Pretty soon I will have a education which don't have to take it's hat off to nobody, yet the nearest I ever been to college was when I slap Kid Michaels stiff in Cambridge, Mass., and I'm forced to pass Harvard on the ways to the fight club. I am plying myself with knowledge of this and that by the kind assistance of books, for the reasons that I would like to pass a fight club some day on the ways to Harvard.
Having Judy in our office where I could see her all day long was like putting a ham bone just out of reach of a chained collie. But I figured I'd bust that chain with education, ambition, and a six-figure bank roll.
I am plowing through a serial the other night called "Fortunate," by Mr. Ludwig Tieck, a poet which did his stuff when you and I were young, Maggie, and he says: "To a sensible man, there is no such thing as chance!"
Ludwig said a mouthful. Personally, I'm satisfied that luck and chance is snares and delusions, as whosthis says. The fellow which has reached the top of the heap and is called a lucky stiff by the failures is simply lucky in having the determination to work hard, the ability to laugh off discouragement, and the pep to keep the rust off his ambition. Having gave luck a thorough tryout, I am in the position to tell you something about it. Depending on luck cost me—but I might as well spill the whole business and be done with it!
A few days after I stop Larry Forbes—a tough egg—in five rounds at Philadelphia, Nate gets a cable from Mr. Haskins, the big English promoter, offering us three fights at the National Sporting Club, London, Eng., where the Prince of Wales must be getting sick and tired of feeling English heavies: "Better luck next time!" Well, naturally enough, this little incident gets me all excited. I had never been farther away from the United States than Coney Island, being too young at the time the draft was all the rage, and here's what has all the earmarks of a chance to tour Europe. So I hop in my nifty chumpy roadster and go to our office to talk this European expedition over with Judy.
She's sitting at her desk giving our brand-new typewriter a cuffing and she looks sweeter to me than a glass bowl shortage would look to a goldfish.
"Good morning, Judy," I says, putting down with the greatest of difficulty a wild impulse to kiss her. "Speaking of anchovies. I'm going to London!"
The clicking keys stops like magic. Judy looks up at me and they's plenty surprise inlaid in her navy-blue eyes as she lays down her notes.
"Of course, you're joking," she says.
"Of course, I ain't!" I grins, sitting on the side of her desk. "Nate just got a flash from King George's home town offering us thirty-five thousand dollars and traveling expenses for three scuffles with three set-ups over there. Ain't we got fun?"
I think she'll be tickled silly, but, in the contrary, she seems exceedingly peeved.
"Gale, how much of your ring earnings have you saved?" she asks, like it's a serious matter.
Well, that's a horse of a different tint. I reach in the inside pocket of my coat and bring forth my bank book—one of the most interesting novels I have yet run across in my studies.
"I only got twenty thousand, eighty-six dollars and nineteen cents," I says. "Nothing at all, Judy."
"Nothing at all?" she says, sitting up straight. "Why, that's a whole lot of money! When you were a soda clerk for Ajariah Stubbs at twelve dollars a week, Gale, you would have thought it wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Now, it's nothing at all! Why"
"But listen, Judy," I interrupt, "I'm going to turn in this dinkey little tin-can-on-a-roller-skate I got and get a Pelham twin-six Sedan. That's going to hit me for about twelve thousand berries. But wait till you see it, Judy; I bet you'll get as big a kick out of riding in it as I will. Why, the front seat alone on one of these boats would hold the United States Senate without no trouble at all!"
"Indeed!" says Judy, kind of cold. "Well, I'll never ride in it, that's certain!"
"What have I done now, Judy?" I says, in astonishment. "Has anybody put in a rap for me, or what is the reasons you won't ride in my sedan?"
"Because," says Judy firmly, "I refuse to be a party to your spending any such absurd sum as twelve thousand dollars for an automobile—or—or anything! Why, that's all a millionaire would spend for a car. You've only just bought the one you have now. What's the matter with it?"
I am commencing to feel the bit red in the face. "Well—I—they ain't enough class to it, Judy," I says. "I am getting in the public's eye more and more every day now and a fellow in my position has got to put on a little dog!"
I see Judy's thrilling lips quivering and then a smile, which makes my blood tingle and would yours too, opens 'em wide. She lays her hand on my arm and I tremble, like I always do when she touches me.
