The Leather Pushers (1921, G. P. Putnam's Sons)/Round 6
The gift of bein' able to think, whilst his charmin' opponent is merrily bouncin' gloves off his achin' bean, has turned seemin'ly certain defeat into a sensational victory for many's the battered and punch-drunk box fighter. Next to the ability to knock a man kickin' with either hand and the heart to weather a sudden unexpected hurricane of crushin' rights and lefts to the body or jaw, coolness under fire is the most important part of the high-class leather pusher's make-up. Hundreds of promisin' kids, which can hit like Caruso can sing and take punishment like the information clerk at a railroad station, never get past the semifinals because the only use they make of their heads is to butt the other guy with.
They know that a punch on the jaw will prob'ly knock their tête-à-tête for a goal if it lands on what is known to the trade as the "button," and with that idea firmly planted in their mind they sail out of their corner at the first bell and begin wildly swingin' at the bobbin' chin in front of 'em with gusto and abandon. As far as they're concerned, the other baby ain't got no short ribs, kidneys, heart, stomach, or any of the other places where a well-timed right or left smash might end the thing and send the crowd home hoarse and rejoicin'. They once flattened a guy with a roundhouse swing to the jaw, and they're now convinced that all they is to the art of box fightin' is jab with the left to the body and then, as friend opponent's guard comes down, cross the right to the jaw.
It's comical to watch them boneheads work when they're in there tryin' with a cool-headed, clever kid which gets 'em all figured out in Round One and makes 'em punchin' bags from then on. The fast boxer, which ain't especially fond of takin' it, knows they're dangerous right up to the last: bell, no matter how badly he's outpointed 'em, because one properly placed clout from this flounderin' tramp may put him out for half a hour. So, guessin' their every move and bein' sure of his own footwork, he keeps stickin' his chin invitin'ly in front of 'em. The boob's eyes glitters and he stabs his ponderous left feint for the body, at the same time drawin' back the deadly right so's a guy sixteen miles from the clubhouse would know what he figured on doin' with it. The boss boxer makes a play at droppin' his guard. The boob swings, misses, and is exceedin'ly surprised to find his own right eye beginnin' to close and the mob yellin' for his immediate extinction. He shakes his head doubtfully, pulls a silly grin, and tries again, with the same result. Next time maybe the other kid walks into the right swing, lets it go over his shoulder, and shakes the tramp from stem to stern with half a dozen rights and lefts to his wide-open body before the disgusted referee pulls 'em apart. And so it goes to the final gong, the clever guy which can't hit pilin' up points and the ham with the man-killin' wallop rippin' the air with useless wallops which tire him out and make him a set-up, because he ain't got brains enough to realize his attack is all wrong and needs to be mixed up a bit to get results.
The toughest job a pilot of box fighters has is to hammer into the usual mass of concrete between the neck and hair of his meat cards the importance of watchin' at all times durin' a hard bout for the lucky break which means a win for the guy which takes advantage of it. It may be a little incident which the crowd never sees. For the example, many's the guy I've seen knocked cold the instant he reached down mechanically to give a hitch to a pair of slippin' tights. The other baby had noticed that his playfellow's trunks was loose and was waitin' till he reached down to grab 'em, knowin' that for maybe a eighth of a second his guard would be lowered—and—well, a eighth of a second's enough! The heavyweight championship of dear old England once depended on a thing as small and seemin'ly as unimportant as that. Pull your chairs up close, and I'll just about kill the next half hour with the tale.
About two months after we have knocked Tiger Capato dead in a round—the Tiger bein' supposedly the last hurdle between us and the champ—me and Kid Roberts is convened in our lair at the hotel in New York discussin' the fascinatin' subject of box fightin'. The indications was that the champ's movie contracts would keep him outside the ropes for the worst part of a year, but in the meanwhile we have got to eat and likewise add to this bank roll for the Kid's busted old man. Business in our line was very dull in the land the Marines made famous, for the reason that we have trimmed all the good heavies and the Kid will not under no circumstances frame a scrap or fight set-ups.
