Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/298

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

from his pocket and jabs the needle a mile in the side of my throbbing hand.

"Listen!" he pants in my ear. "'At's cocaine, get me? It'll start to work in a minute and if they cut your arm off you wouldn't feel a thing! Go out there now and swap wallops with this big tramp. I don't think he can take it and if he could hit he'd of stopped you long ago, because he's already slapped you with everything but the bell. Go on now, kid, do your stuff!"

As the gong rung, Nate turns and hands the hypodermic syringe down to a newspaper man which has been watching all this with the greatest of surprise.

Well, I'm a new man when I jump off my stool for the fourth round. With my hand cocained, I figure I'm free to tie into the Gunner and that's what I done! I ducked his straight left and sunk my right under his heart with everything I got behind it and you never seen such a painfully astonished guy in your life. I think that one punch licked Gunner Slade, because his return, skidding off my ear, felt to me like the cuff of a playful kitten. Another torrid right down below opened him up, and while the crowd is still going nutty over the remarkable change which has suddenly come over me, I hooked him flush on the jaw with the same glove. He staggered back against the ropes, floundering around like a drunken man. His seconds shrieked for him to dive into a clinch and I grinned at 'em over my shoulder, measured Slade with a light left and then shot my right at his bobbing jaw. He went down like a German mark and down is where he stayed!