The Leather Pushers (1921, G. P. Putnam's Sons)/Round 2
The ability to take a unmerciful beatin' has made many a box fighter famous which had absolutely nothin' else to recommend him. Ring records all the ways down from the time Battlin' David knocked One Round Goliath for a goal is studded with the names of these gluttons for punishment whose motto is a steal from the Salvation Army's "A man may be down, but he's never out!" Their favorite punch is delivered with some part of their battered face to the point of the other guy's glove, and they seldom if ever miss. They may never become champs; in fact, the plurality of these babies is usually about tenth-raters, but they'll always be in demand at fancy prices because the difference between the modern prize-fight fan and the cuckoos which used to sit around Nero and holler for the gladiators to quit stallin' and knife each other has stopped at the matter of dress. The average follower of the manly art insists that his favorites be guys of red blood—in fact, he carries his enthusiasm to the point where he wants to see 'em covered with it!
Few of these here "iron men"—even the handful which has slugged their way to the top of the heap—knows any more about scientific boxin' than a hen does about tooth powder. They can tell the referee from a right cross, and they know that every time a bell rings whilst they are in the ring they are allowed to sit down for a minute and wonder why the other guy was allowed to come in with a hatchet; but the real fine points of their trade means zero to them. They are in there to take it, and take it they do with a set, silly grin on their puffed lips which has taken the heart outa many a better fighter who's slashed 'em to ribbons and punched his arms off tryin' to drop 'em for the long count.
Some of them human shock absorbers has held titles for a brief spell in the different divisions and has been very popular with the mob. Any fighter which will keep on gettin' up every time he kisses the canvas, in spite of the fact that both his eyes has observed the one o'clock closin' law, his nose is away outa line, and a ear is floppin' nonchalantly in the breeze, is bound to make a hit with the customers. He's prolongin' the thrill of the thing and givin' the crowd a gallop for its shekels. Their unanimous opinion, screamed at the top of their lungs, is that he's a terrible boob—but the sight of his gore has appealed to their "sportin'" instincts, and on the way home, in the cool of the evenin', they shake their heads admirin'ly and tell each other what a great scrapper he is at that! Jess Willard, for instance, made more friends by staggerin' blindly to his feet from the crimson-flecked mat, after each of his seven knockdowns in the first round by the jovial Jack Dempsey, than he did when he flattened Johnson for the championship of the world.
I'm always as nervous as a steam drill when I send one of my star battlers in against them choppin' blocks. On the level, they're less worry when they're fightin' a clean, hard puncher which is fast and clever. In the first place, these bums makes your boy look bad to the crowd. They usually got a awkward, clumsy defense that makes 'em difficult to slam in a spot which will send 'em down for the night, and after you have punched one of these bimbos from pillar to post round after round, changin' the outlines of his face, but not his determination to stay the limit, the mob gets the idea that you can't hit, and they're off you!
Many a promisin' youngster has had his hopes wrecked right at the start by one of them human derelicts of the ring—them guys whose only claim to fame is that they can take it! The ambitious kid tears into 'em with everything he's got, and in a coupla rounds he's pounded 'em to a pulp, but still they keep comin' in for more. Every time he flattens 'em they bounce up like a rubber ball, till fin'ly the kid begins to get discouraged. The disappointed crowd is givin' him the raspberry, demandin' the knock-out they paid to see. His confidence fades, and he soon starts wonderin' if he's lost his wallop. He's hit this tramp so hard and often that it's like liftin' a coupla tons of lead to raise his arms, and now his hooks and jabs apparently ain't even shakin' the other guy up. In desperation the kid throws science to the winds and comes in wide open, both hands workin' for that grinnin' battered jaw—that red leer that dances before his face. This is what the tramp has waited all night for! Not havin' landed a dozen clean wallops himself, he's comparatively fresh. He feels the sting leavin' the kid's frantic punches; he sees he's losin' heart by his shiftin', worried eyes, and the next minute the crowd is on its feet, goin' crazy, as this bloody wreck tears in, smashes the falterin' kid with a wild haymaker, and it's all over!
Them guys is prouder of their capacity for takin' a maulin' than Dempsey is of his record as a knockerout. Their cauliflower ears, busted noses, and dented faces is to them the Croix de Guerre of their trade. A example of this was Bat Nelson, which held the lightweight title against some of the greatest boxers that ever fought in that class, for no other reason on earth than the fact that them guys broke their hearts, and frequently their hands, tryin' to put him away. Bat used to brag that he wasn't human, and for a long time it looked like that was the answer. If he could box, I can make a automobile. He rarely come out of a scrap without lookin' like he had been run through a meat chopper—the worst tramps which ever stuck their hand in a glove used to paste him with everything but the box office, and then when they was so tired they couldn't even feint him, the grinnin', gore-covered Bat would step in and knock 'em for a goal.