"It's more than eight weeks since I fought Capato," the Kid growls, pacin' up and down the room like a irritated panther. "In that time we haven't earned a penny, and I haven't drawn on a glove. I'm getting stale through lack of work and—"
"Just a minute," I says soothin'ly. "It's your own fault we can't get no work. If you'd of saved up some of them boloneys for return dates, instead of bouncin' 'em all in a couple of rounds, we could go back over the circuit like the rest of 'em does and clean up again. Now, the only way we can get a fight—"
"Is to join the Polish army, I suppose!" butts in the Kid bitterly. "Well, if—"
"No!" I hollers, jumpin' up. "Not Poland, but England! France and England, where the set-ups runs wild and where any guy which gets through two fights without bein' knocked kickin' is made champion of Europe in whatever class he's in. Why, you'll be a riot over there, Kid; I must of been crazy not to of thought of it before!"
"Well, don't talk about it; let's go!" snarls the Kid, nervously reachin' for his hat. "I'm going out and walk off some of this depression, and incidentally I'll find out about passports and accommodations—it will give me something to do. This infernal inactivity is driving me mad and it must be damned unpleasant for you, old man, to have to bear the brunt of my beastly temper."
"That's all right, son," I grins, pattin' him on the back. "All real fighters is temperamental, whether they work with their head or their hands. By the way, speakin' of fightin' and the etc., d'ye know our contract run out last week and that right now they ain't a thing holdin' you to me if you want to cut loose? You're no fifty-dollar preliminary ham any more, Kid; you're the next world's heavyweight champion, with a possible half million iron men ready to fall into your pockets in two or three years. Also, you ain't no bone-headed roughneck which don't know what it's all about; you got a college education, a business head, and somethin' I'll never have—class! If it come to it, you could make your own matches, look after your own affairs, and a few extry pennies will get you experienced handlers to swing a towel in your corner every time you start. All this would mean a savin' to you of half your earnin's—the half I get now. I want you to know just how you stand so's you can make your own choice, Kid, because you—well, you been different than any guy I ever handled: we been more like pals than manager and box fighter—and I got a right to enjoy the sensations of bein' square if I wanna."
The Kid come over and takin' both my hands in them bone crushers of his, presented me with a full-toothed smile.
"As long as I remain in the ring I want you to look after the business end of my affairs," he says. "It was your canny matchmaking, whole-hearted en couragement and the shrewd advice and training you gave me that took me as far as I am now! It was also you who bullied the promoters into giving me the guarantees I've been getting and got my price raised from two hundred a bout to five hundred and more a round. I'm not going to cast you aside now, just when there's a chance for you to cash in on your efforts. No, we'll stick together until the finish and keep the split at fifty-fifty, old man. You're earning your share as much as I earn mine. Why, if I couldn't look over when the going gets rough and see you in my corner, I'd be as helpless as a rudderless ship! As you say, we've been pals—and pals don't break over money. We don't need a contract. I'm sure our friendship is stronger than any legal sheet of paper. Let's continue as we have been doing on a—a—gentlemen's agreement. Does that hit you all right?"
Did it hit me all right? I'll ejaculate it did! Imagine a blue-corpuscled, classy, inlaid in the decanter aristocrat like him, intimatin' out loud that I am what is known as a gentleman. Sweet Mamma, should he of gave me a hundred thousand bucks right then, I wouldn't of felt no better!
Well, about ten days later we are out on the boundin' billows on the en route to King George's home town, and they ain't no hospital and few cemeteries in the world containin' a guy one-fifth as sick as me. For three days I was a object which would of aroused pity in the chest of a Bowery loan shark, and I accumulated some doubts about Columbus discoverin' America, on the account I don't believe anybody ever stayed on the ocean that long. With the Kid, how the so ever, it was all different. The boy had sailed a mean yacht and the etc when his masculine parent had large quantities of sugar, and he was as much at home in the cradle of the deep as a barnacle. He dragged me out of the cabin where I had crawled to die in peace and made me gallop around the deck, till, much to my dumfounded astonishment, I was able to listen to the dinner bugle without goin' into convulsions as heretofore.
