Fighting Blood (Witwer)/Round 6
"Knowledge is power!" says Francis Bacon in the fiscal year of 1624, and Frankie knew what it was all about, don't think he didn't! That snappy remark of his applies to all of us from president to plumber. Maybe you'll kind of curl your lip and say that's fourth-grade copy-book stuff. Well, that's just what it is—but when you get right down to it, ain't it funny how them old copy-book sayings seems to cover everything which comes up in later years? What is these up-to-date nifties, anyways, but the old stuff jazzed up? What's new about 'em. "Strike while the iron is hot!" says Jack Heywood in 1565. "Do your stuff!" says the modern slang writer and gets credit for a wise crack.
You take knowledge in the game I've just quit—box fighting. Like in anything else, the students is the champions. What does a scrapper have to know besides a straight left and a right hook? Plenty! A rush of brains to the head now and then is as necessary to a boxer as it is to a banker. For instance, I learned to instantly shift my attack from jaw to body when the other boy didn't seem to like it down below, when to dive into a clinch and when not to, how to protect myself from a body puncher once we got to close quarters, how to eel out of a tight corner when I'm pinned on the ropes, to stay on one knee till the referee says "nine" if I'm floored—instead of jumping right up groggy and running into a knockout punch—and how to hit straight out from my shoulder or waist instead of swinging wildly like a gate.
Say, when I think what a chump I was when Nate took me from behind Ajariah Stubbs's soda fountain and changed my name from Gale Galen to "Six-Second Smith." I can't understand how I ever stopped anybody! All I could do then was hit and take it—not quite enough, no matter what the sharps tell you. Half the first division guys you think is clumsy from your ringside seat is doing fancy work in close where you can't see it which would make your hair curl and is making the other boy's hair curl.
Besides, all this, I lived clean and healthy. Plenty sleep, good food, no smoking, and I didn't know whether you spread booze on bread or rub it in your hair. Lots of people seems to think that all boxers is a lot of little or big thugs which spends the time they ain't in the ring beating up innocent bystanders just to be nasty and drinking like famished fish. That's apple sauce. Maybe the pork and beaners does all of that and more, but the good ones don't and that's a fact. Even in winning fights, the best of 'em takes not a little punishment in the course of a year and you can't do that unless you're in perfect condition—not to-night, or yesterday, or next week, but all the time!
Well, I got a three months' lay-off from the ring through the kind attention of Mr. Frankie Jackson. However, the argument I put up against the king of the middleweights caused a serious epidemic of bashfulness among the other contenders in that class as far as a scuffle with me was concerned. When Nate pleads with Frankie to give us another crack at his crown, why, the champ just laughs and says if we want to fight to get a job on the Dublin police force. In twenty-four battles I had win twenty by knockouts and, like Dempsey and many another good boy which has too much stuff for the rest of the field, it seems I have fought myself out of a job.
So, giving up all hopes of getting work in the middleweigh division, I tell Nate to go out shopping and get me a nice, fresh, light heavyweight somewheres and I'll be pleased to slap him silly for a reasonable amount of pennies. I was then twenty years old, stood five foot ten and three-quarters in my nude feet and still had trouble keeping down to 158 ringside—about 164 being my proper poundage—and it seems, like London I'm still growing. Well, Bob Fitzsimmons only weighed a few pounds more when he was bowling over some of the best heavyweights of his time and I got as many freckles as Fitz ever had!
Don't fall a victim to the idea that I spent the three months my ruined jaw was healing sitting in my room knitting doilies or nothing like that. In the contrary, what I done with them ninety days was to take a course in a New York business school. I suppose that's a laugh, hey? A prize fighter studying the mysteries of shorthand, advertisement writing, and salesmanship!
Anyways, I take up this business course and also enroll for the evening lectures at Columbia College, because I'm still incurably addicted to ambition—the thing which drove me from one meaningless job to another—a wild and undownable craving to be somebody, to get somewhere! I ain't got no blue blood in me; I know that on the account it always come out red when I got cuffed on the nose—a mere detail in my business. But I had too much fighting blood in me to be a John Smith in Life's phone book for long!