"Oh, Gale—you foolish boy!" she says softly. "When are you going to grow up? So you think yourself famous, because you've had some little success as a prize fighter? That sort of recognition doesn't mean anything, Gale. Don't you know there is a vast difference between fame and notoriety? Where are the high ideals and the stanch ambition that took you from behind a soda fountain? Are you going to disappoint me and let this passing prosperity blind you to the big things that still lie before you? Give up prize fighting now—as you promised yourself you would when you had made enough money to live on while looking about for your life work. You have twenty thousand dollars—why, there are twenty thousand things you can do! A smail business of some kind, perhaps, or—but that will work itself out, if"
"Judy, twenty thousand's nothing startling these days, honest it ain't!" I butt in. "But with the thirty-five grand I'll get from these fights in London I'll have a real bank roll and then I'll hang my gloves on the wall for good, no fooling, Judy! Why, think how that trip across will broaden my mind and—eh—and all that business."
"You're evading the issue, Gale," says Judy, shaking her pretty head. "You don't want to give up boxing! You—you're actually proud of your profession. I can read that in everything you say and do! You do like to fight, don't you?"
With that she gets up from the desk and walks over to the window, looking out on Drew City and tapping her lead pencil on the pane. I get up, too, and stand beside her.
"Judy," I says, picking my words carefully, because I don't want to get in wrong with this eye-widener by no means—"Judy, I do get a kick out of box fighting, but not in the way you think. Of course they's a thrill in a hard-won battle, the roar of the mob, the plunk of your glove against body or jaw, and the fact that boxing is a man-to-man affair, not team against team, like baseball, football, basketball, and them other sports. That's the main thing which makes prize fighting so popular—it's a two-man struggle, and while you watch it you can put yourself in the place of either! You don't get that kind of a angle in watching two teams. But the big thrill I get out of being a leather pusher is the fact that it's the only thing to date at which I have meant something. Judy, I'm getting somewheres as a boxer, I'm a success at it, what I mean—and you can't laugh that off!"
"Any husky longshoreman could be the same!" she sniffs.
"Don't you believe it, Judy. There's thousands of huskies in the game, but there's only eight champions!" I tell her.
"Oh, I don't want to argue with you, Gale," says Judy, kind of impatient. "If you've made up your mind to remain a prize fighter, I don't suppose anything I might say would change you."
"But I ain't made up my mind to remain a prize fighter," I says. "Not by a long shot! I have simply made up my mind to stay in this game till I'm a champ. At everything else I've tried my hand at since I been eight years old I been nothing more than a number on a pay roll, holding a meaningless job. I didn't amount to nothing, Judy, and I'd just as soon be dead as be that way! My motto is: 'Stand out from the mob at—anything! Do your stuff! Don't just live and die like a blade of grass—stepped on by everything from laborers to millionaires, ugly by itself, useless except in mass formation and only useful then as fodder!' They's millions of fellows like that, Judy, but I ain't one of 'em!"
"Those are admirable precepts," says Judy, coming back to her desk again. "But what has that to do with your remaining a boxer?"
"Just this," I says. "Like I told you, Judy, before I begin scrapping, I was George W. Nothing. Well, it's different now! Why, even in Europe they've heard of me—look at that offer from London. I got a following, I get big money for my services, and the sport writers rate me among the leading fighters in the game. If I was to step down before I've win the light heavyweight championship of the world, I'd feel I hadn't played my hand out. It would slow me up in anything I tried after leaving the ring, Judy, it would for a fact! This is the first chance I've had to get to the top in anything. Let me go through with it and if I do win the title I'll quit the ring and tackle some other game with a bigger future. Having been a champ at one trade will help me a hundred per cent to be a champ at another!'
"Well, maybe you're right, Gale," says Judy after a minute, which I use in thinking how long will I have to wait and what will I have to do to get her. "But I don't quite agree with the reasoning that makes your fighting a necessity to your future success. However, good luck to you, and I'll continue to help you in any way Ican. What books have you been reading lately?"
Glad to change the subject, I tell her, and after trying me out on what I've already waded through she lays out my reading course for the coming week. Before I leave, I tell her the $12,000 Pelham sedan is out, as far asl amconcerned. Judy was right, there's no two ways about it. What a sapolio I'd of been to pay that much jack for a car which I needed the same way I needed another forehead. Like she said, the money was commencing to go to my head—where I suppose there was the most room!
While Nate was trying to make up our minds about this trip to London, we got a letter from Denver Nolan, the biggest fight promoter in captivity, which had just built a new arena in New York. Nolan wants to put me on with Jimmy Hanley, light heavyweight champion of America, for his opening attraction, figuring that bout will jam his club to the doors. The English flash, Gunner Slade, light heavyweight champion of the world, had agreed to risk his title in a quarrel with the winner. As there's sure to be plenty pennies in it for us, why, Nolan's proposition puts off the ocean voyage. This tickles Judy silly and I didn't feel near as disappointed that I ain't going across as I thought I'd be. I don't care what they got in Europe, they ain't got no Judy Willcox and what else "is" they?