About four days after the ship has been caperin' wildly hithers and you on the ocean, and I have decided they is more heroes in the navy than any other place in the wide, wide world, a ball is had on the heels of supper. The Kid drags out his "Curse you, Jack Dalton!" scenery, wraps it around his manly form, and won't have it no other way but that I climb into the one he made me stake myself to and join the merry mob on the promenade deck. As a dancer, I'm a fine box-fight manager! I don't know the difference between a bar of music and a bar of soap, provided they is any, and after I have sit out a couple of Onesteps with Janes which would be safe anywheres and which talked about their varied operations and how many times they had been across, I escaped to the smokin' room on the account of preferrin' the male liars to the female pests.
But Kid Roberts had a field day with the ladies as per usual. This big blond in evenin' clothes was a sight which would of made Apollo take arsenic, and, Sweet Mamma, how the women did set sail for him, once he started steppin' out on that ballroom floor! Young, old, and unhappy mediums in between crowded around the Kid, vampin' him silly, while their boy friends and bitter half-s let forth glowers of rage.
How the so ever, while Kid Roberts had a fatal weakness for the sex made famous by the Garden of Eden, I didn't get particularly nervous as long as he played no favorites but kept circulatin' hithers and you among the beautiful girls, some of which was in evenin' gowns which would of wrung a gasp from Annette Kellermann.
But, alas and alackaday, my worst fears come to a head when along around the shanks of the evenin' a couple of newcomers appeared on the scenes, in the shape of a inclined-to-be elderly and dignified gent and a inclined-to-be young and dazzlin' girl. Aside from everything else, money and class stuck out all over 'em. Kid Roberts let forth a gasp and flashed white for the part of a second when the old boy drawed off the girl's opera cloak, revealin' some thin' in the feminine line which would of mesmerized Adam into givin' Eve her apple back untasted. Sweet Papa, what a knockout she was! One of them little de luxe editions of the world's greatest mystery story, viz., woman: hair a bewilderin' fluff of polished copper, eyes as fascinatin' as a month-old baby's and less sophisticated, a complexion which would retail for about ten thousand fish, could you get it in a can and a—eh—a figure which would make the front row of the Ziegfeld Follies seem like a shapeless mass. I figured her age at about half a hour past nineteen, and they is no doubt that many's the tall, willowy blonde took one look at this vest-pocket size heart breaker that night and wished she had missed the boat!
The Kid was down for the count after the first look, and the luck of fools and lovers, which is the same thing, was with him. Over comes the old gent himself whilst this second Venus is dancin' with some bimbo which must of been born with a four-leafed clover in each hand.
"Pardon me," remarks the apparent father of the prettiest girl on our popular planet, whilst he pulls a grin which tags him to me as a regular guy. "You're Kane Halliday, are you not?"
The Kid looks kind of flushed, but he was always there with the old drawin'-room stuff. "I am," he admits, with a well-placed bow. "But you have the advantage of me, I'm afraid."
"I suppose so," says old Father William. "It's some years since I last saw you, and then you were too busy to stop for a chat."
He puts his hand on the Kid's shoulder and throws that grin into high.
"You were—ah—going through eleven husky young Harvard cubs with a pigskin tucked under your left arm!"
The Kid blushes like a bevy of schoolgirls, but before he can set the old guy goes on: "I'm Senator Brewster of New York, a schoolmate of your dear mother's—whom you greatly resemble—and an admirer of your prowess in the twenty-four-foot square. I saw your last fight with Kennedy and it was a corker. Halliday, your right hook to the jaw is the fastest thing I've ever seen inside of a glove and I haven't missed a championship bout in the last twenty-five years!"
"You're a boxing enthusiast, then?" inquires the Kid with the greatest of relief, whilst a wanderin' eye fixes itself on the girl which had been with the old boy.
"Indeed, I am!" says our elderly tête-à-tête, with a touch of gusto. "Much to the annoyance of Dolores—my daughter—whose feminine curiosity led her to witness one prize fight with me and who, I am sure, will never see another! Not understanding the—eh—fine points of the game, she thought it merely a brutal and disgusting exhibition—to quote her verbatim. I've been boxing with an instructor at my club in Washington for nearly a year, and I feel like a boy of twenty. I don't know what a doctor looks like, and I'm eating and sleeping like a Hoosier farm hand! If you intend doing any training to keep in condition on the trip across, Halliday, I'd be delighted to come down to the very excellent gymnasium they have on the lower deck and—ah—limber up a bit with you."
