Fighting Blood (Witwer)/Round 9
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!" says Shakespeare to whom it may concern, and that's a remark which could of been written around me! As king of the light-heavyweight box fighters, I only wore a crown a brief while, still in that time I had some adventures which convinces me that kings, like the girl in the song, is more to be pitied than scorned.
The success I had in personally conducting that scuffle with Kid Christopher,—both financially and fisticuffily—sells me the idea that I'm the Indian's feathers as a fight promoter, and I can see no good reason why I shouldn't keep on developing my brains by planning and staging my own fights, instead of letting some outsider do it and walk away with the bulk of the gate. I take the cuffing, why shouldn't I take the doubloons, too? Is the way I looked at it. So my next step is to pester Gunner Slade, world's light-heavyweight champion, for a bout. His nightmarish demands for purses is still making the promoters laugh him off, so now I cable him a guarantee of one hundred thousand dollars, win, lose, or draw, if he'll come over and take his pasting like a gentleman and a scholar. This leaves the Gunner bankrupt of alibis and his manager peevishly shoots back a acceptance, collect.
Well, the first organized protest I bump into after lining up Gunner Slade is Judy. While Judy saw me reduce Kid Christopher to kindling, she also saw the Kid punch me from pillar to post and I took some cruel and unusual punishment before I snapped out of it and flattened him. As a result, Judy says there is nothing in the world could get her to see a prize fight again. We are sitting in our office when the cable from Gunner Slade's manager arrives, and while it fills me with joy it don't seem to thrill Judy no more than it would thrill a letter carrier to take a long walk on his day off. In fact, she seems sore about it.
"You promised me—and yourself—you would give up fighting when you became a champion," she says, plenty reproachful. "And here you are still planning matches. Doesn't your word mean anything, Gale?"
This makes me the bit uncomfortable. It certainly ain't my play to do anything which will make this wonderful girl off me. All I had then was her friendship, which wasn't one-tenth of what I'd like to of had. Still, should I ever of lost even that, why, I'd been a living ruin, no fooling! So I step over to her desk, trying to keep my mind on the matter at hand and not on what a beautiful object to look at she is!
"Judy," I says, "I did promise you I'd quit the ring and I promised myself, too! That ain't a promise so easy to keep, because, Judy—I like boxing! No matter if I have firmly resolved to get out of the game—a resolution I'm not going to break—I can't help getting a kick out of a fair and square two-handed fight—it must be in my blood!"
"Oh, Gale," sighs Judy, shaking her head. "I knew it—I felt it! The false glamor of that beastly profession has fascinated you—gripped you like some horrid drug!"
"Wait a minute, Judy," I cut in. "I'm going to keep my promise and check out of the ring, on that you can gamble. But I set a certain goal for myself in this man's game and I ain't reached it yet. Would you want me to be a quitter, Judy?"
"Gale," smiles Judy, "I cannot imagine the word 'quit' in connection with you—whether the cause be good or bad, once started you'll go through to the finish! But I do not follow your argument. You're champion now and what is there in anything higher than champion?"
"I'm only American champ, not champion of the world—and that's the mark I'm shooting at!" I says. "To write that title after my name I've got to stop Gunner Slade, and now that he's made up his mind to sail from dear old England, all I can say is that he's coming a long ways to get knocked stiff! Another thing, I'm promoting this fight myself, and look at the experience that will give me for future use in looking after business details. Didn't I show the civilized world I could do something else besides box by the way I put on my scrap with Kid Christopher?"
"Indeed you did, Gale, and made us all proud of you!" says Judy. "But that simply proves my contention that you would be equally successful in promoting some other bigger—and cleaner business."
"Judy," I says, "what business do I know anything about?"
That question's a horse from another race track and it slows her up for a instant. But then she's one more person which don't give up easy.
"Oh you'd find something, if you really tried," she says. "You didn't know anything about the boxing business until you went into it, did you?"
"No, I didn't," I admit. "But I was born with a little natural talent for it in the shape of shoulders and hands and the ability to take a cuffing without running crying to my parents. That wouldn't do me no good in the busy marts of trade, Judy—the first banker or merchant prince I smacked, for instance, would have me pinched. Let's let it go this way—if Gunner Slade puts me out I'll call it a day and step down from the ring right after that battle, because if I can't take this fellow I'll have no kick coming. I'll have had the big chance and failed to deliver. Unless I go broke promoting the fight, I'll have quite a few dimes left and I'll go into conference with you so we can pick a business for me to plung right into, letting the box-fight game run for the end book! But let me have this crack at the world's title, Judy. I've gone too far in the game to quit before I've had my try at the big prize. D'ye know I sit for almost a hour last night looking at Gunner Slade's picture in 'The Police Gazette'? I'm in a trance, no fooling! D'ye think it was the Gunner's battle-scarred face which hypnotized me? No! It was what it says under his picture—'Champion of the World!' Judy, with that as my signature I could die happy. Champion of the world at boxing, brick-laying, street digging, anything, but—champion!"
