Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/243

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

crowd? Who does the fighting? The scrapper! Who gets the money? The promoter! Well, I don't need no promoters. I'll stage my next battle myself and find out for good and all whether they is anything else I can do besides fight, or am I doomed to be a leather pusher for the rest of my natural life!"

By this time Judy is all excited and the skin I'd love to touch is flushed a rosy red.

"Of course, Gale, I'm delighted to know you want to try anything apart from prize fighting," she says. "And maybe if you are successful in promoting this fight, that will be an incentive to you to try promoting bigger things. Just how will you go about it?"

"Well," I says, "first I'll get together with Nate and figure out how much actual cash we'll have to put up for the rent of a arena, Kid Christopher's guarantee, the dough for the preliminary boys, and all that stuff. Then when I get the figures, why, I'll just go out and raise the jack. That's all they is to that!"

Judy smiles. "As easy as that?" she says, kind of doubtful. "I'm not trying to discourage you, Gale, but it seems to me all that will take a lot of money. Where will you get it?"

"Faint heart never won a bank roll!" I grins back at her. "I'll form a pool right here in Drew City among my friends, each one to put in so much, and, after the fight, take down profits according to their investment. They's Mister Brock, Spence, Lem Garfield, Ajariah Stubbs, Knockout Kelly, Nate, Kale Yackley, and plenty more which has got lavish umbrella money hid out for a rainy day. Of course, it's going