For the next week, running back and forth to New York fixing things up with Denver Nolan keeps Nate busy. I'm busy too—studying my books, doping out schemes which will get me and Nate's other scrappers free publicity on the sporting pages, and working out lightly a couple of hours the day with Knockout Kelly and Two-Punch Jackson.
Well, when I stepped in and gummed up Rags Dempster's plans by hiring Judy for our office, Rags gees up in flames and blows his father's office to enter Princeton, with all the rest of the rich bunch from the swell prep school. A few weeks later he busts into the limelight by graduating from college while still a freshman, no small feat. His folks is in Europe and Rags had been stepping high, wide, and handsome since they left, bounding around with a mob of fast guys like himself, which if they had a cent apiece would have much more money than brains. They was having a wild party in a roadhouse just outside of Drew City one night, with bootleg flowing like Niagara Falls, when along comes the revenue babies. They pinched the roadhouse, taking everybody's name, and on the mad dash home, Rags, which must have been lit up like a Christmas tree, crashes into a fence with his car. One of the girls gets a broken arm and one of the fellows gets so badly bunged up he's got to be carted to the hospital. Well, it all got in the papers on the account of everybody in the party coming from big families and it was the town scandal for many's the day. The minute it gets to teacher's ears at Princeton, why, Princeton gives Rags and his playmates the air. In a few days Rags is back in his father's office again and he seems to be proud of all the stuff which was in the papers about him. But they's plenty people says when they pass him on the street, sneering and stuck up as usual: "Wait till his father comes back from Europe and it'll be different!"
I can't figure this fellow Dempster, and that's a fact. Imagine doing anything to risk a college education! I would of parted with a leg for the opportunities this dizzy dumbell tossed airily away. A rich father, a bright future, swell friends, college, autos—everything. All that I've been breaking my neck to get ever since I been old enough to know what it's all about, this bird has presented to him in the cradle, and he let it slide!
Well, Nate finally gets Denver Nolan to talk turkey with the regards to my salary for a quarrel with Jimmy Hanley, and the battle is carded for the middle of the following month. For some reason, Hanley has me pegged as a set-up and he thinks ten minutes is ample time for him to get in shape to flatten me. We are scheduled to go fifteen frames to a decision and I seen in one paper where Hanley says he don't expect the fight to go over a couple of rounds. It turns out he's a burn guesser. It didn't go that long!
Hanley is guaranteed $40,000. Being the cheaper help, I got to be satisfied with a scant twelve thousand and the only guarantee I got is one from Hanley's manager that his champ will smack me for a Turkish waffle iron. That's applesauce to me, because I have saw this Jimmy Hanley work, and, champ or no champ, he looks like he was made to order for me. And twelve thousand kronen for making him like it—oo, la, la!
Well, a short time before this setto, Spence Brock drops into the gym one afternoon and says he'll come over to Mrs. Willcox's boarding house that night and pick me up, because his father is going to have some friends from New York over to their place which is interested in me and he'd like to have 'em meet me. So after supper I get into my new Tuxedo which I pay $100 for at the New York store and go over. If I had of been Vincent Astor or Babe Ruth, I couldn't of been treated no nicer by one and all.
Besides Mr. Brock, they's four or five other dignified-looking old guys sitting out on the big glass-covered pazazza in nobby Tuxedos the same as me, smoking and drinking—well, what they are drinking is nobody's business. Anyways, me and Spence takes grapejuice when the house boy pitty-pats around for our order. I get introduced to everybody and they all shake hands and when Spence whispers to me that they's about fifty million bucks represented by these four or five men, why, I get quite the thrill. I pay strict attention to everything they say and do, so's when I get to be a millionaire I will at least know how to carry it off.
But if I'm getting a kick out of sitting around with all these money kings, why, they seem to be getting a kick out of me, too! Which strikes me as being kind of comical, because I'm Mr. Nothing himself right then. But Spence tells me they're all fight fans like his father and it is as much of a treat to them to be on familiar terms with the coming champion as it is for me to be there, if not more so. A bank president offering a heavy loan would get no more attention from 'em than I'm getting, says Spence, and he calls my attention to how his father is bragging about how long he's knew me and the etc. These birds is under a heavy strain during their business hours, Spence tells me, and this is so much pure fun for 'em—does 'em good, he says, to relax and talk about something else besides stocks and bonds. All rich men has hobbies, he adds, and I have become his father's hobby.