Judy went to this business school with me, and, of course, that didn't make it hard to take at all. She graduated from Drew City Prep a few weeks after my quarrel with Frankie Jackson, and as her mother has absolutely no connection with the Vanderbilt family or the equivalent, why, Judy got ready to bust into the business world herself so's twelve o'clock would mean lunch at the boarding house and not just noon.
Knockout Kelly, which by that time was keeping steady company with pretty Mary Ballinger, was always riding me for studying at nights instead of stepping out. Kayo claimed life's too short for that kind of business and that education is a great handicap to success. Be ignorant and be a winner, says Kayo.
"I don't know if algebra is pink or green," he tells me one day. "I can't spell necessity and words like that. For all I know, North Dakota is the capital of Wyoming. But—I'm clickin' off from three to five thousand smackers a fight, never more than forty minutes' work, usually twenty. They's millions of college guys workin' two years for the same money. Laugh that off!"
"But, Kayo," I says, "ten years from now you'll be through in the ring, and not having no other trick, why, that means you'll be through everywheres! You never save a nickel, so what will you do? You'll be hanging around the cheap fight clubs, picking up a dollar here and there as a handler or a human punching bag for some fellow training for a fight. But ten years from now the college guys which is working cheap at present as newly made lawyers, doctors, and this and that will be making more jack than you ever saw, Kayo, and they'll make it right-up to the time they die!"
"Blah!" sneers Kayo. "Be yourself! I ain't bothered about ten years from now or even one year from now. I never worry about yesterday or to-morrow. Yesterday's gone and to-morrow I may be gone. To-day's all that bothers me!"
With that he walks off whistling "Sing a Song as You Walk Along!"
Kayo didn't have a care in the world—or a chance—while he thought like he did then!
Well, just when I'm sitting pretty with Judy and everything is jake between me and the world, I get a terrible shock. I meet her on the stairs going to my room, and if she'd of looked any prettier she'd of fell in love with herself! The net effect on me I will leave in care of your imagination.
"How's your jaw, Gale?" she inquires tastefully.
"Perfect!" I says. "The last X-ray shows it's all healed and they's nothing to stop me now from going back into the ring and getting it broke again!"
Judy laughs—like the tinkle of little bells. Then she gets a bit serious. "I hate to think of you going back to the prize ring, Gale," she says. "That was terrible—getting your jaw broken. Why, you might be crippled for life at any time! When are you going to give up boxing? It—it would please me a lot if you would, Gale."
"Judy," I says, "to please you I'd dive off the top of Washington's Monument into a glass of water! You know that. But I got to say it with right hooks till I get a little bigger bank roll and a little better line on what I was born to panic the world at. I don't seem to know just what my trick is yet—I'm what you might call experimenting. I don't want to go back of the soda fountain again, that's a cinch! So I'm just looking around. Boxing is keeping me alive and paying for this synthetic education I'm getting, while I'm trying to find out the thing I do best."
But Judy seems to be peeved. "There are plenty of other things you could do besides boxing," she says slowly, after a minute. She's pulling a cute little handkerchief back and forth between the most beautiful little hands in captivity. "You have a good appearance, personality, and enough intelligence to overcome the—the few rough edges left from your premature contact with the world. I'm sure you would not have the slightest difficulty in getting a good position with a future, almost anywhere. Why—" she breaks off, with a short, nervous laugh—"why, even I have managed to get a job!"
Ain't it horrible that a girl like that has got to work?
"You did, eh?" I says, nothing but ears. "Where?"
Judy gets as red as red itself. She kind of turns her face away from me and I got a sudden premonition that they's a highly unpleasant surprise coming. I am 100 per cent right!
"I'm—I'm going to work in the office of Dempster & Co.," she says, trying to appear careless about it and flopping hard.
Well, you could of knocked me down with a wagon tongue! Going to work for Rags Dempster's old man and Rags himself is now working in the same office, learning the business. Honest, for a minute I'm fit to be tied!
Judy busts up the painful pause. "What's the matter, Gale, are you ill?" she says. But she well knows what's the matter!
"No," I says, "I'm sick. Why, Judy, you can't go to work for Rags Dempster's father!"
Up goes Judy's maddening eyebrows and you should of felt the chill in the air: "Oh!" she says. "I can't? Why not?"