This class of fighter is duck soup for the babies which claims the prize ring brings out gameness that would make a paralyzed arctic explorer or a legless deep-sea diver seem faint-hearted. They point to these guys gettin' up after each knock-down, ripped and slashed to pieces, blinded by their own blood, but still borin' in bravely for more punishment. Well, I don't doubt that a lotta these boys has showed more courage than a sightless bullfighter, but my own experience has been that this here same courage is in most cases more a matter of temperament than anything else. The roughneck, boneheaded slugger gets slammed all over the ring and fin'ly floored. He's half in a trance, and he's only got a faint idea of what it's all about; but his legs mechanically raises him upright again without no effort of his dazed brain at all, because they been doin' that same thing for years. The intelligent boxer, knocked kickin' by a wallop, has been in the habit of usin' his head to think with, and said head is now ringin' like a set of chimes. The crazy yells of the crowd comes to him like the boom of a roarin' surf, his glassy eyes rolls around inquirin'ly, and in the ten seconds it takes him to clear his dome and try to figure what he'll do when he gets up he's counted out and often called yellah. Nine times outa ten this baby's just as game as the other guy, or gamer—he's built temperamentally different, that's all!
My idea of the real gamester is the bird which can't take it and knows he can't, but takes his chance with the toughest the game can produce in his efforts to get to the top! The guy with the glass jaw or the weakmuscled stomach that's gotta win quick or not at all. The nervous, imaginative baby which takes more mental punishment in his corner waitin' for the first bell than he ever does from any guy's gloves and that's gotta lick himself before he even faces the cuckoo in the other corner. The kind that, if he fought eighty-six times a day every day in the week, would never get over the soul-tearin' torture of the sneerin', howlin' mob around the ring, the sight of blood, the glarin' calcium over his head, the jarrin' impact of fist on bone, the possibilities in the other guy's left—but still sets himself, steadies his tremblin' knees, and goes in to kill or get killed with a grin on his chalk-white face!
You might say a guy like that don't belong in the ring. Then neither did them kinda babies belong in the trenches; neither do they belong anywheres in life! Didn't we all kinda lick our dry and tremblin' lips a little shaky like in the zero hour over there? Ain't they a mob of us which ain't beyond bitin' our nails a bit whilst waitin' for any of life's Big Crashes to come? But, Sweet Mamma, when them temperamental boys does get under way! A flash at the dope-book on any sport, profession, trade, gift, art, science, or bad habit will show you what happens then!
I made one of them guys heavyweight champion of the world—how 'bout that?
After Kid Roberts had won his first professional fight by knockin' out Young Du Fresne in Sandusky, we have to lay aside the gloves for a spell on account of the Kid havin' busted them small bones in his left hand. Some weeks after that quarrel the Kid comes up one mornin' to our mutual room in the worst hotel in Sandusky, which is the equivalent to sayin' the worst hotel in the world. He holds up his invalid hand.
"All healed," he says, wavin' it at me. "I'm ready to box again. Pack up your stuff, we're going to New York!"
I walked over and examined his paw with the greatest of care. It still looked swollen and ugly to me.
"Better give it another week to set, Kid," I says, "If you bust it again, it's liable to tie us up for a coupla months, and the bank roll's punch drunk already. Why, I'd gamble you couldn't hit hard enough with that left right now to crack a vacant eggshell!"
The Kid presents me with a pleasant grin and commences lookin' around the room. Over in the corner is a long board which with a iron I have borreyed from our genial landlord for the sensational purpose of pressin' my suit. Still grinnin', the Kid picks it up, leans it at a angle against the wall, grabs a towel from the washstand, and makes a coupla turns of it around his left hand. Before I can jump across the room and grab him he has stood off and split that board in two with a punch!
"Now," he remarks, tossin' the towel on the bed and reachin' underneath for his suit case, "we have that all settled! You hustle down to the depot and find out what's the next train for New York. You might as well get the tickets and sleepers while you're there too."
"With what?" I asks, makin' him a gift of a sarcastical smile.
He swings around and looks at me kinda puzzled. "Why—ah—we have something like a hundred dollars, haven't we?" he says.
"Somethin' like it, sure!" I agrees, reachin' in a pocket and pullin' out a bill. "Here's us!" I says, showin' it to him. "This is somethin' like a hundred berries, only it's unfortunately got a ten on it in the corners instead of a hundred. Still, as you say, it's somethin' like a hundred—same color, same size, same—"
"Where's all the money you had last night when you went down to pay our hotel bill?" he demands, shuttin' me off with a glare.
"Well," I says, "it's like this: I run into a bevy of traveling salesmen in the lobby, and one word led to the other. If I'd only had brains enough to quit at two this a. m., I'd of been three hundred men to the good, but that last baby shook a nasty pair of dice!"
Kid Roberts drops his suit case and sinks down on the bed, first havin' the foresight to hurl both pillows and the busted ironin' board at me.
"And the funny part of it is," I goes on, duckin' the above utensils and cheerfully lightin' a cigarette, "I forgot to pay the hotel bill!"