The Kid smiles down at this good old sport, which, for all his white hair and wrinkled face, looked the photograph of health and likewise able to give a good account of himself, fisticuffally speakin' should the occasion ever come up.
"I shall be pleased to have you, senator," says Kid Roberts, and then, realizin' that him and the sen is far from alone, he introduces me with not a little zest. The president baiter seemed tickled silly to be hangin' out with the famous Kid Roberts and his equally likable manager, and I was beaucoup glad that I'd had brains enough to be caparisoned in a dress suit, the first and only time in my gay young life I ever give a U. S. or an any other senator the pleasure of shakin' hands with me.
"I want you to meet my daughter," says the gentleman from New York, and the Kid's eyes takes on a glint which might of caused the senator to reconsider his proposition, if he had noticed it.
The Kid smiles and then immediately gets serious. "Perhaps," he says quietly, "perhaps Miss Brewster would not care to be introduced to a—a—prize fighter, in view of her dislike of boxing."
"Eh—ahem," says the senator, linking his arm in the Kid's,—"I—ah—Halliday, whatever you may be doing now and for whatever reason, you are a gentleman born. You forgot I reminded you that your mother and I were schoolmates. For a heavyweight boxer you are singularly free from the usual marks of your profession and—ah—it might be as well not to mention your—ah—calling to Dolores just now. It seems to me that we can find many other interesting subjects to discuss."
The Kid bowed, but they was a queer look on his face, and the next thing I know we are havin' another orgy of introductions, and then Dolores Brewster and the Kid is slidin' over the polished floor and me and Senator Brewster is out in the smokin' room talkin' box fightin' and drinkin' none of your business!
Well, from that minute till we fin'ly reached the bustlin' village of Liverpool, Kid Roberts hung around Dolores Brewster like she was a glass bowl and he was a gold fish. They danced, eat, walked, talked, bridge-whisted, ouija-boarded, and whatnot together till they was the talk of the ship.
When the Irish coast looms up on the horizon the Kid bounces into our cabin at the witchin' hours of midnight and without no preliminaries knocks me for a goal by announcin' he's gonna wed Dolores Brewster at his earliest possible convenience. This was about the eighteenth romantical affair de heart which had occurred to the Kid since he come under my wings and about the first one to show the earmarks of bein' annoyin'ly serious on the part of both sides. I spent somthin' like two hours beggin', threatenin', pleadin', and arguin' with Kid Roberts against allowin' himself to be dragged to a altar before he had became heavyweight champ of the entire world. He sit on the side of his berth with a faraway and long-ago look on his face and a shoe in his hand, and when I get all through on the account I got to get my breath, he let forth a sigh and remarks to a near-by porthole:
"And to think—to think we're going to be married as soon as we reach London!"
Sweet Mamma, a guy in love is tough to take!
How the so ever, I'm still hopin' that somethin' untoward will come to the pass as of yore before this love's young dream can turn into a nightmare for me. My wildest hopes was realized the night we anchored in a river which the English has nicknamed the Mersey. The Kid and his charmer is givin' the dark deck and moonlight thing a heavy play folleyin' the customary dancin' and by dumb's luck I happen to almost stumble over 'em whilst I'm taking a slight promenade. I have never listened at no keyholes or the like in my life, as I am not that type of guy, but I could not prevent myself hearin' Miss Dolores Brewster tell the Kid that unless he give up the prize ring at once and immediately, all bets was off. He was a nice, bright, handsome, and ambitious kid, but she wanted no leather pushers in hers, and that was that!
I leave it to you how I waited and hung on the Kid's answer. They was no question but that he was head over heels as far as Dolores was concerned and everybody in the world knows that a guy which has fell a victim to love's sweet charms ain't got the brains of a gnat left in his head. The heavyweight title and all the sugar which went with it was loomin' in the offin' and if Kid Roberts threw away his gloves now—Woof, just thinkin' about it got me on the brink of the hysterics!
