cock robin. What I am interested in is mixing up a batch of my beauteous beverage to have it all ready for the early trade in Ajariah's store so's to see how it gets across with the general public. No presidential candidate ever waited for the returns with half the interest with which I waited for 'em that day in the old drug store.
Well, long before noon my worst fears was realized—my drink was a howling success!
I stood back of that fountain with Ajariah and his lieutenant soda man and watched a fair to middling fountain trade jump in a few hours to a business which would make a guy peddling rain storms in a drought look like rank failure. No matter what they asked for—pick-me-ups, headache removers, nerve steadiers or merely plain drinks—we invited 'em to try my new concoction and once they did that they just set there saying "Wow! What d'ye call that?" and shoving over their glasses and dimes for more. It was the greatest sale since the one Columbus took, no fooling!
When me and Ajariah bottled it and it sold faster than we could ram in the corks and turn it out with our home-made bottling machinery, I knew my days of experimenting with myself was over. This liquid gold mine I had stumbled on had overnight removed the uncertainty and that terrible worry and pain in the heart which, young or old, you can't escape if you're an incurable addict of the drug which put the world over—ambition. It took me a long time to find my game—a long time of trying this and that and taking many a nasty fall along with my few short ascensions. But it was all worth it, for look what I got now. I been down, but I get up and there's the secret of success in a nutshell. To add anything to that formula would be using rouge on a rose!
Well, now that the success of my drink is as certain as cold weather in Alaska, the next step is getting a name for it and forming a company to sell it. Like I do on all important questions, I consult Judy about this, but before we get down to business, why, she lays her sweet little hand on my arm. Her beautiful face is troubled and these pulse-thumping eyes of hers is a bit moist, what I mean.
"Gale," she says, "now that you have found yourself at last and have a possible million awaiting you, are you going to—to leave Drew City?" And the anxious way she asks that sends my blood racing. There's no use talking, I might of done everything else twice or more, but personally, I only been in love once!
"No, Judy," I says, "I am not. You couldn't get me six inches away from this burg while—while you're in it! I"
"That wasn't what I meant," she butts in quickly, flushing. "But it does seem to me that you have fought out your whole life problem here in Drew City—coming here penniless, without friends, vague as to your ambitions, now you are a member of the Board of Trade, respected and admired by everyone and—why, Gale, I really believe at this moment you are the biggest thing in the town! I do not mean you wouldn't have done as much in a large city, but, Gale, there are less temptations and more loyal friends in a small town and I know that has helped you. Perhaps I am selfish, but I love Drew City and I feel a sort of vicarious pride in the fact that you were developed here. I'd hate to see you go, now that the work of making you a successful man has been accomplished. But that of course is silly. You alone Gale were responsible for your success—your unswerving ambition and 'fighting blood,' as you phrase it, would have made you a success anywhere. I'm just a foolish girl, I know. You will be a man of affairs now and I suppose you'll feel cramped here. You're done a lot, Gale, a lot for yourself and a lot by example for the other boys here. I—I wish I'd had something to do with your rise, instead of just the pleasure of watching it."
"You had plenty to do with it, Judy," I says, taking her hand. "If it hadn't been for you I never would of stayed here. You been a inspiration and—and one of the goals I been shooting at. I got no intention of leaving Drew City, now or ever. I mean something here, got my home and my standing here and here I stay till doomsday! This drink of mine will be manufactured right here and we'll deal out jobs to the local talent and not to no outside help. I'll give all my friends a chance to get in on the ground floor with stock in the company. Me, and everything connected with me, Judy, is going to be a strictly Drew City affair. Why as soon as I got my company floated and everything running smooth I'm even going to get married here!"
If she blushed before, you should of saw her face then.
"That's certainly fine, Gale," she says shyly. "And I wish you luck in—in all your ventures here. Have you thought of a name for your drink yet?"
"Absolutely!" I says. "The name thought of itself you might say. In fact, I think if I'd had the name before I'd of invented the drink long ago!"
"Now I am curious," smiles Judy. "What is it?"