"Oh, that's the funny part, eh?" he snarls, gettin' up and approachin' me with a three-alarm fire in each eye. "Well, I'm going to pound you into a jelly—see if you can get a laugh out of that!"
"Behave!" I says, slidin' gracefully back of the bureau. "Don't let's get silly and partake of vulgar fistycuffs. If I didn't know you could take me, I wouldn't be managing you; but maulin' me will get neither of us nowheres. I got in that African golf tourney because I thought I could grab off enough doubloons to take us into New York right. The breaks went against me and them guys gypped me and made me lose it—that's all! Ain't you ever did nothin' foolish?"
He stops short and scowls at me for a minute, and then all of a sudden his exceedin'ly handsome face clears and that good-natured kid grin of his makes me acquainted with all his lovely white teeth.
"You're right, old man!" he laughs, slappin' me on the back. "I—I beg your pardon for losing my temper. I'm so infernally anxious to get back to New York that I— Oh, hang it, man—I've simply got to be there by the end of the week!"
He walks over to the window and stares out at Sandusky, tappin' a nervous foot on the floor and bitin' his lip. I stretched out comfortably on the so-called bed and give forth the impression that I was readin' the mornin' paper. In the reality I was watchin' him. I liked that kid—you couldn't help it! He got closer to me in the time we punched, argued, stalled, and lucked our way into a world's championship than any fighter I ever had in my stable. Big, clean, and as pleasin' to the eye as a sunset anywheres west of Chicago, his whole appearance fairly shrieked class! He looked as much like a prize fighter—then—as I resemble Mary Pickford, and I knew he was doin' a piece of deep thinkin' as he stood there at that window lookin' through the greasy panes out into the dirty little alley which run back of this alleged hotel. Think of the stuff that must of been gallopin' through that high-strung kid's mind. He'd been the most popular guy in his college, a kind of a tin god to the other birds which had carried him off on their shoulders from dozens of tracks and football fields. He'd run through as many pieces of eight as Captain Kidd ever seen; he'd belonged to clubs where even the waiters hadda be descended from deck hands on the Mayflower; he'd been used to evenin' clothes, soft lights, music, and the maddenin' smiles of pretty women, after 6 p. m., instead of a pair of trunks and boxin' gloves and the reekin' din of a cheap fight club. He'd exchanged a suite at the Ritz with one of them trick valets to button his collar and fix his "bawth" for a scraggy hole in a twelfth-class hotel—as up against it as Rumania, and with a roughneck like me, which hardly spoke his language, for a companion. A drop, hey?
As I lamped him over the top of my paper I wondered what else he'd gave up. Was they by any chance a—
"What's the mad rush to New York for, Kid?" I yawns suddenly. "A Jane?"
He give a start like a frightened deer. He was always like that, even in the ring—a blur of flashin', quick, nervous moves. He couldn't sit down five minutes in a room. In the course of a ordinary conversation I bet he'd walk ten miles back and forth across the floor, remindin' you of a tiger in a cage at the zoo. It used to make me uneasy and restless watchin' him, on the level!
Now he lets forth a sigh and comes away from the window. Instead of answerin' my question, he stops opposite me and says: "Are you—eh—married?"
"Me?" I grins. "No—I got that bump over my right eye fallin' downstairs whilst a child." Then a sudden thought hit me like a wallop on the jaw. "Say!" I yells, jumpin' up. "You ain't thinkin' of—you ain't gonna get wed on me?"
The Kid smiles and pats my arm.
"Calm yourself," he says. "The most colossal ass in the world would hesitate at doing that without a penny to his name."
"Yeh?" I sneers. "Evidently you never seen the East Side in New York! But answer me this, whilst we are on the fascinatin' subject of wedlocks. I have gave you the low down on myself from the time I seen my first rattle up to as late as last night. I ain't tryin' to jimmy into your most intimate affairs, but is they—is they a girl?"
I've seen chorus girls bitin' their tongues for hours at a time to perfect a natural blush like this big Kid pulled then. He let go my arm and pulled over a chair, sat down—a rare trick for him—and gimme the works.
The dame's name was no less than Irene Gresham, and her beloved parents had a bank roll which wouldst make Jack Rockefeller look like a public' charge. Apart from that annoyin' detail, they was headliners in this continuous vaudeville of society, indigo blooded and with a pedigree that not even a race horse could be ashamed of. Kid Roberts, or Kane Halliday, as the butlers was wonted to announce him previous to the time he hit the skids, was merely engaged to this gold mine, that's all! Now the Kid had a few blue corpuscles chasin' each other through his veins himself, and when it come to ancestors, he was no Adam, but—broke and a prize fighter—Sweet Mamma, where did he fit now!