"My dear," he says, "what you ask is impossible. I have gone too far to turn back now. The atmosphere of the prize ring is almost as obnoxious to me as it is to you, but until I have earned enough money to rehabilitate my father and myself I must go on. Also, you seem to forget that if we are to be"—the boy's voice shook a bit, and he leaned closer if that was possible—"if we are to be married, I must have enough money to insure your—"
"Father has more money than he knows what to do with," she butts in, layin' a vampish hand on his arm.
"He is very fortunate," remarks the Kid kinda chilly, as he straightened up. "But your father's money has nothing whatever to do with me. No, dear, if this were a book or a moving picture, I would probably renounce my present profession in a highly melodramatic manner, and then it would be discovered that I am really the heir to the throne of Alluvia, or something like that, in disguise. But being sordid reality, I'm afraid I'll have to play my hand out to the finish. There is too much at stake for me to give up now!"
Dolores played her ace. She give vent to a sigh and presented the Kid with a glance, which if it made me dizzy, what do you figure it must of done to him?
"Even for me?" she murmurs.
"Even for you!" answers the Kid, hoarse but firm.
Dolores Brewster gathered up her cloak and drifted into the cabin without as much as a glance or a answer to the Kid's dazed exclamation.
So that was all settled!
Three weeks after the above came to the pass, me and Kid Roberts is located at Hampstead Heath, a burg on the hoopskirts of dear old London, trainin' for a scheduled twenty-round muss with Bandsman Shayne, heavyweight assault and battery champion of the United (ha, ha!) Kingdom of Ireland and Great Britain.
I signed articles for the entertainment whilst the Kid was scourin' Blighty with a vacuum cleaner in a effort to find Dolores Brewster. Bandsman Shayne was likewise among those absent at the signin' of the articles, the pugilistic pride of England bein' tourin' the outlands as a vaudeville attraction. So the young men didn't meet when us managers convened at the National Sportin' Club and, over a couple of seidels of the stuff the Anti-Saloon League made famous, accepted a purse of four thousand pounds for the massacre, to be split so per cent to the winner and 40 per cent to the guy they carried out. Bandsman Shayne's manager was a tall, slim, walrus-whiskered baby which packed a shifty eye and mixed a mean highball. He looked, talked, and acted like the undefeated champion boob of the world, and that's what I figured him. Oo la la, what a awakenin' I got!
Well, the Kid took to his trainin' like Mary Pickford took to a camera and within a week I was practically out of sparrin' partners. Cut to the quick by the charmin' Miss Brewster havin' gave him the raspberry, he went around snarlin' and growlin' like a peeved bear, and he seemed to get a lot of relief by batterin' his handlers from pillar to post.
I found handlers as scarce in and around Hampstead Heath as silence is in a locomotive works, and when about ten days before the fight a big husky strolls into our camp and asks for a job I could of kissed him, and for all I know I did! This boy was one tough-lookin' baby and he had "I-can-take-it!" wrote all over him. He was a good fifteen pounds heavier than my 195 ringside Kid Roberts and fully as tall, and before he ever raised a glove I knowed he had been to the races many's the time before, by the way he climbed through the ropes of the trainin' ring. He claimed he was entitled Gunner Enright and was due to go to the post himself in a couple of weeks. He says likewise that he wants experience more than anything else and would give the Kid all the limberin' up he could stand for two pounds a week and board.
Gunner Enright had been in our midst just one hour, English time, when I was fallin' over my own feet makin' him propositions to come back to the U. S. under my management, for I seen that this bimbo could knock two-thirds of our second-rate heavies for a row of refuse containers. Kid Roberts was as happy as a bride winnin' her first argument and promised this guy a bonus if he trimmed the Engish title holder, because the Gunner was givin' him the first real workouts he'd had since we hit the old country. He was fast, he was clever, he could hit, and he could take it, and that's all even the A. E. F. could do, hey?