"Because—because I—Judy, you know Rags is overboard over you, and him getting you that job is just a scheme of his to—to keep you near him!" I bust out. "As the matter and fact, I must give that dizzy stiff credit for a nifty play, but I ain't going to let him get away with it! Why he'll pester you to death, Judy, and"
"What on earth are you talking about?" butts in Judy, in well fained and a bit angry surprise. "Rags had nothing to do with my getting a position in his father's office. I applied there and was engaged by Mr. Young, the head clerk. As for Rags pestering me, well, Gale, I feel quite capable of taking care of myself under any and all circumstances. What right have you to question my actions?"
"In other words, what you do is none of my business, hey?" I says.
"You're not my brother, Gale," says Judy—and the thermometer slides down past zero.
"I don't doubt that," I says. "But I thought I was your boy friend. I guess women is all alike!"
"Indeed!" says Judy, a bonfire in each eye. "You seem to know a lot about women, Mister Gale."
Mister!
"I'm off women for life, Miss Willcox," I says in a dignified way. "I am convinced that the fellow which understands women can also understand what a couple of flies says to each other when they meet on a window-pane! You know Rags Dempster hates the ground I walk on, and yet you go to work with him in his father's office—like that was the only job in the United States of America. It looks like you are giving me a pushing around, Miss Willcox. O. K.—don't be surprised if you read in to-night's paper where I have left for—for Gehenna, or some distant country like that. You made me what I am to-day; I hope you're satisfied!"
With these few remarks, I turn on my rubber heel and march haughtily down the stairs into the great outdoors. I can be as hard as a rock when I want to. Beautiful women has no effect at all on a fellow of my type, and I made up my mind I would apologize to Judy and get squared up with her at supper that night no matter what concessions I have to make, up to and including my right eye!
I ain't taken three steps up the street when low and behold who do I run into but Rags Dempster. I start to pass him by, but he furnishes me with the surprise of my life by stopping me and holding out his hand with a smile.
"Let's—eh—bury the hatchet, Galen," he says, in that smooth, oily voice of his. "It seems rather silly for us to keep up this childish feud, now, doesn't it?"
I am busy thinking, will wonders never cease? I know there's a catch in it somewheres, but still and all I shake his damp, flabby hand because I'm always ready to meet anybody half-ways. I let go Rags's hand and he takes out a gold cigarette case, tapping a cigarette on it, while his smile grows into a wide satisfied grin. "Besides," he says, with a odd glance at me—"besides, the—eh—matter we fell out about is pretty well settled now."
I can feel the hair raising on the back of my neck! "What matter, Rags?" I says, looking him right in the eye—no small feat, as Rags's eyes is of a wandering variety.
"The matter of Judy—Miss Willcox," he says, lighting his cigarette and trying to carry the thing off as a mere nothing. "She's going to work in our office, you know, in my department, and—well, Miss Willcox and myself have known each other a long time, Gale, and I don't suppose my feelings regarding her are much of a secret to you. I thought I'd save you a lot of—eh—a lot of embarrassment, by telling you now that I expect to marry Miss Willcox this winter!"
I can feel I'm as pale as a quart of skim milk and I could of kick myself for not being able to stop my voice from trembling.
"Has Judy—are you and Judy engaged?" I stammer.
Rags's beady, gloating eyes tells me he's enjoying my misery to his full capacity. He takes plenty time to answer.
"We—e—ll, not exactly engaged," he drawls. "But"
"But, nothing, you big stiff!" I cut him off, and my voice ain't trembling now. I'm burnt up, for a fact! "If Judy ain't promised to wed you, where d'ye get that stuff about expecting to marry her this winter? The best thing you can do is to leave Judy alone, get me? If she ever tells me that you're trying to take advantage of the miracle that she's working for you, I'll slap you for a Chinese ash can!"
Thus endeth the first lesson.
That night, as they say in the movies, I nailed Judy after supper and apologized for the way I talked to her earlier in the day. She changes like the wild winds, she does for a fact. She ain't a bit sore, and she's the one which suggests sitting out in the hammock on the dark back porch to talk matters over. I think both my ears is liars when she asks me, but we go and sit there and after a while a idea hits me right in the head—a idea which to me is the snake's hips! It's no less than a way for Judy to turn down the job in the carpet factory office and still eat and what not.