Judy just sits there staring at me with her lips parted, them heart-stimulating eyes the bit misty and a kind of far-away and long-ago expression in 'em. I gaze at her and do a piece of wishing which would make Aladdin's requests look like the lamp was wasted on him. I get a grip on myself quick, you can bet, because I'm afraid another minute of this pause and I'll be kissing her sure and she'll toss me right out of her sweet young life! I figure she's weakening on the boxing argument, however, so I change the subject with break—your-neck speed.
"Well, I'm certainly a sap for the ages, Judy," I says suddenly. "I got a real surprise for you and I come near walking out without saying a word about it! Speaking of going in business, as people will, me and Nate and Kayo Kelly has already took a flyer in something apart from the ring. Laugh that off!"
She comes back to Mother Earth with a start and claps her hands together, plenty excited. "Splendid!" she says. "What is it, Gale?"
"We've pooled fifty thousand cash between us," I explain. "And we're going to buy a lot here in Drew City. Right on top of that lot we're going to throw together a little small office building with a moving-picture theatre downstairs. That gives us a ace in the hole should anything happen to any one or all of us in the science we're in now. So, as a matter of fact, I'll be 50 per cent business man and 50 per cent box fighter, till the time comes when I'm 100 per cent business man and only go to a fight club as a witness."
"Which I hope will be soon!" says Judy, now all smiles again. "I certainly think it's wonderful that you've actually gone into-business, Gale, even if you're only going to devote part of your time to it. I'll wager you'll soon get so interested in making your new venture a success that you'll give up boxing without a qualm. This is the best news I've heard in many a day. Congratulations and the best of luck to you!"
"Much obliged, Judy," I says. "And now I wonder if you'd do me a favor?"
"I'll do anything for you that I can, Gale," she tells me. "You know that."
"Well," I says, "when we get our movie theatre all set, would you mind—eh—would you mind christening it for us for good luck?"
"Why, I'll be delighted!" she tells me—and looks it. "Let's think up a real attractive name—one that will be striking and descriptive of the theatre, too. Let's see, your theatre should be a delight to the eye, physically, and a delight to the soul, spiritually. Now I wonder just what name would describe that?"
"I got the name which fits that description like the skin fits a olive," I says. "We'll call the theatre 'The Judith'!"
Judy gasps and her face gets redder than a rose, only it looks much prettier.
"Oh, Gale," she stammers, "I—why—you can't call it that—You're joking—I"
"I ain't joking," I says, firmly, "and that's what we're going to call it. I don't see why you should holler about me naming my theatre after you, if you really like me as a friend—or maybe that's the bunk?"
"I do like you, Gale," says Judy, "but naming your theatre. The Judith would be too—obvious. Drew City is small and narrow in many ways, Gale, and people would misunderstand. There'd be talking that would embarrass both of us—linking our names, you know, and"
"If you think any talk linking our names would embarrass me, Judy," I butt in, "you're muchly mistaken. It would tickle me so silly, I'd put the gossips on my payroll! Say—if our names was only"
I see the crimson flooding her face again and there's a light in her eye which I don't know for sure is pleasure or rage. Not knowing for sure, I beat it.
Well, for the next three or four weeks I'm busier than a armless sailor furling a sail in a storm. Putting through the deal for our lot and arranging the details of my fight with Gunner Slade certainly keeps me from yawning myself to death and that's a fact. Then one day I'm passing the Dempster & Company carpet factory and I get the shock of my young life when I see Rags coming out of his father's office. As his old man had chased him out of town I was naturally the bit surprised to see him back in Drew City again.
"Hello, Galen," he calls out, like we was old pals, "How's Judy?"
I don't give him a tumble, but just keep on walking, though him merely mentioning Judy gets me red-headed. Still, Rags is determined to get a rise out of me. I guess he figured he was pretty safe on the main street in broad daylight, with pedestrians conspicuous by their presence. So he stands on the steps of the office and sneers.
"Afraid to answer, eh? That's right, you'd better keep your place. We'll see whether or not this town will stand for a drunken pugilist running a theatre here!"
Wam—I'm fit to be tied! I suppose I should of smacked him down then and there and be done with it, but you want to remember that fighting is my business and it ain't Rags's by no means. In other words, I can step and he can't so to my mind clouting him would be about as brave a stunt for me as removing a lolly-pop from a young infant. But I can't get over him being back in Drew City and I'm bothered about him knowing I'm going to open this theatre, so I walk away, wondering how in the Kansas City did he ever find that out? A few days later I got the dope on that part of it and it hit me like a smack on the chin!