When things was breakin' right for him, and his old man had as many chips as the rest of 'em, he had contracted to escort this charmer to the conventional altar. It was a kinda cut-and-dried arrangement, with the articles drawed up by the parents of both victims, and the Kid hadn't seen his intended lifelong sparrin' partner since he left college, on the account of her bein' a habitué of Europe. She had come back the week before, and that's why the Kid was keen to flee to New York. He wanted to get the thing straight—put all the cards on the table, face up. Whether they still thought so highly of each other that nothin' short of matrimony wouldst cure 'em, he didn't know. That's exactly what he wanted to find out. All the boys and girls he used to play with when he was steppin' out thought he was a civil engineer right now somewheres out in the West, or the like, and the Kid was very naturally wonderin' what wouldst be the effect on love's young dream when the fair Irene heard he was a leather pusher.
"Well," I says, when he got it all off his chest and looked half relieved and half sorry for tellin' me, "they's only one way we can absorb enough pennies to get en route for the bustlin' little hamlet of New York, and that's for you to bounce some boloney at this fight club here. Since you knocked that Du Fresne turkey dead, you oughta be a card at the local abattoir, so if you'll amuse yourself countin' how many Smiths they is in the city directory, or the like, I'll prowl over there and see what can be done."
"Fine!" says the Kid. "Just remember that we've got to have at least one hundred dollars. I'll box anyone they can get for that!"
Two years later the Kid was gettin' about a hundred bucks a punch. What changes time does bring, as the ex-kaiser is wonted to remark!
I found the match maker for the local club heavily engaged in a conference with some of the directors. The conference was on the subject of dollar-limit stud poker, and was bein' held in the back room of a liquor bazaar, this bein' in the days when it was not a felony to pass the time of day with a bartender. I waited till he win a pot with three aces, two of which he had the presence of mind to slip himself from the bottom of the deck, and then I called him out to the bar, purchased, and made known my modest wants.
"I might be able to let this tramp of yours work Friday night at the regular show," he says fin'ly. "How much sugar are you tryin' to git for him?"
"Well," I says, "solely on the account of you bein' so unusually polite and obligin', we'll take a five-hundred-buck guarantee and battle anybody you throw into the ring!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" he cackles with the greatest of sarcasm. "Try and git it! I wouldn't give five hundred bucks to stage Cain and Abel with a set of strange wildcats for a preliminary! I'll tell you what I'll do, and whether you take it or not may make some difference to the board of aldermen of Bolivia, but it'll make no difference to me. I'll slip you two hundred berries for ten frames with Special Delivery Kelly, provided that big boloney of yours stays the limit. If Kelly stops him before the fifth round, which is no doubt what'll happen, you don't git a nickel! Gimme a argument and the whole thing's off—how 'bout that?"
"We'll gamble!" I says after a minute of decidin' that for me to slam this cuckoo wouldst get me nothin', "But just as a matter of simple curiosity, without tryin' to delve into your private affairs, what's this Special Delivery Kelly gettin' outa this homicide?"
The match maker grunts and waggles the cigar in his mouth.
"I'll give him a pocketful of tickets for the show," he says. "And he gits a reward of four bits on everyone he sells, besides his guarantee of twenty berries, win, lose, or police—which is enough for the big tramp! You can work out in the club gym if you wanna, and lemme give you a tip—this Kelly ain't never been knocked out, and he swings a nasty right. It wouldn't surprise me the slightest particle if he stopped that baby of yours in a round!"
"Well," I says, "I'm a bettin' fool myself, and them two hundred men we're gonna get won't pay our laundry bill here. I'll lay you my end of the gate at even money that Kid Roberts knocks Special Delivery Kelly dead! Do you fade me?"
"You're faded!" he grins. "If your guy flattens Kelly—not outpoints him, remember; he's gotta knock him—you git four hundred; if he do not, you git the raspberry! Why—"
"And that's all settled," I shuts him off. "Now where can I get a flash at this Kelly person?"
He presents me with a full-toothed smile and turns back to the poker tourney.
"Go over to the Acme Boiler Works any time between eight in the mornin' and four-thirty in the afternoon," he says. "Ask anybody and they'll point out Kelly. He's knowed as Paddy over there; but the minute he gits in the ring with that meal ticket of yours, you'll both find out why they call him 'Special Delivery'!".
Whilst I was palely ruminatin' over the interestin' fact that I was gonna send my kid in against a tough boiler maker named Paddy Kelly, which had likewise earned the ring titleof "Special Delivery," I happened to glance around and I seen the match maker and his boy friends lookin' after me and laughin' as if their hearts wouldst break. I give vent to a shiver and leaned over to the bartender.
"Have somethin' yourself," I says. "Ah—eh—what kind of a mauler is this guy Kelly?"
"Tough!" he says, shakin' his head from the one side to the other. "Terrible tough! He don't know nothin', but brother, he can hit like one of them pneumatical sledges, and he's a pig for chastisement. He's mingled with all the good ones, and none of 'em could do a thing with him in the regards to a knockout. They all half killed Kelly, but he was still in there swingin' with 'em at the final bell. It looks to me like that green kid of yours is scheduled for a pastin'!"
"It looks to me too!" I says, and proceeded on my way.