I suppose another thing which give me some standing with Mr. Brock's pals was the fact that I am there in a tux the same as they are and didn't show up in no cap and sweater and bust somebody in the nose just to be nasty, like maybe they figured a prize fighter would do. Mr. Brock draws me out on how I'm coming along with my studies and he asks me questions about different subjects and different books he knows I been reading. Every time I answer him I catch his friends glancing from one to the other kind of surprised, and you ought to see Mr. Brock throw out his chest and beam around at 'em as much as to say: "This boy's the trout's ankles, hey?"
Well, finally I look at my watch and it's nine o'clock, and as Nate insists on early to bed and early to rise when I'm training for a bout, why, I get up and wish everybody good night. They all stand up and shake hands with me, saying they are glad to of met me and they will see me again when I fight Jimmy Hanley. They're going to have ringside boxes and they hope I win. So I says I hope so myself, as far as that goes. So that was all settled.
That interview give me quite a kick! And why wouldn't it give me a kick to know a man like Mr. Brock was for me? Don't get the idea in your head that I had any plans to quit trying or ease up on the pace I'd set for myself because I had a millionaire for a ace in the hole. The only support I wanted from Mr. Brock, or even from Judy, was their encouragement and attention to my efforts to be a success. I supplied the rest of the ingredients, all by myself!
Spence walks home with me from his house that night, and on the ways he wants to know if I can bust away from my training for one afternoon the following week to see the Brooklyn Handicap run out on Long Island. The pet of his father's racing stable, "Knight Errant" was entered in it, and Spence claimed the big race would be a spread for this horse, which only a few days before had broke the track record in a private workout.
"If you have a couple of thousand lying around loose—as you must have, with the purses you've been getting for your fights lately, you bloated plutocrat, here's a chance to make a lot of quick, easy money!" Spence wound up, "Father thinks Knight Errant will be five to one, at least, and he'll win as sure as fate, or else"
"Or else he won't!" I butt in, grinning. "I don't know a thing about racing, Spence, and all I know about horses is that they eat a wicked oat. As for gambling on 'em, well"
"Who said anything about gambling?" Spence interrupts. "A bet on Knight Errant to win the Brooklyn is no gamble, Gale, it's a copper-riveted cinch! But suit yourself, of course. Far be it from me to lead you astray. I'm going to bet a thousand on Knight Errant myself and he'll go to the post carrying all of dad's money that the books will take. He gets in with an impost of only a hundred and ten pounds—a feather for him, Gale—and the best jockey in the East, Donovan, will have the leg up. Why, he'll win by himself! At any rate, try and get away to see the handicap, even if you don't bet a penny. The crowd, the excitement, and the soul-tingling thrill of a blanket finish will give you an awful kick!"
It did give me an awful kick and no mistake!
I lay awake a oversize hour that night, thinking about Spence telling me that Knight Errant will be unable to lose the Brooklyn Handicap at big odds. I had never been much of a gambler, mostly because until very lately I never had no spare jack to devote to this worthy purpose and didn't believe in luck. Still and all, I couldn't imagine Mr. Brock being wrong about anything, and if he's sure his horse will win—and at five to one! . . .
I simply couldn't get to sleep and that's all there was to it! I remembered reading somewheres that if you will merely close your eyes and begin counting imaginery sheep jumping over imaginery fences you will slip right off to dreamland. So I began counting, but I didn't count no sheep! What I am counting is dollars, like, should I bet a thousand on Knight Errant I would win five thousand and should I bet five thousand I would win twenty-five thousand and should I bet ten thousand I would win fifty thousand—and—well, the last I remembered before dropping off to slumber I am a trifle over a hundred thousand winner!
The next morning I nail Nate at breakfast.
"What d'ye think of Knight Errant in the Brooklyn Handicap?" I ask him, trying to be kind of careless about it.
"Hey, listen," says Nate. "Lay off the bang-tails, kid; they have kept me poor and broke wiser guys than either of us!"
"Applesauce!" I says. "I asked you a question—what d'ye think of Knight Errant?"
"He won't be in the money!" sneers Nate. "'At beagle's a sprinter, and a mile and a eighth's too much race for him. Cirrus will win 'at scramble from here to Brazil. He couldn't lose if he left his legs in the paddock!"
"But would they let him do that?" I says, with a sarcastical grin, and Knockout Kelly laughs.