During the week I hear that Rags's old man has gave him another chance and took him back to work in the office of his carpet factory. Immediately, his old gang forgives and forgets, too, because you know yourself a million dollars will get attention anywheres no matter where you roam and a million is what Rags's father is supposed to have. I seen Rags a couple of times more and once he actually tries to make "friends" with me. You know what I told him. He also calls Judy up either eighteen or twenty-seven times, but I'm glad to state that Rags could of got the wrong number as far as he was concerned.
Well, with Rags bounding around in Drew City I know it won't be long before he'll start after my scalp again—and it wasn't long! His first number was to ruin me at the Drew City Country Club, where I had the chance of a lifetime to step out with the class of the town, assisted by Spence Brock. That's a thing I was crazy to do, as the farther away I could get from the atmosphere of the prize ring when I wasn't actually in it and the higher I could climb on the social ladder in Drew City, the more chance I had of rubbing off the rough edges which I knew would have to be rubbed off if I was going to get anywheres. Anyways, Spence had been after me for a long while to come out to the country club with him and try my hand at this golf thing. I'd been putting the event off, because I always thought that in order to properly appreciate the mysteries of cross-country billiards you had to be sixty, a bank president, bald-headed, fat, and a little bit goofy.
However, I would do anything for Spence, so one day we gaily set forth for the courts, or links, or gridiron, or whatever it is you smack them little white pills around on. When we get out to the country club right off the reel we run into Rags. He's out on what you call the first tea, practicing shots. The minute he sees me, he ties in.
"What's the big idea?" he says to Spence, pointing to me with his club like I'm something the cat dragged in. I commence to get steamed myself.
"The idea is that Galen and myself are about to play a round of golf," says Spence coldly. "Any objections?"
Rags gives a whinny of rage. "I should say I have an objection!" he snaps, his piggy little eyes glaring at me, though he speaks to Spence. "I shall see that the house committee is immediately notified of this fellow's presence here. This is a gentleman's club, not a training camp for prize fighters!"
Before Spence can play a card. I climbed into the breech.
"Be yourself, you false alarm!" I says, stepping over to Rags and returning his glare with usurious interest. "Just because I been letting you push me around all this time without giving you a smacking, don't get the idea that things is going on this way forever. Some day I will take a wallop at you and everything I owe you for all you've ever did to me will be in that one punch!"
"And—eh—he's light-heavyweight champion, Rags," remarks Spence, with a grin.
Rags looks thoughtful indeed and moves away, growling under his breath like all hounds does.
Well, me and Spence ties into this golf. Spence puts his ball on the tea, takes a couple of practice swings, and then—blam! He hits what would of been at least one home run in any ball park in the world. I'm up next. I don't want to show off or nothing like that, but as I step up to the tea I can't help thinking to myself that what I'll do to this little pock-marked apple will be murderous. I took aim at a tree about a mile away, set myself, and—flooey. I don't even get a foul! Once again I try my luck and miss from here to Madrid. Spence laughs. Different here! Well, to make a long game short, on the eighth swing I finally connected with everything I got and the ball rolled about four feet from the tea. Then I got interested!
A half hour later I am playing this game like not only my life, but the future of the world depended on each stroke. And, listen—golf is considerable pastime, don't think it ain't. Anybody which calls it a old man's game is dizzy! It's a wow of a sport and wonderful as a training stunt for a boxer. Besides great exercise, if you put your heart and soul in it you'll get back cool-headedness, patience, steady nerves, and determination, just what you need to get to the top in the fight game—or in any game, for that matter!
When we come to what they call the fourth hole I have run up the praiseworthy score of twenty-five strokes for the first three, while the best Spence can do is fourteen strokes and he's been playing the game for years. However, I'm first to bat at cavity number four and by dumb luck I cracked the pill on the nose with my first swing. As I look up to see have I hit safe or not, I notice Rags down near the flag watching me. I ain't bothered about Rags, though, I'm thinking what a swell time I'm going to have capering around this course every day, mixing with the blue bloods of Drew City and calling millionaires by nicknames. I'm even going to buy the golfing uniform and a container full of clubs and some caddies to put the tea in. Oh, I'm in right, what I mean, when out of the clear sky Rags winds up my happy little dream.
The ball I hit sails through the air at a bad angle and heads for the State road which runs past the course. There's a swell limousine buzzing along the road and me and Spence holds our breath for fear my ball will hit it. Rags is watching it, too. But my ball drops in a bunker hill this side of the road and I'm just letting go a sigh of honest relief when I see Rags stoop down, pick something up off the ground at his feet and pitch it at that limousine, breaking one of the windows! Then he takes it on the run as the car grinds to a stop.