I drilled back to the hotel as cheerful as a yegg on his way to get sentenced, but I managed to bring forth a smile for the Kid. I told him I had grabbed a set-up for him named Kelly which called himself "Special Delivery" because he went out so quick, cleverly leavin' the slight detail that I had bet our end of the purse on a knock-out out of the conversation.
That Friday night, at the bewitchin' hour of ten, Kid Roberts climbed through the ropes at the Crescent A. C. of Sandusky, accompanied by me and a dinge middleweight I had hired for two bucks to help handle him. The mob give the Kid a mild greetin', and then down the aisle, through the haze of smoke, comes what I thought at first was Washington's Monument with a bath robe on. It turned out to be nothin' less than Special Delivery Kelly, which Kid Roberts is soon gonna be versus. The second the customers piped him I thought the roof of the clubhouse was comin' off, and for all I know it did! Everybody in the joint, includin' a leather-lunged delegation of honest hearts and willin' hands from the boiler works, climbs up on their chairs and lets forth three hundred rousin' cheers for Monsieur Kelly, which said gent acknowledges by several noncommittal short bobs of his bullet head and a coupla ferocious scowls at our corner. If this cuckoo wasn't a yard over six foot, then I'm the next king of France, and his weight was announced at a triflin' 240. I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard that. I had him figured at about 940! His hair was shaved down close to the temple of knowledge on top of his neck like he had not five minutes ago completed a course in Sing Sing, and what I take it for granted was his face give him the startlin' appearance of a guy which had devoted the best part of his life to fightin' buzz saws with it. The top of one ear was elsewhere. Oh, Special Delivery Kelly was one tough-lookin' young man, I'll inform the hemispheres!
"Good Lord—what a beast!" gasps the Kid after one flash. "He looks like a gorilla!"
I says nothin', but my personal idea was that, alongside of Kelly, a gorilla would look like a chorus girl.
Whilst I am bandagin' the Kid's hands and my dinge helper is whisperin' sweet nothin's in his ears to take his mind off the crowd, the air is filled with shriekin' demands for Kelly to murder him. My boy is pale and nervous like as of yore, head down and both feet shufflin' restlessly back and forth in the rosin. He kept wettin' his dry lips with a shakin' tongue and tappin' the ropes with his hands, every now and then glancin' out at that ocean of sneerin' faces around him and then quickly turnin' his head away again. He was takin' a terrible lickin', and no one knew it better than me, right whilst he sat there in his corner and waited for the festivities to commence. He had nothin' on his mind but that girl Irene, his future, whether this bird wouldst mark him up or not, what wouldst happen when they all found out back home that he was a prize fighter, and, likewise, what wouldst happen when one of Special Delivery Kelly's hamlike fists bounced off his face. Yellah? You never seen him work. Once the bell rung it was all different, and that nervous energy slipped right out through his pumpin' gloves. Temperament—that's all! This big ourang outang Kelly sit sprawled out in his corner, kiddin' with friends around the ringside about the pink-cheeked dude on the other side without another care in the wide, wide world!
Fin'ly I step over to Kelly's corner to have a flash at his bandages. One look was enough! I whistled to the referee. "Why don't you give this guy a ax and be done with it?" I says, pointin' to Kelly's hands. His seconds is tryin' frantically to get the gloves on before I can crab it.
"What's the matter?" sneers the referee. "They let 'em use tape in Ohio. This here's supposed to be a fight, not a one-step!"
I reached down and yanked up one of Kelly's hands before he had a idea of what it was all about. "See that white dust on top of the tape?" I yells. "Well, I know plaster of Paris when I see it, fellah, and we come from New York, not Crabapple Crossin'. This baby is figurin' on buryin' his hands in the water bucket, and that plaster will harden up in a minute till it'll be the same as if Kelly had a rock in each hand. Take 'em off or we don't fight!"
"Strip them bandages!" growls the referee to Kelly's handlers. "We got a dumb-bell from the State Boxin' Commission out in front." He wheels and glares at me. "That ain't gonna git you nothin', wise guy," he grunts. "Kelly'll make that ham of yours jump over the ropes!"
A fine, fair-minded referee, hey?
The announcer steps to the center of the ring and holds up his hand, immediately causin' the well-known deathly silence to fall upon the house except for such hot-blooded admirers of the manly art which can't control themselves now that the red slaughter is actually about to commence.
"Final star bout of the evenin'!" bawls this guy. "Ten-round exhibition—" he turns and points to our corner—"over here, Kid—"
"Kelly first! Kelly first!" roars the mob, dancin' up and down.
The Kid was half-way up from his stool. He give a short, jerky laugh and sit down again.
"Over here"—goes on the announcer, waggin' a finger at the other corner—"over here, Sandusky's favorite Irish-American heavyweight, which always gives the best they is in him—Special Delivery Kelly!"
Sweet Mamma!
They bang the chairs on the floor, hurl their hats in the air, shriek, whistle, pound their feet up and down, and seven guys gets hysterical and embraces each other.