"Judy," I says, "the only reason you're going to work for Rags Dempster's father is because you got to take a job somewheres, ain't it? I mean it ain't because you particularly like Rags or nothing like that—am I right?"
"I thought we settled all that this afternoon, Gale," says Judy, beginning to freeze. "I think we're letting this conversation grow too personal again. I am going to work for Dempster & Co. because it's right here in Drew City and I have been offered a very good salary—and why I'm allowing you to catechize me like this, I don't know!"
"It's a mystery to me too," I says pleasantly. "However, what I'm getting at is this, Judy. If you had a chance to take another job in Drew City at more wages, would you take it instead?"
"Rather!" smiles Judy.
"Then that Dempster & Co. job is out!" I says joyfully, "Judy, I now hereby offer you the position of my secretary at the salary of fifty bucks a week to commence, with a chance of advancement. No experience is necessary and"
But Judy has bust out laughing. "Oh, you funny boy!" she says, looking at me through dancing eyes. Then she gazes out into the night. "I wonder what I'll eventually do with you?" she remarks softly to the big oak opposite the house.
Now that's a funny crack, ain't it? What will she do with me? I'm trying to figure that one out, when she lays her beautiful hand on mine, which is only beautiful in a four-ounce glove.
"That's a splendid offer, Gale," she says, "and I'd be tempted to snap it up, only I know why you've made it to me. You don't need a secretary yet, though I know the day will come when you'll have half a dozen secretaries in your own big office. I often visualize you sitting at your desk, directing the destiny of some tremendous business, Gale—don't you yourself?"
"I don't know, Judy," I says. "I'd rather direct your dest—eh"
I'm getting in over my head, so I kind of trailed off!
"Yes, Gale?" says Judy, all attention.
But I'm afraid to gamble with her! I'll tell you why. If I ever lost Judy's friendship, I'd of cooked myself, as sure as you can get good and moist by falling into the ocean. I once read in a book about a couple like me and Judy which was the best of pals till the fellow hauls off one day and asks the girl to wed him. This spilled the beans, because the girl looks sad and shakes her head, saying, to the best of my knowledge: "Oh, Jack, how could you! Our lovely friendship is now broke up—we can never be the same again since you went to work and asked me that! Why couldn't we of remained just chums?" And the guy gets the air. So I held my tongue and played safe, turning the conversation to Rags.
"It looks to me, Judy," I says, "as if you're kidding me about what you really think of Rags Dempster. You turn down my offer of a job and take his and the best I can get is a laugh! D'ye know he's going around telling people he expects to marry you this winter?"
Judy's face is like fire. "Where did you hear that tidbit?" she asks.
"Rags told me himself," I says. "I told him if he bothered you when you went to work in his office, I'd knock him dead."
Judy jumps up out of her hammock. If she ain't mad, then she's a wonderful actoress. "I wish you and Rags would stop discussing me as though I were a—a town character!" she says, ninety below zero. "And I am not in need of a protector. You've made it very embarrassing for me by threatening Rags, and I'd be glad if you'd wait until I ask you before delivering ultimatums for me. I haven't the slightest intention of marrying Rags, or—or anyone, ever!"
And she flounces into the house.
If I got a dollar for every time I got in wrong, I'd have a Rockefeller gnashing his teeth inside of a given year!
Well, for the next few days me and Judy don't exchange half a dozen words, and she even takes to eating her meals either before or after me, so's we don't meet at the table. This kind of treatment steams me up to the point where I have almost decided to move from Mrs. Willcox's boarding house to a New York hotel, when Nate busts into my room one day and hollers he has finally signed me for a fight. The victim's name in round numbers is "Wild Bill" Killoran, which has broke down and confessed to being light heavyweight champion of the Pacific Coast. The quarrel is to be staged at the Eureka A. C. in New York, fifteen frames to a decision. I am to get five thousand bucks even—win, lose, draw, or what have you.
I will have to spot Wild Bill at least ten pounds, and from all accounts he's a sweet puncher and nobody's fool. Likewise, this will be my first battle in three months, so I start in training at once for William. Spence Brock is then a inmate of Princeton and his millionaire dad is still taking a interest in me. Both of 'em goes to nearly all my fights, and I have been up to the emperor's palace they call their home half a dozen times, talking over my future with Mr. Brock. I always left him with a little more stuff and a little more ambition than I had when I went up to see him. He is certainly one wonderful man and a billion ain't a dime too much for him!