I come running up to the road for my ball with my club in my hand and I'm looking for the pellet when the bozo from the limousine reaches me. He's fat and bald-headed and his face is as red as a throwing tomato. Honest, he's so mad he ain't fit to be at large! He's got a golf ball in his hand and he holds it up, waving it at the broken window of his limousine. The next point of interest he shows me with his quivering finger is a lump as big as Manhattan on the side of his noble forehead. I bet if he'd had a gun he'd of cooked me sure!
This is a situation which calls for some fast and spellbinding talking, yet what mind I got with me is occupied in realizing what Rags has just did and awarding him the china sledge hammer for brain work. This baby seen me hit that ball of the course and he immediately hurls his own ball through the limousine window, thus making it look like I drove it through! And now here I am with my club in my hand looking for the ball and nobody else in sight. Rags has gone away from there and Spence is far back at the tea, not knowing what it's all about.
Well, I'd have to be more of a dumbell than I am not to see at a glance that the real story of this accident would sound so silly to the enraged victim that he'd probably take my club away from me and brain me! I wouldn't even believe my own story myself. I'm covered from head to foot with circumstantial evidence and that's all there is to it. So without mentioning Rags at all I merely commence to stutter a apology, when the old jazzbo shuts me off kind of angrily. Then comes the toughest blow of all. This guy is chairman of the house committee, and when he finds out I ain't even a member of the country club he rules me off his golf court for life. In fact, he says if he ever catches me scampering around the greens again he'll have me hung for trespassing!
I think if I had come across Rags when me and Spence is wending our ways home from the country club that day I would of made him the plot of a coroner's inquest and that's a fact! I even took a long cut home so's not to run into him, as a murder wouldn't fit into my program right then by no means. But after I have talked to Nate Shapiro that night I wanted to go out looking for Rags and I ain't even got one qualm left about manslaughter.
My two business partners, Nate and Knockout Kelly, is sitting gloomily in the parlor when I come in. "Ah, the master mind has arrived!" says Nate, sarcastically. "Well, I got one for you to try on your piano—the deal for the lot has fell through and our movie theatre is canceled!"
"Laugh that off!" adds Kayo Kelly.
"Boys," I says, "I am in no mood for horseplay—get me? I have just got a tough break and if you start a kidding bee with me I'll lay you both like a carpet!"
"You think you just got a tough break," says Nate grimly. "But you're mistaken. We got the tough break right here for you. Listen—I go up to 'at real-estate agent with the jack to take over our lot to-day and they's nothin' stirrin'! No can do. Somebody's put in a rap for us and the owner ain't goin' through with the sale!"
"Why?" I asks, mystified to death.
"'At's what I asked the agent," says Nate. "And this tomato tells me the owner didn't know he was doin' business with a combination of box fighters, and now that he does, why, he don't think me and you and Kayo here should be encouraged to stay in Drew City, much less open a business in this slab. Can you tie that?"
"I went right up in flames!" says Knockout Kelly. And I can imagine he did.
"Well, Kayo," I says, "I hope you kept your head and didn't begin swearing and cursing in that agent's office, because that's just the thing would make it harder for me to straighten this out. We don't want 'em to think we're rough and tough, even if we are boxers. A gentlemanly answer would of probably swung the tide in our favor."
"Everything's O. K. then," grins Kayo. "I didn't do a particle of swearin' or cussin'—by a odd coincidence, I simply stepped in and knocked that wisecrackin' agent for a horse radish!"
I just throwed up my hands and sunk in a chair. "Who is this owner?" I says finally. "Maybe I can make him see things in a different light."
"Sure!" sneers Nate. "And maybe Niagara Falls is composed of lemonade. The owner is Rags Dempster's old man!"
Hot tamale!
Well, we were up against a serious proposition and no mistake. Not having the faintest of faint ideas that there would be any trouble about the lot since we already had a option on it, we have went ahead with builders, architects, decorators, contractors, and the etc., and you know all that costs important money. If the deal for this lot fell through then, why, we stood to lose a fortune!
But this is one time I made Mr. Rags Dempster like it! I didn't bother going to his father. I knew that would be the same as appealing to the sense of fair play in a famished lion outside a sheep corral. I went right straight to my guardian angel, Mr. John T. Brock, and the best street in the burg ain't called "Brock Avenue" for nothing! By the time I got done telling Mr. Brock what's what he's as burnt up as I am. By way of the phone he calls a special meeting of the chamber of commerce for the next morning. He's just president of it, that's all. Then he pats me on the back, tells me if I let Gunner Slade stay six rounds he'll be ashamed of me, and says to show up at the chamber of commerce the following morning with my two partners and the money for the lot.