Gunner Enright told me he'd think over my proposition to come back with us to the formerly Land of the Spree, and when I asked him was this Bandsman Shayne a false alarm or a beaucoup puncher, the Gunner curls his wolf's lip and pans the English champ for half a hour. He claims the box-fightin' musician is as yellah as the Chinese flag, has ducked either twelve or eighty-six chances to meet him, and that Kid Roberts should put him away with three or four clouts at the utmost.
A few days before the large clash the Kid draws me aside whilst waitin' for the Gunner to get into his trainin' togs, and they's a queer smile on his face.
"This Enright would be a sensation in America if he was properly matched," he says. "No man I have fought has given me a stiffer argument than he does when he gets warmed up to his work. He's a terrific body puncher and can also take his gruel without flinching—if you've noticed, he's scarcely taken a backward step in all the workouts we've had together. I have the firm conviction that this fellow has never really cut loose yet. He gives me the impression many times that he's holding back his returns. Tell him to-day to let me have everything he has in stock. If I can't handle a sparring partner, I've got no business in the same ring with a champion, and the sooner I find it out the better!"
I grinned and glanced toward Gunner Enright, which was comin' over with the gloves.
"As usual before every big scrap you got a attack of nerves," I say. "I'll tell this cuckoo to give you the works, and then I want you to knock him out—just so's he won't kid himself that he could take you if he wanted to."
The Kid shakes his head. "I'm not going to punish any sparring partner unnecessarily," he says. "I'm getting plenty of work letting them come to me and simply standing them off. You've seen that I always let them clinch and recover when I forget myself and sting them a bit. I've been a little more strenuous with this man than with the others, only because he can assimilate punishment and seems to fight better when he's shaken up. Tell him to try and knock me out—I want to see what he's concealing."
They boxed three two-minute rounds, goin' at it hammer and tongs, and they was a lot more action in this thing than in many's the real mill I've looked at. Gunner Enright took me at my word, and if he didn't endeavor to knock my comin' champ for a goal, then Grant didn't care whether he win the Civil War or not! The Gunner was gettin' a trifle too fast for me, and had opened up a old gash over the Kid's left eye which bled rather lavishly, when I called a halt. Right before I bawled "Time!" he staggered Roberts with a beautiful right to the head, and the Kid, thoroughly enjoyin' himself, come back with two lefts to the jaw that dropped the enthusiastic Gunner to his knees. That was ample for me, and I stopped the show. Much to my amazement, the Gunner apparently lost his head and insisted on continuin' the quarrel. He begin by pleadin' and wound up by gettin' nasty. When he hollered that he could "Bash the bleedin' Yank's fyce in!" meanin' the highly amused Kid, I paid him off and, with the kindly assistance of a couple of volunteers, throwed him out of the camp.
The night of the Kid Roberts-Bandsman Shayne fracas they closed all doors of the National Sportin' Club at half past eight. The main event wasn't due to get under way till ten, but the galleries and other seats for the middle clawsses and the etc each contained two guys a few minutes after the entrances opened at seven. This Shayne person had a followin' which can only be compared to the one Roosevelt had and they was all there to see their man give the American leather pusher the trimmin' of his young life. The English sports figured the bout would be a spread for their champ, and before my exactin' duties called me to the dressin' room, I had got down five thousand fish on the possibilities of the Kid's right hook to the jaw at 2½ to 1.
The weights was announced as: Kid Roberts, 196½; Bandsman Shayne, 214.
Bandsman Shayne was already in his corner when we come to the party, as I had purposely made him wait for us to see what it would do to his nerves. I was very anxious for my first flash at him, and so was the Kid, but he had so many handlers and the like flittin' around him that it was the same as impossible to view him. Fin'ly the referee called us to the center of the ring for final instructions, and Bandsman Shayne stepped forward, facin' the Kid.
Roberts gave vent to a gasp which could of been and no doubt was heard in Shantung, and, Sweet Papa—I liked to fell through the ropes!
Bandsman Shayne was no less than our old pal and formerly chore boy, "Gunner Enright!"
