Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/312

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stuck around and watched the Kid work out with Dynamite Jackson and a couple other handlers, shook their heads, breezed back to New York, and predicted a new heavyweight champion when Kid Roberts and Jack Enright went to the post. The Kid was slow, fat, and wind-broke. Enright, in wonderful condition, was murderin' his sparrin' partners, etc., and so forth.

I don't know nothin' about how Enright was. I never visit no rival camps before a fight, but I do know that Kid Roberts was far from the young man which win the world's heavyweight championship in three rounds, just one year before! For the first time since I'd been his pilot I couldn't do nothin' with him. He went to bed and got up when he felt like it, eat what he wanted, clowned his gym workouts, and did his road work in a automobile. To all of my threats and pleadin's he answered that he wasn't goin' through no weary trainin' grind for a scrap which wouldn't last over a couple of rounds.

About a week before the quarrel I suddenly got word from no less than Dolores Brewster that she's got to see me at once on a matter of life and death connected with the fight. Also, I am not to let the Kid know about her message.

The most beautiful representative of the adjoinin' sex that I, you, or anybody else ever seen is much excited. The first thing she wants to know is whether or not the Kid is still goin' to bet his end of the purse that he'll flatten Enright in six rounds. "When does he get this money?" she wants to know.

"I collect it," I says, "three days before we step into the ring.