"Both you guys is comical to me," says Kayo. "Knight Errant and Cirrus, hey? Blah! A couple of Airedales! Mad Hatter's my feed-box special. He'll tincan in! I'm parlayin' that bet right back on Postmaster to cop the last race. If they both come through, which they naturally will, I win forty-five hundred on the day! That's tough, hey?"
I leave 'em, still arguing, because that remark of Kayo's about parlaying his bet gives me a wonderful idea. Like a flash, I see a chance to quit the ring immediately after my fight with Jimmy Hanley, with a bank roll which would startle Vanderbilt. Then I can pick out a business of my own and maybe Judy will come in as a partner, and not only in the business either! I can't get to the bank quick enough.
Without saying a word to nobody—but the paying teller—I draw out all of my $20,086.19 but the eighty-six nineteen. Then I got down to Kale Yackley's cigar store and poolroom. Kale takes bets on the races, ball games, fights, and the like and sends 'em over to a big bookmaker in New York. He gets a heavy play from the men which works in the carpet factory and a couple other big plants. I ask Kale will he take a bet on Knight Errant to win the Brooklyn handicap.
"That's what I'm here for," smiles Kale. "How much?"
"Twenty thousand dollars," I says, calmly pulling out a package of brand-new thousand-dollar bills. "And I want it all parlayed back on me to knock out Jimmy Hanley!"
Kale's face was a movie as he gazes at the money, his eyes popping out so far you could of knocked 'em off with a can. But that don't bother me, I figure if I'm going to gamble at all, why, I might as well plunge like a man—take a chance of winning all or losing all, like Cæsar, Napoleon, and them other Big Leaguers done. They's no kick in risking anything less!
When Kale gets where he can talk, he stutters that he'll have to call up "Big Bill" Jacobs, the bookmaker in New York, and see if he'll take a bet as heavy and as cuckoo as mine. After a while he comes back, muttering and shaking his head. But he takes my jack and gives me a ticket calling for $20,000 on Knight Errant to win, at closing prices, and if the horse wins the entire loot is to go back on me, at prevailing odds, to knock out Hanley. "A sucker bet!" remarks Kale, handing me the ticket. I paid no attention. I am thinking if Knight Errant wins at five to one I'll go into the ring with Jimmy Hanley carrying a hundred thousand dollars of my own money that I'll knock him out! My whole future's at stake, yet I might say I was as cool as a cucumber—if I wanted to be a liar. Later, I told Spence what I done and Spence says good for me, but I notice his eyes looks worried.
Well, I go over to our office after making the bet with half a mind to tell Judy. Going up the stairs, I suddenly remember that she's away, having took her mother over to New York to see a big eye doctor. I'm coming down again, when who do I bump into at the first landing but Rags Dempster. I would of passed him without a word, but he grabs my arm and hangs onto me like he's drowning.
"For God's sake, Galen, give me ten minutes of your time!" he pants. "I'm in a terrible fix!"
I look at him in amazement. He seems to me like he's two inches from the hystericals and if I didn't know prohibition was in our midst I would swear he's been drinking heavily—a favorite drink of his any more. I'm so surprised at the shape he's in, wild-eyed and trembling, that I don't stop to think of what a terrible nerve he's got coming for help when he's in a jam to the fellow he's fouled a million times. Still and all, if he's really in trouble I can't turn him down cold without a hearing. I wouldn't want nobody to do that to me. So I told him to come on upstairs to the office.
A half hour later Rags is sitting at Judy's desk with his head buried in his arms—crying like a baby. I'm walking up and down the floor in a trance, but even in the trance I notice that Rags is sitting in Judy's chair and I stop walking long enough to make him get up and sit somewheres else. My mind's in a whirl, it is for a fact, because Rags has just told me he's stole ten thousand bucks from his father's office and dropped every nickel of it at roulette in a New York gambling house.
Sweet Mamma, what a trap he's in! I suppose after what he's done to me I should of been tickled silly that he's up against it proper, but I ain't particularly pleased, at that. I can't see many giggles in anybody getting the worst of it, can you?
But the thrilling part of Rags's story is the fact that his father will be back from Europe the following day and they don't seem to be no way out for Rags at all. First his father will hear about him being throwed out of college and the reasons why, and on top of that will come the knowledge that his son is a crook. Between moans, Rags tells me his father is what you call a hard man and not only will he cut off a finger nail, but they's more than a even chance that he'll send him to jail for good measure!
Well, they's something pitiful in seeing a man weep—and something disgusting, too. So I slap Rags on the heaving shoulders and tell him to snap out of it and I'll help him. After all, I think, this bird has been going down steadily while I been going up. Maybe the breaks has been against him.