"It's Judy Punch!" I hollers, for the name had come to me in a flash while she was talking. "I claim that name's the rabbit's velocipede and inside of six months it will be on every tongue in the nation!"
It was on every tongue in the nation inside of three months. I bet you've ordered it time and time again yourself, hey, and ain't it a drink for your life?
Well, I wasted no time in getting Lem Garfield to draw up papers in legal style and the first thing I know I am incorporated as "Gale Galen, Inc." After trying twenty times without no luck at all to find out what the papers Lem drew up for me was all about I appointed him counsel for the company. The original stockholders was me, Ajariah Stubbs, Judge Tuckerman, Nate and Knockout Kelly. Besides my stock, I am to get a certain royalty on every bottle of "Judy Punch" sold and I am likewise president of the firm, This is what I call sitting pretty and I don't suppose nobody will give me no argument about that part of it.
However, when we cast up accounts after the organization of the company, the total amount of capital we have managed to excavate fails to give me a thrill. What I mean is, I realize I have got hold of something which don't want to be ruined by piker methods. "Judy Punch" wants to be manufactured and bottled on a heavy scale and we need a plant, machinery, a selling and promotion staff, and all this sort of thing, if my marvelous invention is going to mean anything. All this calls for important jack so I set forth after it like I set forth after anything else, with one idea fixed in my mind. The one idea is—get it!
I was afraid things had been breaking a little too smooth for me, so I can't say I was dumbfounded when the old fly in the ointment crops up. This was Rags Dempster. Rags had been duly tried and convicted of peddling the forbidden brew and the fine took every nickel he had in the wide wide world. Queer, ain't it, that the drink Rags got mixed up with broke him and the drink I got mixed up with made me a fortune? Anyways, I run into him on the street shortly after he come out of the bootlegging thing, up against it and without a friend in Drew City. He stands in my way and greets me with a ugly snarl. Rags was drunk,—but with hate, not moonshine.
"Well, you squealer," he sneers. "How much did you get from the Revenue agents for informing on me?"
"Rags, you're crazy," I says, keeping my head. Why smack him down? I figure he's taking the long count now in more ways than one. "Even though you ain't exactly infatuated with me, you know I wouldn't do a thing like that. I ain't built that way. I'm light-heavyweight champion, you never had a glove on in your life. If I wanted to do you a real injury, I'd make you step with me here and now for that crack you just made!"
"Oh, no you wouldn't," he hisses, and shoves his right coat pocket forward. It's got a gun in it. I can see the outlines of a automatic as plain as day. "Oh, no you wouldn't," says Rags. "You make a step forward towards me and I'll blow you up. I'm dying to do it, anyways!"
"Rags," I says, "I won't cuff you because I'm sorry for you. You been your own worst enemy and evidently you're determined to make the feud with your self a finish battle. But if I did want to cuff you, Rags, that gun wouldn't stop me—remember that, in case you get rosey with me again! Now lay off acting like a villain in the movies. You got people looking at you."
Rags glances sharply across the street and sees a little group of innocent bystanders rapidly gathering. The hand in his coat pocket relaxes, but his set face don't. Honest he glares at me with his beady eyes glittering till he looks more like a tiger than a human being.
"Galen," he says, in a hard voice, but it was steady enough, "I'll get you if it's the last thing I do! If I do kill you, I'd just as soon it would be the last thing. I'd die happy!"
Sounds like a play, don't it? I know. That's what I thought, too. I think I grinned—I couldn't help it, Rags sounded so dramatic. I didn't think he'd ever have the nerve to shoot a rabbit, judging from his past performances. That just shows there's plenty of things I don't know.
Well, I got Mr. Brock interested in the possibilities of "Judy Punch" and he came through for me as he has scores of times before. Came through to the extent of loaning me enough jack to begin the manufacture of my drink the way it should be manufactured and he took my notes for the loan. He didn't want nothing but my word, but I didn't want to start in business without doing everything in a regular business-like manner. I never was strong on accepting favors, not because I hate myself, but because I hate to think I can't stand on my own feet and operate from that point.
