The Passing of the St. Louis Bearcat

by T. S. Stribling

 

The Passing of the St. Louis Bearcat

 

By T. S. Stribling

 

IF A man had kissed the Blarney stone, memorized Lord Chesterfield's letters, fitted ladies' shoes in a department-store, run a Wednesday night prayer-meeting and practised medicine as a nerve specialist, he might possess such poise in the presence of women that he could eat ice-cream, make love, and even propose a matrimonial alliance, calmly and serenely under the adverse and outspoken strictures of half a dozen critics and rivals.

Unfortunately, Sim Toyne lacked this technical training. He was only a muck-table operative, and he sat in the Leadville Ice-Cream Parlor with the red flag of mental anarchy in his face, sweating profusely, and wondering why the soda-jerker, who leaned grinning on his marble slab, did not chuck the whole set of roughnecks into the street.

The girl, on the other hand, was entirely self-possessed.

She smiled sweetly in the general direction of the boy-spotted entrance even while she talked to Sim.

This difference in poise was caused by a difference in age. Sim Toyne and Maggie Maroney were both seventeen. That is to say, the girl was five or ten years older than her gentleman friend.

Maggie unpursed her rouged lips momentarily from the straws:

“Ain't them kids silly?”

“They make me sick,” agreed Sim with deadly literalness.

“Me, too.”

“I kain't see what makes you let such kids go round with you like you do, Maggie?” Sim's voice started in a high, pained surprise and trailed into the aching depths of his chest tones.

Maggie turned wistful eyes on him. They were the only spots on her face that were neither painted not enameled nor penciled.

“Lots o' times reg'lar men don't ast a girl, Mister Toyne.”

A thrill went from end to end of Sim as if he had been a harp-string under St. Cecilia's fingers. He leaned over the table again, drawing a breath. “You mean, Maggie, that me——”

“They're still looking,” she whispered.

Sim settled back, his head in a whirl at the amazing implication. “I reckon you want to go to th' fight with me, don't yuh?” he inquired shakily.

“You mean the fight at the 'Y'?”

“Yeh.”

“Where I live?”

“Sure.”

“Why, it's only three stories down-stairs, Mr. Toyne,” smiled the siren.

Sim was momentarily taken aback, but returned warmly to the attack: “I don't care—it's the principle of the thing, Maggie.”

“All we'll do is step in an elevator and step off at the gym floor.”

An inspiration came to Sim: “I'll come early and we'll walk down. Nobody ever goes down by the steps.”

Miss Maroney seemed startled, then leveled a home-manicured finger across the damp table with line and gesture copied from her favorite vaudeville beauty: “Oh, you wicked, wicked men!”

 

FROM the entrance came whispered eulogies: “Gee! Don't that chicken know how to show a kid a good time!”

“Then you will!” shivered the youngster.

Maggie hesitated: “I about half-way promised to walk down with Peter McGillicuddy, Mr. Toyne.”

Sim's chair seemed to sway under him. “Him!”

“Don't you tell I told you!” she warned.

“Oh. I won't.”

“I wouldn't have him know I told you for nothing.”

“I won't, Maggie.”

“I keep serious matters sacred, Mr. Toyne.”

It seemed to Sim as if one of the figures in the church were speaking out of some remote goodness.

“Then I can come?” he palpitated.

“If you won't tell Peter McGillicuddy, Mr. Toyne. I'd ruther you'd stab me here,” she pressed her hand to her ample bosom, “than to make one of my frien's so awful jealous as he'd be.”

Sim resisted an impulse to lean across and press this loyal heart to his bosom. The silence vibrated. Sim signaled the soda-jerker for two more. The moment passed and they talked of indifferent things.

“Where'll our seat be?” inquired Maggie archly. “A box?”

“No, a chair.” Then he suddenly saw his mistake and reddened.

Maggie giggled, under the impression it was premeditated. “Where will the chair be, Mr. Toyne?” And she trilled again.

“Right by the ringside—I'm one of the fighters.”

“What?”

“Yeh,” he nodded modestly and looked away.

“Why, Sim Toyne!”

“Yeh.”

“Ain't you afraid?”

“Me! Why, Maggie, I'm thinking of entering the profession.”

 

SHE leaned over impulsively and placed one of the warmest little palms Sim had ever known on the back of his hand. “Sim, dear, how can you he'p being afraid?”

Sim sat with rabbit-like stillness for fear she should discover her largesse and withdraw it. He cast about wildly for something to say to camouflage this tingling oversight, when a sentence that he had taken some pains to compose the night before popped into his head. He swayed across the table and the speech began almost before he knew it, in the hypnotic monotone of a book solicitor:

“No, Miss Maroney, fear can never enter the heart of a man inspired by the presence of a pure woman at the ringside. I am some pounds lighter than the St. Louis Bearcat; I haven't his ring experience or his training; but strengthened by the power of a great love, Maggie, burning with high ideels in my profession, me and you will——”

“Sh—Sim—they're still lookin',” warned the girl, shaken out of her composure for once.