Well, I am talking to Mr. Brock one day a little while after Judy has apparently broke off diplomatic relations with me, and during the course of the conversation I tell him I think I will leave Drew City flat on its back, as these small burgs cramps my style. Another thing, now that the sweetest girl in all the world has give me the air, why, I don't think they's enough opportunities in a trap like Drew City for a fellow of my speed. The way I checked up then, I felt it wasn't going to be no great length of time before I retired from the ring and tried my luck in some game which is less wearing on the features. I had $5,475 in the First National Bank, a $1,800 chumpy roadster, and I was getting around five thousand fish every time I crawled through the ropes. So I figure I belonged in a hick burg like Drew City the same way a submarine belongs to a bathtub.
But, to my great surprise, Mr. Brock is against me leaving Drew City to take my chances in New York. He tells me the rumor that opportunity knocks once on every man's door is a true one and a ambitious boy don't have to rush off to the city to make his fortune. He himself got his start in a small town, Irontown, Pa., where he's then president of the big locomotive works, after he'd starved trying to knock New York for a goal.
"The fallacy that success is to be found only in the big cities has sent many a promising young man home from them to his native village, beaten and discouraged," he says, chewing on a cigar which costs some heavy money but which for some reason he never lights.
"Some of them have then gone ahead to fame and fortune, proving, of course, that success is never a matter of environment, but of the man! Knut Hamsun, who a couple of years ago won the fifty-thousand-dollar Nobel Prize in literature, could rise no higher than a street-car conductor in Chicago. Lipton drove a horse car in New Orleans, Clemenceau started as a teacher in New York, Masefield was a bartender there. Yet all those men, giving up the struggle in the big cities, returned to their home towns and made their names known to the far corners of the earth! You can do the same, Galen. Never mind New York—the cities have broken far more men than they've ever made! Look about you here, where you have friends and an open, clean record of progress under the most adverse conditions. There's less competition in Drew City and when you discover your 'trick,' as you call it, you will find an interested and sympathetic audience. I, for one, am always ready to give you my attention and help!"
Well, after that I just chased New York right out of my mind, and I bet you would of too. With a man like that in my corner I'd be a dumbell indeed to leave Drew City without making a two-handed attempt to put myself over in it, now wouldn't I?
Well, the day I am to swap wallops with Wild Bill Killoran finally rolls around as days will and we break camp at noon, so's to be ready to leave Drew City on 85, the 4.06 p. m. local. As usual, Mr. Brock has a ringside box and he takes Spence and a party of friends from Wall Street with him, so I'm anxious to win this battle in jig time, as whenever I do, Mr. Brock beams around at his friends and acts like he had win the fight himself.
I'm all packed and ready to leave my room, when they comes a familiar knock on the door—a knock which makes me drop my suit-case and gets me tingling all over. I flang the door wide open and there's Judy, smiling at me like she did the first time I ever seen her nearly three years before, standing in the same spot. It's a funny thing, but although I see Judy nearly every day of my life I just can't get used to her pulse-quickening beauty and take her as a matter of course. Every time she comes near me I get a thrill, I do for a fact! So I just stand there and gape at her like a boob, and I guess my face must of been a show window for my feelings, because she gets a very becoming shade of red.
"I just wanted to wish you luck, Gale," she says. "You will be careful of your jaw, won't you? I—I'd rather have you lose than get hurt!"
"Thanks, Judy," I says. "It's sure fine of you to give me a—eh—to care what happens to me, and you coming up to say good-bye was all I needed to put me in perfect condition for this scuffle. I ain't going to lose, and I ain't going to get hurt either. I'll just go in there thinking of you and I'll put this Killoran out for so long that when he comes to his shoes won't fit him!"
Judy laughs, and then she gives me a look which starts my heart trying the difficult feat of leaping right out through my ribs. It looks like anything might happen, when this big stiff Nate Shapiro bawls up the stairs for me to snap into it or I'll miss the train. What do I care about missing a train, when they's a chance of me getting in right with Judy again? Say—I'd miss a whole railroad for one smile from this panic!