Then I begin looking around Drew City for a plant suitable to my needs. I find it in a place which seems to of been picked not by me but by Fate. It's no less than the deserted carpet factory, once owned by Rags Dempster's father. The machinery had been sold to satisfy the creditors and it's just one wonderful place for us to turn out "Judy Punch" in large and luscious quantities. One long lingering look all around it was enough for me—and I guess the fact of that factory being just what it was kind of helped me to make up my mind, too. I bought it, took down the big sign reading "Dempster & Company" which had stood there for years and put up one in its place which says, "Gale Galen, Inc."
I imagine the proudest second of my life was when I stood across the street from the factory and gazed fondly at my nice new sign. Just think, I now own the place where Rags once sneeringly offered me a job as a laborer in order to make me look small before Judy. When Rags and me started he had wealth and education at his disposal, I had poverty and ignorance. Now I had wealth and at least a working education, while Rags had merely the education. The difference that really counted though, was in the stuff which flowed through our veins, Dempster's was water, mine was blood—fighting blood! What I've done is no more than what anybody with courage can do and a great deal less than many have done. So go on, do your stuff, sock the world whenever you can, take it when you have to and—you'll be surprised!
Well, having sorrowfully took me at my word that my fight with Battling Long would be my last, Nate was now busy trying to develop Two-Punch Jackson, the heavyweight, into a champion. He likewise had Tommy O'Ryan, the good middleweight, under his wing and figured on bounding over to Europe with 'em and fighting 'em against the best English and French boys in their class. The cables had been kind to Nate in the matter of offers, so all in all it looked like bon voyage. Knockout Kelly bought out my interest and Nate's in the Judith Moving picture theatre, his wife going back to her old job at the ticket window, where she was a decided asset and she'd be a decided asset to any theatre, don't think she wouldn't. The future locked too busy for both me and Nate for us to keep a hand in a small town picture theatre and we was glad to cash in and step out. On the other hand, it was a perfect spot for Kayo. Spence Brock suddenly pleasantly surprised both me and his father by declaring himself crazy to go to work at something connected with the putting across of "Judy Punch." So I sent him to New York to open a branch office for us there and organize a sales crew. Even though Spence is a multi-millionaire's son, that didn't prevent me from telling him this was his chance to make good!
Then come the tragedy which gloomed us all up for a while—a terrible unexpected shock which solved a old problem for me, but I can't truthfully say I liked the way that problem was solved. It was a bit too terrible to gloat about, it was for a fact. Like all things which stun you at the time, it's soon told. It happened like this: Besides superintending the manufacture of "Judy Punch," I was spending a lot of time doping advertising copy and framing what I hoped was interest-building letters to the jobbers and dealers. Judy was worth her weight in platinum in helping me do this, as she's got some wonderful ideas and a business head as wise as it's pretty, which is saying several mouthfuls. Well, we'd been doing most of this work in the office, of our plant, and this particular night we are working there late trying to smooth out a idea which had all the earmarks of being a wow when we got it properly set. It came out later at the inquest that it must of been about ten o'clock when this thing happened. They couldn't prove the time by either me or Judy, as we was both too upset and sick with the tragedy of the whole business. Anyhow, I was just helping Judy on with her coat where there was a sharp report, the crash and jingle of broken glass in the window opening into the factory and a wicked thud in the opposite wall. I felt a stinging in the top of my left ear and when I felt it my hand came away sticky and red. Judy give a little scream and run to me as I staggered back. I wasn't hurt, but the sudden sensation that somebody had tried to cook me in cold blood made me a bit ill in the region of the belt. I can't say I've had that happen to me every day.
"Stay here, Judy—I'll get that guy!" I says quickly, pushing her behind a big book case out of harm's way.
"Gale—don't—you'll be killed!" she gasps, white as the teeth in a toothpowder ad.
"Well I'll be killed if I stay here, too," I says, forcing a sickly grin. "If I go out maybe I can argue my boy friend out of it."
But I didn't feel that funny at all.