Then, again, I figure to have a fortune when Knight Errant wins the handicap and I smack Jimmy Hanley silly, and it looks like I have drew away from Rags in the race for Judy, too. All together, I seem to be sitting pretty and I remember in the Bible which Mrs. Willcox gives me it says: "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; if he be thirsty, give him water to drink!" So I finally pull Rags together and send him away with my word that I'll loan him the jack to make his shortage good.
As I have bet every dime I got in the world on Knight Errant, why, getting together them ten thousand bucks for Rags is something of a trick and don't think it ain't! I didn't know nobody I would ask for that much dough, even if I needed it for myself. Still, I got it! It was a case of where they's a will, they's ten thousand dollars."
After a two-day tongue battle with Denver Nolan, got him to advance me ten thousand and I agree to call my twelve thousand guarantee for the Jimmy Hanley fight square. I lose two thousand bucks by playing Lady Bountiful for Rags, but I think what will a mere two thousand mean to me after I win my bet? Anyways, I give Rags the money and my word of honor that I won't tell nobody nothing about it.
When the day of the Brooklyn Handicap rolls around I drive over early to the Aqueduct track with Judy in my chumpy roadster. There was no more people there than there is in South Dakota and getting seats in the grand stand was a considerable feat, but we got 'em. There's three races before the big handicap, but they don't mean nothing to me, though I holler my head off with the rest, at a neck-and-neck finish in the steeplechase.
The excitement seems to hit Judy too, and she's having the time of her life! With her cheeks flushed a rosy red and her beautiful eyes sparkling like sapphires in a ring, she's a sight there ain't nobody forgetting overnight. She gets a third look from everybody and maybe I don't feel proud to be with her when them necks twists around after us!
Well, nothing will do but she has got to bet on a horse and when I says wait till the Brooklyn Handicap is over and I'll bet with her, she laughs and says I have been talking about nothing but that race since morning and anybody would think I had a fortune bet on it. Sweet Grandpa, if she only knew what I did have at stake! I ain't told her a word about it, I want to surprise her after the race—and that's what I done.
However, she closes her eyes and sticks her hatpin through the program for the third race. The pin goes through the name of a horse entitled Babbling Brook, and Judy sends me down to the betting ring with two bucks to lay on that baby for her! When I commence to tell her what a foolish way that is to gamble when she don't know nothing about the horse and just picked it blind, she starts to get sore, so I go down and bet her two dollars on Babbling Brook. I got my mind made up that when this goat runs last I will give her back her money and tell her I was too late to get it down.
Babbling Brook win by two lengths at twenty-five to one!
The next race is the Brooklyn, and by the time them horses is on their ways to the post I'm in terrible shape. The mob rushes to the rail and banks twenty deep against it—the buzzing, rumbling roar of their excited voices coming up to me in the grand stand just like it comes over the ropes to me in the ring.
I am trembling like a leaf and though I sink my teeth in my lower lip that don't seem to stop it. I borrow a pair of opera glasses from a cold-faced hardeyed guy next to me and I manage to pick out Knight Errant from the eleven prancing horses leaving the paddock. Mr. Brook's entry looks like a million dollars, tossing its shinny black head, rarin' to go! I can't sit down, and, for that matter, everybody seems to be standing on their seats, all chattering and laughing kind of nervous and elbowing each other this way and that. I hear a dozen horses' names. "Mad Hatter's a good thing!" . . . "Cirrus will win in a walk!" . . . "Boniface is a cinch at the weights!" . . . "Watch Knight Errant!" . . . Then, thirty thousand voices in one terrible roar which rolls across the field and echoes back: "They're off!"
I don't want no more twenty-thousand-dollar bets on no horse races when twenty thousand is all I got to my name. I put on ten years in the two minutes it took 'em to run that handicap! The big crowd has went cuckoo, howling and screaming like thirty thousand maniacs: . . . "Come on with Mad Hatter, come on with him, Jock!" "Use your whip, you dumbell!" "Boniface, Boniface, Boniface!" "Cirrus all the way!" "Knight Errant walks in!" "Aaaaah, look at the favorite run!"
I get swept off my perch, and the next thing I know I am half-ways down the steps to the field, pulled along by the yelling lunatics. Battling my way, I get to the fence, minus my hat, some buttons off my coat and the flap of a pocket. I hear 'em thundering into the stretch and then I see 'em bunched together on the far rail, a flying, bobbing mass of color. All of a sudden I let out a wild yell of joy. Out in front the jockey's arm rising and falling with the whip like he's beating a drum, is Knight Errant! I know Mr. Brock's color's; red cap, blue jacket with red bars. Knight Errant closed at three to one, not the five to one I expected, but sixty thousand for me if he wins! If he loses. . .