I don't know whether that referee told us we was allowed to kick and bite in the clinches and that knives would be furnished after the first round or not. I never heard a word he said, for I was gettin' set to clip Bandsman Shayne's grinnin' manager on the button, when the white-faced Kid Roberts shoved me away. The referee raised his eyebrows and coldly motioned me to our corner, where I slumped up against the ropes in a trance. Think what that English—ah—ah—cuckoo had pulled on us! Knowin' we'd never seen the Bandsman, he sends his man up to train for this championship battle with the very man he's gonna fight! A instant's thought will show the dummest bimbo in captivity the priceless advantages Bandsman Shayne win for himself by this raw trick. He's worked out every day with the guy he's gonna face in the ring for the real muss. He's apparently learned every punch, every trick, and every weakness of his comin' versus, whilst at the same time, by skillful fakin' of his own work, he's gave away no information of value on himself. He's givin' us about two minutes to shift our carefully rehearsed and long-planned scheme of battle and he's grabbed off a powerful asset in the moral blow this last-minute discovery handed the Kid, which walked slowly back to his corner waitin' the openin' gong, every muscle doin' a dance, his teeth fastened in his lower lip and his face whiter than eight dollars' worth of cream. They wasn't a dozen guys around that ring which after one searchin' glance wouldn't of bet fifty to one Kid Roberts didn't last a round with the laughin', jokin', and supremely confident Bandsman Shayne. Before I could rouse myself and make a last desperate protest to have the mill called off, the old cowbell rung out.
They hadn't exchanged three wallops before I seen we was in for a rough evenin', if not for crushing defeat! This Bandsman Shayne was a fighter and the Kid was wilder than a Borneo circus attraction. In his desire to end matters at once, Roberts missed a half dozen leads, and the smilin' Bandsman peppered him at short range with rights and lefts to the body that had the Kid flounderin' about the ring, punch drunk and weary before the openin' frame was half over. I don't think Kid Roberts landed four clean wallops durin' the entire session. He simply got off on the wrong foot and couldn't set himself thereafter. Comin' out of a clinch, the Bandsman deliberately butted my boy with his head, layin' his right cheek open and drenchin' him scarlet. The referee politely warned the Englishman in response to my frantic yellsof "Foul!" and, a few seconds ahead of the gong, Shayne connected with a long overhand right to the jaw that sprawled the Kid on his face in a neutral corner. He was on one knee, shakin' his head to clear it and gazin' at me for advice, when the referee had counted "eight" and the welcome bell rung.
They is a mild clappin' of hands around the ringside and some real old-fashioned yells from the galleries whilst we're hustlin' the Kid to his corner and workin' over him. I guess to everybody but me he looked a beaten man! His left eye was completely closed, his lips puffed and swollen, and the gash in his right cheek took five stitches to close. But his wind was still perfect, a cold vicious grin had took the place of the nervous twitchin' of his mouth, and as he shook the water I doused him with from his blond hair he grunted: "This fellow can hit, but I'll get him in the next round!"
Round two opened with the Kid dancin' lightly around the confident Bandsman and suddenly hookin' his right to the head and smashin' his left to the body. The Englishman looked surprised and backed to the ropes cautiously, showin' a beautiful defense for the Kid's determined efforts to hook his right to the jaw. They fiddled around for a minute, each tryin' to connect with one solid smash that would finish it, and then Shayne worked close, leanin' his entire weight on the Kid so's to get the full advantage of that extry seventeen pounds weight. In response to my frenzied yells which caused amazed stares from the ringsiders, Roberts fought himself free and drove Shayne to the ropes with a hurricane of rights and lefts to the head and face. A left swing buried the Kid's glove to the wrist in the Bandsman's short ribs and gaspin', the champ begin to wilt. Roberts feinted swiftly with the same left and then crossed his right to the mouth, bringin' a stream of crimson as the Bandsman begin to tin-can desperately around the ring. Pinned in his own corner, the English mauler showed he was a ring general by pretendin' to be dazed and groggy and slumpin' back against the ropes. The Kid fell for it, and, as he sprang in to finish him, Shayne suddenly straightened up and drove Roberts back on his heels with a perfectly timed right hook, followin' that with four stingin' jabs to the mouth with his left before the astonished Kid could set. It looked like anybody's fight, and they was toe to toe exchangin' wallops at the bell.