I sneaked out the door and in the dim night light over the stairs I see a figure, all scrunched down, but trying to see what he rung up with his shot at the office. So I crawled over on my hands and knees, making a wide circle and coming up in the rear of this unknown yellow killer. He heard me just as I jumped, but I was too shifty for him and grabbed the wrist of the kand which held the gun before he could fire again. He twisted and squirmed like a wildcat and I jolted him with a short right to the jaw. As his head flew up and he dropped to his knees I saw it was Rags Dempster.
While I stood there dumbfounded and my next move made uncertain by surprise and disgust, Rags got to his feet and faced me, his features twisted with hate, still holding the gun. He aimed it at me pointblank and he wasn't four feet away when he pulled the trigger. "Goodnight!" I tell myself and stiffen for the plunk of a bullet socking into my body. But poor Rags—and on account of what happened within a few minutes I say poor Rags even though he tried to kill me—poor Rags was out of tuck. The trigger clicked harmlessly and the next instant I floored him. He rolled over and over, getting to his feet like a cat and staggered for the stairway. He's still got the gun and I set sail after him. Up the stairs on the dead run comes Garth Hinkle, our nightwatchman, who's heard the shot and the scuffle on the office floor. He tried to stop Rags and Rags knocks him flat with the butt of the gun. As Garth fell he yanked out his own gun and fired one shot from the ground. He couldn't of aimed, he didn't have time, but Rags dropped like a stone and he was a stone when we reached him—stone dead!
The poor, poor kid—with all he done to me, Rags was unfortunate from birth in a great many ways. His mind was shaped all wrong and when the breaks went against him he didn't have the stuff to fight back fair and you can't foul Fate. Yet that was a tough way to go out. It broke us all up for quite a while.
Well, when the day of my fight with Battling Long arrived it was almost a unexpected visitor. Putting "Judy Punch" on the market had gave me little time for training and I was miles from being in perfect condition when I climbed through the ropes to defend my title for the last time. This ain't a alibi—Long is a good boy, a sweet puncher and a fair fighter. For all I know, he might of been able to take me the best day I ever seen and as I don't know, why, let's say maybe he would of and give him the credit. He's still in the fight game and I ain't. I got a trick worth two of that now!
Before this melee had gone a round I had a sensation I never had before while I was box-fighting. I knew I was going to be trimmed! The thought even struck me that I might be knocked cold, for the first time since I pulled on a padded glove and stepped into the squared circle under the blinding lights to do my stuff. My wind was all shot to pieces and I run to my corner at the bell, blowing like a porpoise and my body a mass of red welts from the jarring blows of Battling Long, who fighting a cool, heady fight, knew where I couldn't take them that night no matter how punch-proof I used to be. Long's handlers was almost hysterical with joy and acted like they couldn't believe their eyes when he walked to his stool. Their wildest dreams looked about to come true and they wasn't a bit backward in showing how they felt about it. But Long, with a world's title staring him in the face, never blinked a eye. He just sit there cold, grim faced, tight-lipped and cruel, but only cruel because you see that was his business. He hadn't a thing against me personally, but plenty against me walking out of that ring still holding the title. Well, that's the game.
After that for ten barbarous rounds, Long made a punching bag out of me. He took no reckless chances of rushing to land a quick knockout—he was fighting a champion and a champion is dangerous till he's counted out, that's what makes him a champ. So Long fought his battle at long range, taking advantage of my poor timing to chop me to pieces with a murderous left and jar me with occasional terrific rights to the body. Even though I was steadily on the receiving end of those wallops I couldn't help but admire his plan of battle. My hat's off to a artist in any line, and Battling Long knew his business!
In the eleventh round, Nate begged me to let him toss in the sponge and save me from taking needless punishment. He knew I was through and for that matter it was no secret to me, but I've never had no fights stopped to save me before and I wasn't going to begin then. Besides that's a Hades of a way for a champion to lose, now ain't it? I have slapped many a boy stiff myself and if it was my turn now, why, I was in there to take it.