But you seen it in the papers. Knight Errant stumbled fifty yards from the finish, recovered too late, and run—fifth!
The jam at the rail breaks up quick. Lots of fellows is yelling with joy and running up to cash in their tickets as the numbers goes up, 6-3-1-Cirrus, Boniface, Mad Hatter. Others, like me, just stands there in a trance. It kind of slowly begins to get through my num head that I am clean—I ain't got a nickel in the wide, wide world. And as for Judy—miles away, hundreds of miles!
Then I think to myself: "Well, you big stiff, what are you going to do, bust out crying? Snap out of it! You couldn't get that twenty thousand back if you sobbed your eyes out— you can't get nothing if you're going to moan about it. Forget it, and start the ball rolling for another bank roll. It's all fun!"
I'm plowing my ways through the crowd back to Judy, a little bit older, but at least with my head up, when I bump smack into the last guy in the world I expect to see at a race track just then—Rags. He's tearing up some tickets and cursing Mr. Brock and Knight Errant, over and over again. Well, it kind of dumfounds me that Rags would be able to make a bet on anything when he's in a jam like he is now, so I ask him about it. He seems a bit startled to see me, peering at me out of a set of bloodshot eyes which has booze printed on 'em in raised letters.
"Is it any of your affair what I do?" he snarls, glaring at me.
"Well, no—I guess it ain't, Rags," I says. "Only I'd think a fellow which is in the trouble you are"
He busts out laughing at the top of his voice and I stop in the greatest of surprise.
"What's the joke?" I says.
Rag's lip curls at me in one of them sneers which would make a rabbit aggressive.
"You're the joke, my poor fool!" he says. "I'm not in any trouble—I never stole anything! I saw a chance for a clean-up on that infernal nag of Brock's, Knight Errant, if I had a respectable amount of money to bet. So I concocted that embezzlement story for your sole benefit and you fell for it beautifully, you boob! Ten thousand dollars for the mere asking, though you must admit I put on some artistic touches. Well, you owe me something for coming between me and Judy Willcox. As for the ten thousand—try and get it, that's all! You have nothing to show that I owe you a penny, and I have your word of honor that you'll never tell!"
Well, I just stand there and stare into his grinning face. I'm afraid to touch him, honest I am, because I know I would never be satisfied with just beating him up! I'd bump him off as sure as my name's Gale Galen, and I didn't want to go to the chair. But somebody pushes in between us and grabs Rags's arm. It's Nate Shapiro and his face is as white as white itself.
"You double-crossin', yellah hound!" he bawls at Rags. "You bet he's got somethin' to show 'at you owe him 'at jack—he's got me! I heard every word you said, d'ye get that, you crook? I know Gale—he'll never cuff you, but it's different here! You're laughin', hey? Well, laugh this off!"
With that he knocks Rags fat on his shoulder blades, and then ducks through the crowd which comes running up. I continue on up to the grand stand and Judy.
I guess she knows something is wrong the minute she sees me, though I try to act natural.
"Gale, what's the matter?" she says que, "Did you lose on that race?"
I nod my head, it's buzzing like a bee-hive.
"How much?" she wants to know, pulling me around till I face her.
"Oh, just a few dollars," I says, with a synthetic grin.
I should of knew by this time that I can't fool Judy. In a few minutes she draws the entire box score from me, with the slight exception of what Rags has did. I see by her pale face that it's a terrible blow to her to hear I have lost my last dime on this horse race. But instead of bawling me out, a thing I confidently expect, why, she is just full of sympathy, squeezing my arm and telling me never mind I'll soon have it all back and more. Coming at a time when I never needed it worse, her sweetness is more than a tonic and does wonders for my peace of mind. Ain't she a knockout, no fooling?
I sit there just looking at her and I find the view a thrilling one indeed. I'm doing a piece of heavy thinking—thinking what I could do if she'd always be with me, when I hear her saying that I don't have to start penniless, I'll at least have the twelve thousand I'm going to get for my fight with Jimmy Hanley for the light heavyweight title.
Before I get a chance to stall on this subject, along comes Nate, still steamed up about Rags. His first remark, though, is that he win five thousand even on Cirrus, and that Kayo Kelly dropped one thousand on Mad Hatter and is fit to be tied. Then he turns to Judy.
"Did Gale tell you what that—what Rags Dempster done to him?" he demands.
