Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/348

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out losin' position, socked the other one stiff with a right uppercut that not even Kid Roberts would of had to apologize for. The chauffeur had come to life by this time and started the motor, and after I have distributed a few more clouts where they would do the most good and—eh—stopped a few myself, I managed to jump back into the car again and we shot away, and that's all there was to that.

Joan wiped my face off with her handerchief and made a heavy fuss over me for "rescuin'" her, as she put it, whereas, to be frank with you, the main thing I was thinkin' of when I went over the top of that auto was that under no circumstances did I want my comin' champ beat up!

Well, I couldn't get Kid Roberts to come away from New York and Dolores, although four times we split up for good as a result of arguments over his ideas of trainin' for a championship fight. The best he would do was some mechanical boxin' and weight pullin' a few hours a day. There was times when I didn't even see him for days, and that's the way the two months went by till the day of the battle with Knockout Pierce and the last appearance in the ring of Kid Roberts.

I had Joan's brother set for one of the preliminaries. He was to go six rounds with "Shifty" Mullen—a tough boy—and I demanded and got $500 for him, more money than Young Stillwell had ever seen before in his life. As she promised, Joan was there beside me at the ringside, white-faced and tremblin', braced to see a bloody slaughter. The absence of his usual reception from the bigger, noisier, and nastier