The second the Kid is on his stool I am yellin' into his ear; "What's that guy suckin' his lips in for, d'ye know? I been watchin' him all through this round and he keeps puckerin' up like he had somethin' in his mouth. What is it?"
The Kid glanced up, kinda puzzled. "I—why—I don't know, I'm sure," he says. "Unless—well, the first punch I landed in this round caught him square on the open mouth. It may be that I loosened one of his teeth and he's drawing on it to get it loose enough to—"
"To get rid of it, to get rid of it!" I hollers. "Just what I had doped out! Now listen to every word I'm gonna say, because it means a quick knockout if you folley my instructions. Pay no attention to any part of this tramp but his mouth! That tooth's gettin' looser and looser and pretty soon it'll come all the ways out and—get this now—he'll turn his face for a second to spit it out! Get that? He'll have to turn his face to one side; it's a natural movement. You keep watchin' him suck away on that tooth. When he turns his face to get rid of it, be set to let him have the right on the button. It's a fifty to one shot, but if you connect, you're heavyweight champion of England!"
The Kid's eyes flashed and he reached a glove for my hand and shook it silently, but hard enough to make it ache for a week. Then the bell brought him off his stool to the center of the ring, where Bandsman Shayne begin peckin' away at his sore eye with the flashiest left I've seen since Jack Johnson's. The Kid snapped over a wallop now and then, but his one good eye was glued to the Bandsman's puckerin' lips, and his deadly right, flickin' back and forth, was ready for immediate use. Suddenly they both started a rally at the same time in mid ring, and after Roberts had drove Shayne's head back six times without a return with right and left hooks, the Englishman had enough and dove into a clinch. They wrestled all over the ring, crashed into the ropes and slid along 'em, the Bandsman hangin' on for his life and the arm-weary Kid desperately tryin' to wriggle free. The referee tore 'em apart in our corner, and the Kid swiftly stuck his left in Shayne's face. The English champ shook his head, worked his lips for a instant, and then twisted his neck slightly as he spat out the tooth. The Kid's right had started with the workin' of the lips and it connected just as Shayne's jaw was swingin' back, addin' double force to the blow which lifted the Bandsman a good three inches off the floor, turned him half around, and brought him to the mat with a crash that shook the buildin', the first part to touch the canvas bein' his shoulder blades.
The referee could of counted a billion. At "ten" the body had scarcely settled. So that was that!
A half hour later we're comin' out of the dressin' room when a silk-hatted, evenin'-dressed, and familiar-lookin' gent busts into us. A close inspection reveals that it is no less than our old shipmate, Senator Brewster. He grabs the Kid, hugs him, waves a American flag, hugs me, jabs another flag into my coat lapel, and in a hoarse voice which he claims he contracted durin' the first round, tells Kid Roberts he has saved his country's honor, E Pluribus Unum and Nux Vomica, and that he personally can lick Bandsman Shayne, all his handlers, and the referee!
"But come on!" he winds up out of breath. "I have a car waiting outside, and we'll all go over to my hotel and—why, say, Dolores won't be able to speak above a whisper for a week! She—"
We're out on the street by this time, and the excited Sen. Brewster is shovin' a path through the half-crazy Americans to a big tourin' car which contains one terrible pretty girl, answerin' to the name of Dolores Brewster, in the rear seat. She puts everything she has on a smile, presents it to the dumfounded Kid.
"Dolores!" he whispers, turnin' to the old man. "Why—what—how—did—what is she doing here? You never brought her to see—"
"She gave me no peace until I did!" grins the happy old gent. "She insisted upon seeing you annihilate the English champion, and, why, in the second round she—"
"My God!" breathes the Kid, lookin' at her. "You saw that bestial exhibition?"
"I most certainly did, Kane," smiles Dolores, with the greatest of enthusiasm. "I'm so glad you won, but of course father and I knew you would. Why, we were sitting only a few yards from the—ah, ring, isn't it?—and father won some huge sum on you, and I didn't think it was brutal at all! Who and where do you fight to-morrow night, dear?"
To-morrow night. Sweet Papa, tie that!