Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/123

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to get chesty about, then neither was Napoleon's! Also, we'd gathered together numerous shekels and our guarantees now run from $3,000 to $7,000 a fight, accordin' to where it was and with which. Seven thousand berries is interestin' money even to Charley Schwab, and I was satisfied to leave well enough alone and go right back over the trail bouncin' them same babies once more for auld lang sang and, of course, the pennies. But, brother, it was all different with my food card, Kid Roberts. That boy was as full of ambition as Pancho Villa and he wanted the champion now or nobody! He still hated the box-fight game from pit to dome and had swore on several phone books that the minute he win the title and copped one large, juicy purse, he'd leave the ring flat on its back and go in some business. A business, for the example, where, if anybody kept wavin' a dirty towel up and down in front of him, he would at the least have the pleasure of throwin' him out of his office, instead of havin' to sit on a backless stool and like it, as he did now!

How the soever, the champ turned a bevy of deaf ears to our frenzied demands for a crack at his crown and we might as well of tried to pick a fight with a nervous rabbit. In the two years he'd held the title, this cuckoo had fought exactly 901 guys—one set-up which lasted four rounds and 900 movie supers which lasted four reels. He was out on the goldiest gold coast of America, or, to get technical, Los Angeles, Calipickford, makin' a picture labeled "Up from the Gutter and Half Ways Back" or "From Dockhand to Champion!" The screen slave drivers