Well, the chamber of commerce meeting was a movie. Besides a lot of influential citizens which I have only a nodding acquaintance with and the nodding is all on my part, there was Lem Garfield, Judge Tuckerman, and Ajariah Stubbs, all with me to the limit in anything at that time. The rest of the heavy business men frowns at me and my partners, but they regard Mr. Brock like he was President Harding. All except old man Dempster, which hurls us a angry glare to split among us.
Mr. Brock wastes no time on preliminaries, but gets right down to business when the meeting is called to order.
"What's all this nonsense I heard about driving this young man out of town?" he bellers in his bull elephant's voice, looking straight at old man Dempster. "A detriment to Drew City, is he? Why, you fools, Gale Galen is the biggest thing this town has ever produced! He's put Drew City on the map and if you meddling idiots will let him alone he'll keep it there. Do you know who he is? A prize fighter, I suppose some doddering imbecile will say. Well, he's not just a prize fighter, any more than U. S. Grant was just a general! He's American light-heavyweight champion and I'll wager anything from one penny to one million he'll soon be champion of the world. Do you know what that means? It means columns and columns of priceless publicity for Drew City. Every time his name is printed in a newspaper in the United States, Drew City is mentioned beside it. People who never heard of our town and never would hear of it unless it was destroyed by an earthquake, now know that Drew City is the home of a champion and everybody is interested in a champion of anything!"
"But—" begins old man Dempster.
"Silence!" yells about a dozen voices.
"Not only that," goes on Mr. Brock—"not only that, this boy has set an example during his residence here that should be held up as a model for the youth of this town! Honest, ambitious, courageous, intelligent, and clean living, fighting for an education denied him through poverty. He came here penniless, unknown, an object of suspicion. Look at him now! Why, he could buy and sell half of you hypocrites in this room! If he wants to go into business here, he should be encouraged and assisted, and if this young man is refused the deed to a certain lot I understand he holds an option on and is now ready to purchase as a site for his proposed enterprise, I will resign from this board right now!" He bangs on the desk and glares around the room. "Well, come on, I'm ready to hear arguments!" he bellers.
Well, there was plenty arguments—but they're all in my favor. Them babies don't wish none of Mr. Brock's game, that's a cinch! Inside half a hour old man Dempster has sold us his lot without further ado.
The building of our movie theatre proceeds with the greatest of speed and a couple of months later Gunner Slade arrives in America, so I got to go in training for him. The sport writers look Mr. Slade over and then go back to their papers and open up with their typewriters on him. He looks big and husky, they say, but then so does a plate of corned beef and cabbage and they think in justice to the American fight fans he should give them a line on his wares before going up against the best fighter of his class in the country. The Gunner and his manager stalls and stalls, but finally they got to talk turkey. So they take on Battling Hicks over in Jersey City to give the fans a drummer's sample of what they got in stock. I went over with Nate and Knockout Kelly for a eyeful myself.
Battling Hicks was a tough boy in his day, but his day was all over. While he was still a fairly clever boxer, he couldn't punch his way out of a paper bag. I stopped him myself some time ago with a couple of smacks on the chin. He was scared stiff by the Gunner's rep and it turned out to be the sorriest kind of a set-up, only lasting two frames because Gunner Slade was nervous and wild. I came away from that fight more than ever convinced that I held the light-heavyweight championship of the world in my right-hand glove!
Well, the hard-boiled sport writers failed to wax hysterical over Gunner Slade's showing, in spite of the fact that he stopped his man in two rounds. They commence to predict that I'll murder him, till I could of murdered them for what they're doing to the gate receipts of my coming brawl with the Englishman. I guess the Gunner must be quite a newspaper reader, because after seeing what the reporters thought of him he demands more time to get in better shape for me and there's nothing for me to do but give him what he wants. So in that way the time goes by till finally our three-story building is built and the movie theatre on the ground floor is solemnly christened the "Judith" by Judy herself. Her objections vanished like magic when she seen what a cute little trap it was.
Then me, Judy, Spence, Nate, and Kayo Kelly hold a conference for the purposes of doping out some stunt which will open our theatre with a bang. Everybody is called upon to trot out a publicity scheme—a trick which will pack the customers in on the opening night. Knockout Kelly coughs and says he has a wow of a idea and there's no use looking no further for something which will jam the place to the mortgage. I give Kayo permission to take the floor and expose his scheme and Kayo says its very simple—just make Mary Ballinger cashier of the theatre and then try to keep the mob away from the box office!
When the laugh has died away the motion is voted on and Mary gets the job. She's a swell looker at that, and thinks Kayo, which is not no swell looker but is certainly a handsome puncher, is a better man than even Gunga Din. But merely putting Mary in the box office as a decoy ain't just what we're after, so I order more thinking and finally it was no less than me which gets the fatal idea. That is, to open our theatre with a little amateur playlet, put on by local talent. That's sure to bring in at least the friends and relatives of the young actors, and if we give 'em a good show we'll make 'em permanent customers and boosters.