The announcer favors us with a sympathetic grin.
"Over here," he says, noddin' to the Kid, "New York's promisin' young contender for the heavyweight champeenship—Kid Roberts!"
A few scattered handclaps for us.
I whisk the bath robe off the Kid, knead his stomach, and rub his eyes, whilst the dinge wiped him dry and kept whisperin': "Don't let him stall you, white boy—'at Special Delivery thing don't mean nuffin'!" Then he starts snappin' his fingers over to Kelly's corner. "We spots you fifty pounds and we takes you!" he shouts. "Was punches dollars you'll be Vanderbilt inside of one second! Ah shoots ten dollars we knocks you daid! Ah—"
The bell cuts him off, and we jump down under the ropes.
"Get this guy, Kid, and get him quick!" was my final instructions to the Kid as with a slap on the shoulder I turned him loose.
The thing hadn't gone a minute when I seen that Special Delivery Kelly's only idea was to stay the limit. The Kid, all the nervousness gone now that he was in there workin', felt his man out a bit and then proceeded to beat him from pillar to post—it wasn't no fight, it was murder in the first degree! Roberts tried hard to connect with a solid smash that would end it, but Kelly was the wildest thing I ever seen this side of Borneo, and when he wasn't reclinin' on the mat he was divin' head first into a clinch and roughin' my boy with that extry forty-odd pounds of bone and muscle. The referee give him all the chance in the world to hang on, scrape the Kid's back against the ropes, and wrestle him. That and the generous counts he got durin' the four times he kissed the canvas was the only things which saved Kelly from goin' to bed in round one.
The Kid ran grinnin' to his corner at the bell with his golden blond hair scarcely mussed. The house was in a uproar. "That fellow's sheer strength is remarkable, but he's not a boxer!" says Roberts to me. "I'll end it in the next round—I'm not going to punish him any more."
But he had to do it—much!
Kelly came slowly out for the second round, a pitiful sight. The Kid had chopped him to pieces in the first three minutes, and his hairy body was stained a deep crimson down to his trunks. Suddenly he rushed viciously, landin' a right and left to the body that sent Roberts crashin' into the ropes gaspin' and drove the mob insane. As Kelly lumbered in close to finish him, the Kid caught him with a left uppercut to the heart that could be plainly heard in Siam, the lightin' right cross to the jaw that followed sprawlin' Kelly on the lower rope. He was up at "six," pawin' blindly in the air, but carryin' on smartly, and the Kid coolly circled around him, his flashin' left forever in Kelly's battered face. Three times more Special Delivery Kelly dived to the mat, and each time he staggered to his feet spatterin' gore on the reporters, with the crowd a pack of maniacs. Right before the bell the Kid turns to the referee and asks him to stop it, but that guy shakes his head and motions him to go on. With a dyin' flurry Kelly rushed again, drivin' a jarrin' right swing to the head, but the Kid drove him back on his heels with a beautifully timed left hook, and as Kelly bounced off the ropes Roberts put both hands to the face, dumpin' him on his back in his corner as cold as a Eskimo's front yard. The kind-hearted referee took plenty of time with the count so's to give Kelly a chance to get up and take some more, but the bell at "nine" saved him. His handlers hadda lift him up, drag him to his stool, and hold him straight on it, still peacefully slumberin'.
When the Kid come to his corner I started to slap him on the back and shake his glove, but he waved me off.
"I'm through!" he pants. "I'm not going in there and hit that poor devil any longer. This isn't a contest; it's wanton brutality! That fellow hasn't a chance with me, and he's been punished enough. Get me someone else and I'll box him the rest of the ten rounds so we'll get our money, or have the referee stop this thing I'm not a murderer!"
"He'll never be able to answer the next bell," I says soothin'ly. "He's as dead as Napoleon right now. You just step to the middle of the ring at the gong and we cop!"
I slipped down under the ropes and shoved my way through the howlin' mob on the en route to the box office to collect our four hundred fish. Two hundred wages and two hundred I win from the jovial match maker on a knockout. As I get to Kelly's corner they is about a dozen guys workin' over him, one of which is no less than my old pal, the match maker himself. He's givin' Kelly's manager a terrible bawlin' out and jabbin' a bottle of ammonia up under what's left of Kelly's nose. Kelly is layin' back against the ropes, both eyes closed—one of which the Kid attended to—dead to the world.
"Pay me!" I hollers at the match maker.
"Not yet, you fathead!" he snarls with a odd look, and then I see they have got one of Kelly's gloves off. In a flash the genial match maker pulls a penknife from his pocket, rips open a blade, and shoves the point up under the quick of Kelly's thumbnail. Kelly jumps half-ways off the chair with a yell of pain, and the crowd goes batty again. The lion-hearted iron man is comin' back! A nice, clean sport, hey?