Well, like it says in the old pome, "'Twas a balmy summer's evening and a goodly crowd was there" when I crawl through the ropes at the Eureka A. C. with the intentions of knocking Mr. Wild Bill Killoran for a row of shanties. Kayo Kelly and "Two-Punch" Jackson is looking after me and I get a pretty fair hand from the mob as I sit down on my stool. I see Spence and his father in their box and we exchange hand waves and a little farther back I pick out Rags Dempster with some of his cronies. In this case stony stares is exchanged. Wild Bill Killoran is already in the ring, and from where I sit he looks like a tough egg, he does for a fact! The weights is announced as 162½ for me and 174 for my charming adversus. This draws some moans from the crowd, but a twelve-pound handicap means nothing in my young life. I figure I'll soon cut Wild Bill down to my size, and after that, a little lower.
Wild Bill starts right out after my goat when we get called to the middle of the ring for instructions. "Do I walk to my corner and wait for the count every time I knock this guy down?" he says to the referee.
"Be yourself, you big boloney!" I snarled. "The only thing you ever knocked down in your life is nickels when you was a street-car conductor. You'll go out of here to-night on a shutter!"
"Shut up!" says the referee to both of us. "Fight with your hands!"
Then the fun began.
Wild Bill shows where he got his name by charging out of his corner like a wounded lion at the bell. He was short with a terrific right swing, and when I duck under his left it whizzed by the panic-stricken referee's ear, only missing him by a scant inch and dumb luck! The crowd howls with joy. I leaped in with a hard left to the head and shot a stiffer right to the heart before Wild Bill knew what it was all about. He looked surprised and begin backing to the ropes, with me following, cautiously. "C'mon, fight!" I grin at him, and he answers with a murderous right hook to the body which shook me from head to toe and satisfied me that he was one sweet socker and not no bonbon eater by no means! I dove into a clinch, and, when the referee broke us, Nate yells for me to box and not slug. I nod my head and begin to left-hand Wild Bill all over the ring. Killoran couldn't cope with me at this, and in a minute he's tincanning from pillar to post, with me following him up and cutting him to ribbons. Following Nate's instructions, I clinched every time Wild Bill tried to mix matters up, and the bell found us in mid ring, with me pecking away at Wild Bill's crimson profile and Wild Bill punching holes in the air. I run to my corner with a broad smile on my face, a smile I had worn since the opening bell.
But the hard-boiled mob which had give up their jack to see assault and battery give me the royal raspberry for boxing Killoran instead of standing toe to toe and slugging with him. During the rest, some of 'em howled for me to take a chance, and I remarked to Nate that I'm going out in the second frame and see who can hit the hardest, me or Wild Bill.
"You'll do nothin' of the kind!" snaps Nate, sponging me off. "You do what I tell you, never mind the crowd—we're fightin' this baby, not them cheap squawkers out there! Keep makin' him miss and he'll soon tire. Box him. And lookit, take 'at grin off your pan! It don't mean nothin', and it'll get you a razzin' when this guy shakes you up and you forget to smile. They'll holler: 'Where's 'at smile now, Smith?' and it'll rattle you. You do the fightin' and let me do the laughin', get me?"
Killoran come out fast for the second round, but I kept beating him to the punch, stabbing him in the face with my left time after time and then crossing my right to wherever I see a opening. About a minute after the bell, I socked Killoran flush on the jaw with a short inside right and his knees buckled under him. The customers shriek for me to knock him for a row of silos, but he's hanging on to me with both arms like he's drowning. It took the referee quite a spell to tear Wild Bill away from me, and when he did let go his head come up and bumped mine, opening up a old cut over my right eye.
The referee warns him and the crowd hisses, but none of that stops the blood from that cut from blinding me on that side of my face. This butting business gets me red-headed and I tied into Killoran with everything I had in stock! I shot my left to his bobbing head five times without a return and then took a glancing right to the jaw to bury my own right in his stomach. Wild Bill stumbled away and crashed to the mat, face down. When they drop from a body punch they're hurt, and that's a fact! Remember that the next box fight you see. He managed to beat the count and was braced against the ropes, set for a trip to dreamland, when the bell rang.