Judy and Spence thinks my idea is the peacock's knuckles, and even them two ten-minute eggs, Nate and Kayo, gives grudging approval. I leave the details to Spence and Judy, as I have got to ready up for my own little playlet with Gunner Slade in which I hope to play the leading part and I need plenty rehearsals for that drama myself!
Well, when Spence pulls the amateur theatrical thing on his girl and boy friends they go double cuckoo over it and there's so many applications that we could of put on Custer's Last Stand and had sixteen more principals than there was in the battle itself. Strangely enough, all the boys want to play the hero and all the girls is strongly in favor of playing the heroine and when I see the trouble Spence and Judy is having trying to keep old friendships and still put the play on, why, I'm glad I'm merely a silent partner in the production. Spence solves the difficulty by sending to New York for a professional director which plays no favorites but picks out for the parts the ones he thinks best suited for 'em and advises the others to buy tickets.
If I had a dollar for every time I have wished I never thought of opening my theatre with a amateur show, there's no sixty banks in the world would be big enough to hold my jack. Battling Luck delivered three punches at me as the net result of that play which cost me a young fortune and come mighty near costing me Judy, the world's championship, and my life!
Punch number one is when the director picks out Rags and Judy for the leading parts in the play. That floored me, but I got up. Punch number two is when Judy comes into dinner from rehearsal one night, all excited and acting like she's just got word that a rich uncle died and left her everything but Baffin's Bay. I ask her what seems to be the trouble, and after stalling a bit she finally says the director has told her she's a born actress and is throwing herself away by staying in Drew City. What she should do, this parsnip tells her, is to go to New York, where he's satisfied her talent will get her attention. I leave it to you what this done to me!"
"The big stiff!" I says. "I suppose he likewise asked you could he call on you some night and give you more details about going on the stage in New York, hey? I'll go around there and slap him silly!"
"You'll do nothing of the sort!" says Judy, flaring right up. "Mr. De Haven is a perfect gentleman and I think it's wonderful he should take such an interest in me!"
"Ain't we got fun?" I says, fit to bite nails. "What did you tell him when he invited you to bust into the show business?"
"Don't cross-examine me, Gale," says Judy. "I said I would think it over. I certainly don't intend to be a stenographer all my life!"
"I don't expect you to be one all your life, either, Judy." I says. "But please don't go on the stage. That would just about murder me, no fooling! Why, the mere thought of you being a actress is"
"Just a moment!" Judy butts in, giving me a odd look. "Do you think it any worse for me to become an actress than it is for you to be a pugilist? I don't!"
I'm against the ropes for a fact and before I get a chance to box my ways out, in comes Mrs. Willcox to tell Judy Mr. De Haven would like to speak to her on the phone. Wam! That adds the finishing touch and I bust out of the house without no dinner or nothing. What a fine break I got all of a sudden! Rags Dempster playing the hero to Judy's heroine in a play I'm paying for, and the director, whose salary I'm also putting up, is stuck on Judy, too. If I had run into both of them birds when I left the house that night there would of been two of the niftiest killings you ever seen in your life!
Now for punch number three, the one which goaled me. The night our theatre opens you couldn't of got inside after seven-thirty p. m. if you had been a thin fly. In fact, me and Nate and Kayo Kelly has got to stand up in the back, as they seems to be two people in each seat. We hire Eddie Granger's Vesper A. brass band, paying them famine prices, but they was worth it, because while Eddie is no Sousa they sure did horn a mean overture! Then up goes the curtain and the drama is on.
Well, everything moved along smoothly, though some of these synthetic actors is a little nervous at being right up there on the stage for all the world to look at. But they are going over big with their parents, anyways, which is there in evening clothes and keeps constantly nudging each other with pride and the etc. Judy never looked better and I guess that director was right, for, honest, she made the rest of 'em look like so many clowns. Rags is in his glory, strutting around like he's the Duke of Diphtheria or something, on the account he's playing the hero of this frolic. Two or three times when he catches my eye he sneers out over the footlights like it was part of the play. This is gradually getting me rosy, but when he has to put his arms around Judy in one of the scenes you could hear my teeth grit in far-off Siberia!
Then some devil must of got into Rags's brain, where they is already a congress of demons. He glances over his shoulder at me and deliberately prolongs this part where he's got his arms around Judy, bending over to kiss her. Judy looks surprised and then frightened and starts backing away across the stage with Rags after her. Everybody else seems to think this is in the play, but somehow I don't! At this critical point, Mary Ballinger, which is standing next to Kayo Kelly, whispers:
"Rags must be crazy! I saw all the rehearsals and that's never in the play. Look how scared Judy is!"