When the gong clanged for the third session I had to fairly throw Kid Roberts into the center of the ring. He was sick of slaughterin' this baby, but the watchin' mob figured he was gettin' faint-hearted, and they yell for Kelly to let him fall. Roberts shakes his head disgustedly and ties into this totterin', half-blind wreck with the idea of gettin' it over as quick as possible. He forces Kelly to lead and takes a light left to the face; then he sets himself and floors the boiler maker with a long right swing. Up bounces this unhuman cave man only to crash down again from a volley of lefts and rights to the body. This time he took "nine" before arisin' and collapsin' over the ropes, both hands hangin' useless at his side. They is some yells to "Stop it!" but the referee slaps the Kid on the back and hollers: "Go on, fight, or I'll disqualify you—you big dough-hearted tramp!" The Kid shoulders him away, hesitates a minute, and a sponge comes hurtlin' into the ring at Kelly's feet. The fightin' boiler maker's one good eye observes it with a trace of annoyance, and with his last remainin' strength he kicks the sponge outa the ring and paws feebly in the general direction of the Kid. Roberts stepped back and made no attempt to hit him, and then Kelly's handlers swarm in and drag their man to his corner, where he flops like a sack of wheat, mumblin' that he never felt better and still weakly strugglin' to stand up and scrap.
The roarin' crowd mills into the ring, and the Kid walks over to Kelly's corner, shakes his hand, and tells him he's the gamest man he ever saw with a pair of boxin' gloves on. Kelly shoves a coupla handlers away and sticks up his pulpy face. "Yer a dom good man," he grunts, the one workin' eye glarin' at each and all, "but I'd have licked ye in another round. Ye niver would have stopped Paddy Kelly! I've taken mannys the worse batin' thin I got to-night," he adds proudly. "Why Young Horgan bruk three of me ribs and divvil a count I tuk!" He suddenly peers over the ropes. "Where's that blackguard which manages me and brung down on me head the disgrace of havin' a foight stopped that a Kelly was in?" he roars.
Special Delivery Kelly's pilot pushes forward, kinda nervous. "Tough luck, Paddy," he mutters. "But we can't finish in front all the time! Brace up now, you'll be all right in a coupla days, and—"
"All right, is ut?" bawls Kelly, pullin' himself to his feet by the ropes. "And did ye iver see a Kelly that wasn't all roight?"
"You tell 'em!" grins the manager, still a trifle uneasy. "Now—"
"Shut up, ye divilish banshee!" howls Kelly. "'Twas you that stopped the foight, they tell me."
"Yes," mumbles the manager, backin' away. "I stopped it so—"
"Stop this, thin!" yells Special Delivery Kelly, and lets go with all he had left on that baby's jaw!
That Kelly was tough, hey?
Well, after payin' off hithers and you in Sandusky, and gettin' fitted for a set of tickets to N. Y., I have a even hundred and twenty-five berries left of the four hundred we accumulated from the extermination of Monsieur Kelly. I divided this with the Kid, givin' him the twenty-five, and the minute we have hired parkin' space for ourselves at a Manhattan hotel he disappears. I hunted for him all afternoon, but he might as well of been vice president, because nobody had laid a eye on him or heard anything about him.
In the midst of my search I run into a billiard palace which is a hangout of mine when I am in this burg which electric lights made famous. It is called a billiard palace for the reason that billiards is about the only thing which ain't played there. I play a race at Havana and do myself $250 worth of good, and then I sidle on to the rear, where a exhibition of the gallopin' dominoes, or, to get technical, a crap game, is bein' had. In two hours I have ran the $250 up to $900, and in five hours I ain't got a nickel, and, in the addition to this, I have lost my watch. I tried to borrey $20 on my contract with Kid Roberts and was laughed outa the joint. I have raised $10,000 on that same scrap of paper, since.
How the so ever, when I fin'ly get back to our inn, the Kid is sittin' on the bed waitin' for me. When he ain't been walkin' the floor he's been playin' solitaire—a combination that drives some guys crazy and makes others sane. I asked him did he see his girl friend, and he says on the contrary, but he had the boon of a long interview with her male parent on that identical subject, and it looked like the bottom had fell outa his stock as a comin' son-in-law. The old man thought the Kid was a très bien guy, and he was sorry his father had been careless enough to go broke, but, as the French says, what would you? Perhaps, if they waited 100 years, it wouldst be all different. Maybe by then the Kid would have some standin' as a civil engineer and his father wouldst likewise have dug up another roll somewheres, but right now—well, you got the rest of it, hey?
The Kid had carefully neglected to mention that he had turned into a leather pusher. He wanted to see how the sight of this Jane affected him before the show-down.
The show-down come quicker than either of us expected it!
The next mornin' I get the information that no less than Dummy Carney is in New York yellin' murder about me havin' the Kid now that Roberts looked like a comer. Well, as I remarked before, we are paupers again, so I figured on diggin' up Dummy and sellin' him a piece of the Kid's contract for enough to room and board us till we got a fight. That night Kid Roberts was gonna rent a set of evenin' clothes and find out from Miss Irene Gresham how the course of true love was rannin', if at all, and I was gonna do the same with Dummy Carney, without the evenin' clothes.