The third round was the last and the best one of the fight, from the crowd's angle. Wild Bill was sent out to risk everything on landing a knockout punch, and I went in with the objects of stopping him with a couple of blows. The result was just a little more action, with less principals, than they was at the battle of Santiago! I closed Killoran's left eye with the first wallop, but took a vicious right to the mouth in return which loosened a couple of teeth and drew blood. Devoting my attention to Wild Bill's mid-section, I tossed in a right and left which made Bill say "How do you do?" and a right uppercut knocked him a long ways from normalcy. The average boy would of been through for the evening by this time, but Wild Bill was tougher than a life sentence in solitary confinement! He just shook his head and bored in, ripping both hands to my wind and pretty soon I'm as red between the neck and belt as if somebody had hit me with a bottle of catsup and it broke.
I shift my attack and begin taking shots at Killoran's jaw with my right. One of 'em got through his clumsy defense and he tottered back against the ropes, plainly in distress. He looks around to his corner for advice, and I didn't clout him when his head was turned, though Nate and the mob yelled for me to paste him and razzed me most heartily when I didn't. We boxed carefully for a few seconds, when suddenly Killoran whips over a long left which lands a good two inches below my belt. The crowd roars when I stagger back, biting my lips with the pain and pressing both gloves over the place where that foul punch landed. Oh, I was hurt bad and no mistake! I looked at the referee, and he hesitates a minute while the place is in a uproar and then he taps Wild Bill on the shoulder, warning him. A lot of good that done me and the babies which had bet on me!
I am in so much pain and so crazy mad that I can't see straight, but I rushed at Wild Bill with what might be called evil thoughts in my brain. I missed two rights, but connected with a left hook to the heart that spun Killoran around like a top. Seeing the shape I'm in, Wild Bill gets a new lease on life and stung me with two sizzling rights to the chin and a left uppercut that nearly tore my head off. Well, I can't really untrack myself till I'm hurt, as Mr. Killoran soon found out! I rushed him to the ropes and took all the fight out of him with a torrid right swing to the wind. He starts to back pedal and I dropped him to his knees with a one-two punch to the jaw. He waited for "nine" and then he got up, groggy. All I can hear around me is: "Knock him out, Smith! Knock the big stiff out!" and "Go on, kid, take him!"
I set myself to oblige the cash customers, when Killoran deliberately crashes his right below my belt again. This time the foul did the business! I got dizzy and awful sick at my stomach and kind of slid slowly to the floor, doubled over in a knot like a pretzel. The crowd has went crazy and lots of 'em are rushing for the ring, but they don't bother me because the pain has drove me crazier than they are! The next thing the referee is chasing Killoran to his corner and telling the maniacs out in front that I have win the fight on a foul. Then Nate and Kayo Kelly is bending down over me and somebody says: "Let the doctor pass through here, you guys!"
At this critical point I passed out for the time being.
When I come to I am in the dressing room with my handlers busy working over me. Nate is standing beside me with a serious look on his face.
"What did I do—get knocked?" I says, kind of dazed.
Nate grins and commences to tell me what happened, and though I'm still kind of goofy I gradually remember Killoran fouling me. The pain, which is coming back, is a great aid to my memory. Well, I am good and mad and don't think I ain't. I don't want to win no fights like that—I want to knock 'em dead or get knocked dead—no draws or referee's decisions, or newspaper verdicts means anything to me! Then who walks into the dressing room but Mr. Wild Bill Killoran, some sport writers, Rags Dempster, and Spence Brock.
"What's the idea?" snorts Nate, running to the door. "We ain't giving no party here!"
"Just wanted to see how badly your boy was hurt, that's all Nate," says one of the newspaper guys.
"Hurt?" sneers Wild Bill, shoving his ugly face up to me. "Where would he get hurt? He didn't like it, that what's the matter with him! He got away with murder, claimin' that foul. The punch that put him down landed on that glass jaw of his!"
"That's correct, gentlemen," butts in Rags Dempster to the reporters. "I saw the blow land!"
"You're a liar!" hollers Nate. "As for you, you big yellah hound—" he begins, turning to Wild Bill.
"I'll knock you stiff, too, if you open your mouth to me!" butts in Killoran, swinging around on Nate.
Well I'm boiling over, so I get up. "You won't knock nothing stiff!" I says to Wild Bill, "I had you steadied for a knockout when you deliberately fouled me, not once, but twice. I don't like to win fights that way. I like to win 'em this way!"