That's ample for me and I am starting up to the stage, when Judy backs into a table on which there is a lamp. Rags makes a grab for her and over goes table and lamp with a crash.
Then the panic is on!
The flimsy draperies went up like celluloid, and before I have battled my ways half the distance to the footlights through the yelling, stampeding mob, the stage is a roaring furnace. Nate grabs wildly at my coat to hold me back, but I shook him off. I also shook off a couple of gents which has went fear-crazy and wants to climb through the roof, using a couple of women for ladders. Short right and left hooks discouraged them babies and in another minute I am on the stage with Judy. She's trying to drag out some girl which has fainted away in a swoon.
Rags Dempster, the hero of the play, has disappeared and so has all the other brave actors. I got Judy outside and I got to snatch her up and carry her out bodily, because she refuses to leave the young lady which is peacefully sleeping on the floor. I went back and got the fainting beauty and also Mrs. Willcox and then I just took 'em as they come, this time with the kind assistance of Knockout Kelly, Nate, Lem Garfield, and a couple of other guys which figured what's a few burns between friends? After a while Engine Company No. 6 arrived, and as long as they was there they figured they might as well put out the fire, so that's what they done.
Our brand-new stage, movie screen, curtains, and all this sort of thing was simply burned out of existence—quite some financial loss and don't think it wasn't! But the toughest break of all for me was the place I got burned. Just imagine what would happen to Katherine MacDonald if her face got burned, or John McCormack if his throat got burned, and you'll get the idea of what it means when I tell you I got badly burned on the things which is my fortune—my hands! They're just a puffed mass of raw blisters and in less than three weeks I got to step into the ring with Gunner Slade and fight for a world's championship.
Well, we manage to keep the thing out of the New York papers, which is one place I don't want it, or there will be nobody show up to see a fight in which one guy is going into the ring with his hands all shot to pieces. Nate fells out the Gunner's pilot on a postponement without letting him know why we'd like one, but there's no chance. For some reason or other Gunner Slade has a longing to return to merry England and he says if the fight don't come off as scheduled he'll beat it back, taking with him my ten-thousand-dollar appearance forfeit. I've had about all the losses I can take, so over Nate's frantic protests I decide to go through with the battle on the advertised date.
One look at the crowd as I climb through the ropes on the night of the quarrel is enough to convince me I'm going deeper into the hole by promoting this International carnival of assault and battery. When I pay Gunner Slade his hundred thousand guarantee and look after the other expenses, about all I'll get for my end will be a punch in the nose. The big gaps of empty seats here and there is the answer to the sport writers' stories that Gunner Slade will be a spread for me. If them babies only knew the shape my hands was in as I sit in my corner waiting for the opening bell, why, they wouldn't of been yawning and looking around and acting like they wished they was somewheres else! And if Gunner Slade only knew that Nate had to lance the blisters to tape my hands—well, can you imagine how happy that guy would of felt?
I'll pass over the pain I suffered every time I tried to close the gloves on my raw hands and the pain I suffered every time I looked at them empty seats and realized what they meant to my bankroll. It seems to me then that just about the time I started to get somewheres, I always get floored for the count and I'm gloomily wondering am I one of these birds which is born to run second? Well, I chase them thoughts out of my mind. After all, the money's a small thing. I can always get more—anybody can. What I devote my tumbling thoughts to is that no matter what I've lost, I've still got the opportunity of my life in front of me—a chance to become champion of the world at my trick. All I got to do is to knock this glowering English scrapper kicking. Sounds easy, but believe me, it was quite a stunt!
We both stepped out smartly at the bell and I led first to get it over with. My glove socked against Gunner Slade's nose and I nearly fainted with the pain which shot up my arm to the shoulder. It wasn't a stiff punch, either, just a mild left lead, but it was enough to show me that nothing but a miracle could make me knock the Gunner cold with the hands I got with me that night. I then begin to box very cautious, and, the mob which expected to see me sail into Slade and send 'em home early, gets highly indignant and razzes me to a fare-thee-well. The Gunner takes heart from my pacifist tactics and gets down to business himself. He drove me half-ways across the ring with a wicked right to the head which didn't do me a bit of good and when I merely crouched, covered up, and commenced to take it, the crowd goes wild. "Fight, you big stiff!" and "Fake! Fake! Fake!" is just a sample of the choice remarks which greets me on all sides. The least said about the opening frame, the better. I didn't take two punches at Gunner Slade and it must of been fearful to look at!