Then things happened very fast!
I insisted on the Kid doin' a little road work that mornin', both to ease his nerves a bit and also to keep him conditioned in case we got a chance to fill in over in Jersey that week. We are runnin' through Central Park—the Kid with that long, easy stride which brung home the lovin' cups and the etc at college, and me puffin' along in the rear with the pantin' gait which come from the years I have dallied with the other cups. Along around Eighty-sixth Street they is a auto worth a steamfitter's ransom stuck at one side of the road, and a gayly bedecked chauffeur is changin' a tire. As we slow down to get around it, Kid Roberts stops suddenly and goes white.
"Irene!" he kinda gasps.
As my name has at no time been Irene I look around inquiringly and gaze upon a strange and interestin' sight.
They is a Jane sittin' in the back of that car, and she is regardin' Kid Roberts with a mixture of about thirty-eight different expressions, of which contempt is away in the lead. She's a beaucoup looker all right, but beautiful the same way them marble statues is—perfect and cold. The Kid is standin' there goin' red and white by turns under this silent inspection which seems to have tied his tongue up too. He had on a ragged cap, a torn and form'ly white sweater, a old, dirty pair of courduroy pants, and a pair of runnin' shoes. The lady fair's icy, glitterin' eyes takes in every detail of that outfit, and she gets further below zero with each second. One of the Kid's eyes has a little mouse under it and his left cheek bone is hid by a strip of court plaster, the result of Special Delivery Kelly's dyin' efforts. A split lip ain't had a fair chance to heal yet, and by the time this girl's gaze reached the Kid's face it was so cold I shivered where I was standin'. The Kid fin'ly pulls himself together and seems to be gulpin' out somethin', and I step away so's I won't get my ears in where they don't belong. As I do somebody slaps me on the back and snarls: "I been lookin' all over for you, you rat! You're a fine guy, you are—what d'ye mean by stealin' my fighter from me, hey?"
Dummy Carney's purplin' face is shoved over my shoulder at the auto.
"Oh, there's the big bum, hey?" he growls, and, throwin' my hands off, he walks up to the Kid and the girl. The chauffeur has changed the shoe and he looks up kinda puzzled. Kid Roberts gets a coupla shades whiter when he sees Dummy and tries to motion him away. But it's too late.
"You big stiff!" roars Carney. "You fight another guy for anybody but me and I'll run you outa New York! Foolin' around with a skirt, hey, instead of lookin' me up and—"
The sudden rush of blood was still dyein' the Kid's face as he clipped Dummy, and that baby kissed the turf without a groan.
"Beast!" says the girl—the only word I ever heard her say. She motions to the chauffeur. Exit Miss Irene Gresham from the life and adventures of Kid Roberts!
With his cap in his hand and his head throwed back, the Kid stands starin' after the car. Then he snaps his fingers with a short, queer laugh and turns to me a white, strained face, which seems to have picked up five years somewheres since I seen it last.
"And there's that!" he says. "Let's get away from here!"
Carney begins showin' some signs of life, and the Kid stops a passin' taxi, tells the brigand the hotel, jumps in, and pulls me after him.
"Hey," I whispers to him, "I ain't got a nickel, and it'll cost at least two bucks to get to the hotel."
"There's every penny I have!" snarls the Kid, pullin' out a two-dollar bill and tossin' it tome. "Pay it. Now shut up and let me alone!"
From then on that baby was different. I don't know just what the change was—he was just another guy, that's all! No more did he shed a tear over bein' forced to clout the stiffs; he showed about as much mercy as the gentle Germans showed Belgium.
They is a little package and a note for the Kid when we get to the hotel, and up in the room he opens it, reads the note, and tears it up.
"There goes the last link that held me to what used to be!" he remarks, tossin' the pieces out the window.
"I only wish we had some kinda links to hock!" I says. "Do you realize we ain't got the price of a rebuilt toothpick?"
Instead of answerin', he hands the little box over to me.
"Look at that," he says. "It represents the end of another illusion!"
I opened it and was nearly struck blind by the diamondst diamond I ever seen in my life.
"Sweet Mamma!" I breathes. "Who give you this, Kid?"
"The young lady we met in the park," he says. "I am now free to pursue my heinous career without any qualms. That—er—was an engagement ring. When I bought that my father was worth a fortune, and I paid eleven hundred dollars for it. I'm glad—in a way—this happened. It was the easiest way out of a thing that would have been a horrible mistake!"
"Well," I says, gazin' at the ring in a trance, "she might of at least—"
"Not a word!" he warns me, holdin' up his hand. "She is a splendid woman—a sweet girl!"
I grabbed for my hat and held up the ring.
"And this here's the sweetest thing she ever done!" I says. "Wait here and we'll eat. I'll try and get five hundred on it!"
I was goin' down in the elevator before he reached the door.