With that, I shot out my left and Killoran's head snapped back. The bunch yells and begins milling around us and Wild Bill caught me on the ear with his ungloved right first. But I knew where he couldn't take it, so I ripped both hands to his wind. He bent over and I measured him with another left which straightened him up and then crashed a terrible right to his chin. He floundered backward into the reporter for the "News," and when the reporter stepped quickly away, Wild Bill slid to the floor, dead to the world. So I got my knockout after all!
Nate found out later that Rags had dropped a thousand bucks on the fight, betting Wild Bill would stop me before the limit. I certainly was sorry to hear that. I wish he had dropped a million!
On the way back to Drew City, I get to thinking again about Judy going to work for Rags Dempster's old man. They must be some way to prevent that from coming to pass, I keep telling myself, and then all of a sudden I sit up straight in my seat. I got a idea again! Nate's stable was then composed of half a dozen leather pushers, including me, and when I wasn't fighting or studying I was doping out different ways of getting publicity for all of us. In fact, I cooked up several pieces which Nate managed to get on the sporting pages, making him think I was the turtle's wings as a press agent. There was also a whole lot of correspondence connected with matching us up for fights and Nate had been taking all his letters over to the Commercial House and having Mary Ballinger write 'em. Well, my idea was to have Nate open up a regular office in Drew City like all the big-time fight managers does in New York, put in a filing system, telephone, desks, and all this sort of thing and hire a girl, to viz., Judy, to take charge, answer mail and the etc.
At first Nate says not so good, because he loves to keep down expenses, but after a while when I says'll split Judy's salary with him, why, he gives in.
I don't say nothing at all to Judy till a week later, when we got our office in the First National Bank Building all set. Then I drive her over to see it. Well, she's just delighted, that's all, and right there's where I butt in with my offer of a job as stenographer extraordinary and secretary plenipotentiary. Judy begins to hedge and says am I sure we are doing enough business for all this outlay, and I says wait till she sees the mail we get every day and she'll think we're running a puzzle contest. Finally, after plenty argument, she agrees to come over with us, with the proviso that if they ain't enough work to give us a excuse to pay her fifty a week, she'll leave us flat. I ask her can I go with her to see Rags Dempster's face when she quits his office and tells him where she's going to work and she says absolutely no, but she laughs.
Well, the very first day Judy's on the job I get a tough break. She's waiting for the sacks of mail to come in so's she can answer it and earn her jack and all the letter man brings us is a bill for the office furniture. She shakes her head and starts for her hat, and the thought that she's going to quit after I have went to all this trouble to keep her under my wing nearly floors me. But I am a idea-getting fool! We're alone in the office and I called across the room to her:
"Just a moment, Miss Willcox! You was supposed to take dictation and the like here, was you not?"
She looks surprised at the tone of my voice and the "Miss Willcox," but she nods her head yes.
"O. K.," I says, very stern. "Kindly be so kind as to sit down at that typewriter. I got a important letter to get off and this has all the earmarks of a busy morning!"
With a kind of a puzzled look at me, Judy takes off her hat, sits down at the typewriter, takes up a pad and pencil and stares at me.
"All right," she says. "I'm ready!"
I cleared my throat. "Take this letter," I says. "To Whom It May Concern—Mr. Gale Galen, nee Six-Second Smith, future light heavyweight champion of the world and even more future business king, would like to announce that he is—is—eh—wildly in love with—with—a certain party by the name of—of—eh—just leave that space blank!"
"But—but I've already filled it in!" says Judy—and then she gets as red as a four-alarm fire and would of tore the paper up, but I snatched it out of her hand.
I'm spreading it out on the desk, when Judy's voice stops me. "Gale," she says, "do you want me to stay here?"
"I'll say so!" I says.
"Then tear that paper up without reading it—instantly!"
I had it tore before the last word left her beautiful mouth, Say, ain't girls funny? Why did she write in her name if she didn't want me to see it? While she was in the act of doing it, I seen her write down "Judy Willcox" on her pad, right after "I am wildly in love with a certain party by the name of—" I didn't study shorthand at that business school for nothing, or write Judy's name in that language eight hundred times without knowing what the shorthand marks is for it, when we made 'em up ourselves!