Round two was a duplicate of the first inning. Gunner Slade made a punching bag out of me, and the customers called me names which will never make me stuck on myself. Toward the end of the round the ringside comment got under my skin and I come out of my shell long enough to crash the surprised Gunner against the ropes with a right and left to the jaw. How them two socks felt to Mr. Slade I don't know, but I do know that the pain from that pair of punches with my burned hands brought the water in streams from my eyes and give me a feeling in the pit of my stomach like when you go down in a fast elevator. I immediately went back on the defensive again, unable to follow up my advantage and finish him. The crowd had leaped on the seats when I opened up, now they sank back with groans and hisses. When I run to my corner at the bell I got the same kind of a reception that puss gives Rover.
Gunner Slade come out for the third round with a rush and sent me back on my heels with a poisonous straight left. He then hooked the same glove to my heart and whoever says them English scrappers can't hit is liars. This baby had a kick like two healthy mules! The mob roars when a right and left uppercut bends my knees and the Gunner commences to swing 'em from the floor, thinking it's all over.
The boys which has laid four and five to one on me to win by a knockout is screaming madly for me to take at least one punch at the Gunner and not act like a sheep in a slaughter house. I'm all at sea from the punishment I'm taking and the razzing, and in dancing away from one of Slade's wild haymakers I slipped to the canvas on my back, hitting my head with enough force to daze me for a second. The attendance thinks I been knocked stiff and you should of heard 'em. Like the steady roar of a record rain on a tin roof! I took "seven" and got up groggy. Nate yells for me to clinch, but the Gunner beat me to it with a terrible right swing to the pit of the stomach which drops me on my haunches for a clean knockdown. I am a very sick young man when the blessed gong stopped hostilities for that round.
Nate is like a wild man as he drenches me with the water bucket. He rushes over to the referee and begins a argument about Gunner Slade's gloves, demanding that they be examined. Nate knows that their ain't a thing in the world the matter with the Englishman's gloves: what he wants to do is give me a few extra seconds to come back to life. I needed a few years, not a few seconds! This Gunner Slade has cuffed and smacked me till I don't know what it's all about. While the referee and Kayo Kelly is examining the smiling Gunner's gloves, Nate slips back to me and begins to unlace my right glove with feverish haste. Before I can stop him, he pulls a hypodermic syringe from his pocket and jabs the needle a mile in the side of my throbbing hand.
"Listen!" he pants in my ear. "'At's cocaine, get me? It'll start to work in a minute and if they cut your arm off you wouldn't feel a thing! Go out there now and swap wallops with this big tramp. I don't think he can take it and if he could hit he'd of stopped you long ago, because he's already slapped you with everything but the bell. Go on now, kid, do your stuff!"
As the gong rung, Nate turns and hands the hypodermic syringe down to a newspaper man which has been watching all this with the greatest of surprise.
Well, I'm a new man when I jump off my stool for the fourth round. With my hand cocained, I figure I'm free to tie into the Gunner and that's what I done! I ducked his straight left and sunk my right under his heart with everything I got behind it and you never seen such a painfully astonished guy in your life. I think that one punch licked Gunner Slade, because his return, skidding off my ear, felt to me like the cuff of a playful kitten. Another torrid right down below opened him up, and while the crowd is still going nutty over the remarkable change which has suddenly come over me, I hooked him flush on the jaw with the same glove. He staggered back against the ropes, floundering around like a drunken man. His seconds shrieked for him to dive into a clinch and I grinned at 'em over my shoulder, measured Slade with a light left and then shot my right at his bobbing jaw. He went down like a German mark and down is where he stayed!
The Gunner's manager and handlers swarm into my corner, yelling something it's hard to hear over the continual roar of the crowd. We finally find out that one of Gunner Slade's seconds seen Nate give me the hypodermic and they're claiming the fight on a foul. Nate bends down and gets back the syringe from the newspaper guy he give it to. Then he hands it to a doctor which has been boosted into the ring.
"'At's plain warm water in that hypo," says Nate carelessly to the interested reporters. "Nothin' else! The doc will tell you as soon as he tests it. If I want to give my man water between rounds, I can do it. I knew if my battler thought he was gettin' cocaine which would soon stop the pain, he'd sail into this Englishman and drop him. 'At's what he done! I kidded him out of 'at pain, I didn't dope him. I keep my eyes open. I see 'em do that same trick once with a hophead. They tell him he's gettin' morphine and he got water, but it works O. K. on this guy for a couple of minutes. I thought they'd be no harm in tryin' the same gag here—'at's all!"
Kayo Kelly has got my gloves off and Nate holds my hands up. They look like a couple of overripe tomatoes and if you don't think they're painful—just burn your hands once!
"Good Heavens, look at his hands!" gasps the sport writer from the "Sphere." "And he knocked Slade out with 'em!" he almost whispers.
"He got 'at in a fire; I'll give you the dope as soon as the doc here fixes up them hands," says Nate. Then he bends over me. They must hurt like hell, don't they, kid?" he says anxiously.
What do I care if they hurt or not? I'm light-heavyweight champion of the world!