A punch by punch description of that battle would be monotonous and there was no pleasant memories connected with it for me. In the twelfth and thirteenth Long battered me from pillar to post, putting more stuff on his swings, now that I was a set-up. Some of the customers even begin to walk out on us because the result looked like a foregone conclusion. I remember dully wondering how it would feel to get knocked stiff, a thing that never had happened to me before. Then I'd get desperate and lash out with both hands, once landing a wicked right on Long's face that sent my friends howling and jumping on the chairs. But they was just flurries and Long soon learned to figure just when I was going to start 'em and he'd cover up and weather the storm. I guess I took almost as much punishment in my last battle as I did in my entire career up to then. I was down for short counts twice in the fourth, twice in the fifth, once in the seventh, three times in the eleventh, once again in the thirteenth—a total of nine times in a fifteen-round scuffle. Plenty!
In the fourteenth round, Long, driven wild by his inability to stop me, opened up and began swinging 'em from the next block. This was my only chance and I went at it like a collie after a bone. The instant I felt him tiring from his own efforts I gathered the last remaining strength I had left and tied in to make a grandstand finish. A right hook to the heart staggered Long a little after the bell and I followed that with a hard left to the head that spun him against the ropes and made the home-going spectators stop in the exits and scream their heads off. The highly amazed Long was then short with a right uppercut and I dropped him to one knee with the same punch in return. Long took "Six" and come up with murder in his eye. He swung hard for both head and body and soon had me covering up. That was the end of my spurt. The bell found me hanging on for my life.
In the fifteenth and last frame I took a cuffing which would of satisfied my worst enemy, I did for a fact! I don't know what kept me upright. Long bombarded me with terrible lefts and rights to body and jaw, hanging me over the ropes once under a hurricane of blows which actually held me up they were coming so fast. I made as many returns as I could, but I was getting weaker and weaker and the bell was the most welcome sound I heard that evening. Two seconds more and I'd of been knocked as cold as a coroner's case.
So the decision and the light-heavyweight championship of the world passed on to Battling Long on points. When you read that sort of a decision in the newspapers you get the idea that the fight was mere "boxing exhibition" and not much to look at. If you had seen me after that brawl you would never get the idea again.
A wild admirer of mine to the last, Mr. Brock comes plunging through the mob up to my corner where Nate and Kayo Kelly is trying to bring me back to life. He shouts that I was robbed of the decision and should of got no worse than a draw. But that wasn't so and I told him it wasn't.
"No sir!" I says, shaking my weary head. "I wasn't robbed. I got a square deal. Long would of knocked me kicking in another round. He's a good tough boy and I hope he holds the title as long as I did."
When I was able I walked over to Long's corner where he's surrounded by a mob of guys eager to get even a nod from him. He's the new king and I'm forgotten. Such is life in the prize ring—or in any other ring. When Nate has cleared a way for me, I shook the new champion's hand and wished him luck, remarking that I had sent many a boy home in the shape I'm in myself and now I can sympathize with them more fully. Battling Long just grins a happy grin. He's beyond speech and I don't blame him. I know the feeling. That title is worth around fifty thousand a fight, but—I got a million to shoot at!
Spence mobbed me in the dressing room with the cheering news that "Judy Punch" has took New York by storm and he and his merry men has orders which will work our factory to capacity. He tells me my future is assured and asks me what in the name of Heaven is the matter with my right eye. I says I have been in a fight.
Then I heard Judy's voice and her knock at the door. I throwed around my shoulders the bathrobe she give me on my nineteenth birthday, and which I have never went into a ring without since. Then I give Spence the air.
"Oh, Gale," says Judy. "I'm so glad about our—your—about 'Judy Punch' and so sorry you were hurt so badly and"
She's all excited. I ain't.
"Listen," I butt in. "I have stalled around for six years trying to get up enough nerve to ask you to wed me, Judy. I got everything I want but you and I'd give everything I got to get you! Just what do I have to do to make you marry me?"
"Well," whispers Judy, turning away shyly, her face a four alarm fire, "For one thing—you—you might ask me!"
"Will you, Judy?" I gasped.
"Yes, Gale I will!" she nods and from the depths of my shoulder she adds in a kind of muffled voice, "I think I would have at any time since you first come to mother's boarding house!"
"Much obliged," I says. "Now . . . Oh . . . Judy . . . !" And day by day in every way we're bet ting better and better!
The end