Judy's eyes widens and she says no. I try to shut Nate up, but he tells Judy how Rags took me for that ten thousand bucks and made me like it. Well, she goes right up in flames and says she will go to Rags's father and tell him the whole business and make him pay me. Honest, I never see her so hopping mad before in all my life! But I make her promise to lay off. What good would it do to tell Rags's old man. I got no proof and who's word would his father take? To tell you the truth, I'm more interested in the fact that Judy thinks enough of me to want to go to the bat for me than I am in the ten thousand or ten million!
Well, three days later I fight Jimmy Hanley and you know what happened. I never went into a battle more determined to win and win quick! Before the bell rings for the first frame, I got everything to set in my mind. If I lose this scrap, I got to start at the bottom and begin all over again, broke. The five thousand and up purses will be a thing of the past till I can fight my ways to another chance at the title. If I win it, why, I'm a champion and I can write my own ticket for the amounts I get to display my wares. I can even go to Europe and get a crack at Gunner Slade, world's champion light heavy. Yet, I got to win and win quick!
As I had gave Rags Dempster the money I was to get for this scuffle, I am really fighting Hanley for nothing, but I find that more of a help than anything else. Hanley come out smiling at the bell, nodding to friends at the close-packed ringside. He blocks my straight left and counters with a light jab to my mouth, I shake my head and bore in to close quarters and both of us land hard rights and lefts to the body, while the crowd settles back to look at a long, tough fight.
The next second they are all on their feet, triple cuckoo! As we come out of a clinch, we both start a right swing for the other's jaw. I beat Hanley to the punch, connecting solidly, and he went down on his haunches like somebody tripped him. The house is in a uproar as the referee begins the counting and one look at Hanley's goofy, how-did-this-happen grin is enough for me! I know how to work when he gets up—if he does.
He did. He's on his feet at "eight" and the customers howl for me to finish him. I gives him plenty chance to stand erect and then I measure him with a light left and sock my right to his heart. He falls over on me and hangs there for his life, gasping for breath.
The referee finally tears him away and Hanley surprises me with a wild left hook to the head which sends me back against the ropes and gives his friends a chance to yell. But that's just a dying flurry. Hanley never got over that first punch which floored him, and I know it's only a question now of a opening! I don't want to cut him up by playing safe and wearing him down, as some guys would of done. I want to slip him a clean knockout—quick, painless, and a proper way for a champ to lose. The way I wanted to get it myself when my time came.
The opening comes thirty seconds before the bell and just when Hanley seems to be finding himself and getting stronger. I am covered up and letting him drive me across the ring with a shower of lefts and rights, most of which is bouncing off my bent elbows, but some of which gets through. The ones which did connect was not doing me no good and that's a fact! Hanley was a mean puncher, but that knockdown has ruined his timing and generalship. He's snarling at me to open up and fight when I suddenly hook my left to his wind with everything I got behind it.
Hanley grunts, looks worried and backs away, while advice pours from his corner like water over a dam! I follow him slowly to the ropes, stabbing my left in his face to keep him from setting for a punch. A quick feint for his body draws down his guard, and I throw a right at his head which buckles his shaky knees and brings the bawling mob to its feet again. Dizzy and all at sea, Hanley swings a vicious left, and I step in under it, crossing my right flush to his jaw. This punch should of knocked him cold. It did!
I am light heavyweight champion of America, but I ain't got a dime to my name.
Mr. Brock and Spence is the first ones to greet me when I climb down under the ropes after my one-round win. Mr. Brock grabs my glove and pumps my hand up and down till my arm's sore. Then he tells me Spence has wised him up to what happened to me when Knight Errant stumbled in the stretch. He claims he feels more or less responsible for me going to the cleaners, as his son laid me on the horse, and he wants to make good my twenty thousand out of his own pocket. As if I'd let him!
"But, you poor devil—" begins Mr. Brock, when I says no.
"I ain't no poor devil, Mister Brock, don't call me that!" I says, quietly. "I hate that expression! I don't want to be cried over. I'm young and healthy and I got some valuable experience now that I didn't have before. In a way, I'm glad I lost that money. It's cured me forever of gambling, that's a cinch! If I'd of won that bet, I might be hanging around the race tracks till I lost my ambition and a few other things which is more than money. I'll start right in again to-morrow doing my stuff, and"
"But you haven't a penny!" interrupts Mr. Brock impatiently. "You are just where you started!"
"Oh, no,'m not just where I started, Mister Brock," I grins, throwing out my chest. "You forget—I'm a champion!"