She withdrew her hand quickly, picked up her empty purse and handkerchief that shook out a swirl of perfume.

Sim began to hurry the exact change out of his pocket so he would not lose her to his rivals at the door. His fist got hung somehow. As he worked at it nervously, she leaned toward him: “I hate to drop you here, Mr. Toyne, but that boy, Peter McGillicuddy, just made me give him a teeny-weeny bit of this afternoon when I held back the fight for you. I wanted you all the afternoon, Sim, but—” At the look in Sim's eyes she broke off and whispered warmly: “Well, what's a girl to do when nobody she wants won't ast for dates in time——”

Then aloud, “Good afternoon, Mr. Toyne, ta, ta——”

Another vaudeville wave as she sailed to the conquests waiting at the entrance.

The coming prize-fighter leaned weakly against the marmoreal furnishings of the Imperial Ice-Cream Parlor—still, there was no earthly way for the girl to have got out of it. The man who spoke in time got her. There was a broad simple justice in that. A fair field and no favors.

He drew a long breath and very slowly laid out a quarter, a nickel and three cents war tax. There was no hurry. The crowd at the door had drifted off in the wake of McGillicuddy and Maggie.

As Sim approached the Breen home an hour later, a place where he occupied a station somewhere between a boarder and an eldest son, he saw Doll Breen sitting on the porch waiting for supper.

The boy wondered how Doll's married life had degenerated to this unimpassioned sitting around waiting for supper. Now if he were married to Maggie—the boy shivered in shadowy ecstasy.

The lover nodded at the stolid husband, ran on in, up a flight of stairs to his room, where he began a feverish adornment of his person. He locked his door, stopped the keyhole with a wisp of paper, got out a thirty-five-cent safety-razor outfit and began lathering his face.

Sim lathered conscientiously, rubbing in the soap with his finger-tips with a circular motion. He did this because a negro barber on Gaudelupe Prospect had told him that his beard was the toughest and wiriest that ever entered his shop, and that Sim would have to be very careful in shaving if he didn't get pimples.

Well, it turned out the barber was right. He had got pimples. Now he always softened the bristles on his face thoroughly in an effort not to get more.

After ten diligent minutes, Sim achieved the snowball effect of a shaving-soap advertisement. He was about to chop in with his safety when there came a light pattering on the stairs, immediately followed by a kick at the door and a small possessive voice ordering:

“Sim, come play dominoes with me till dinner.”

At the onslaught, Sim managed to cut himself. He screwed his face to one side at the sting. “I kain't, Adele.”

“Why?”

“I'm dressing.”

A moment's silence, then a small voice stated with the sharpness of one trifled with: “No, you aren't dressing, Sim Toyne!”

“I know I am!”

“I know you aren't!”

“How do you know I ain't?”

“'Cause, you don't stop up your keyhole when you're dressing.”

Sim stared at the door, his face growing warm under his lather.

“Adele Breen!” he cried, scandalized.

“Well, you don't,” stated Adele positively, “and you aren't dressing now. What are you doing in there, Sim Toyne? What made you stop up this keyhole? What are you doing in there?”

Sim stared frozenly at the door. “If you don't go away, I'll tell your mama!”

“Well, you—let me in!” Her voice squeezed up as she pushed vigorously.

“I'll not do it—you go on away!”

Came a little interim. Sim heard a faint picking at the outside, and the wisp of paper in the keyhole began to wiggle up and down.

“Mrs. Breen!” burst out the boy in an agony. “Oh, Mrs. Breen! Come to Adele! Come to Adele, Mrs. Breen!”

From below came a woman's pleasant penetrating slide up the gamut: “Is that you, Sim?”

“Yes'm, it's me!”

“What is it?”

As a light retreat had followed this explosion, Sim called back, “Nothing now, Mrs. Breen,” adding in a lower tone: “She'll skin you, girl, when I tell this.”

Silence followed this declaration and presently came a faint creaking of the steps as Adele tiptoed down in an effort to save her cuticle, and perhaps later make complete denial of any excursion to Sim Toyne's door. For in practise Miss Breen was an out-and-out opportunist.

When the dinner-bell tinkled, Sim had just finished slicking his pompadour with his palm and the reverse side of his brush. Now his hair lay flat back on his head in a straw-colored piano finish. He had changed his working-clothes for a costume of green and buff suitable for evening wear. The only suggestion of the athletic event which he would attend that evening was a crimson-and-yellow sweater that gleamed under his coat.

Mrs. Breen, a pleasant-sized woman with chestnutty hair, opened her eyes when he entered the dining-room. “Going out to-night, Sim?”

“Why, you were dressing!” trilled Adele, forgetting the alibi she had planned.

“What's up?” inquired Doll.

“A little set-to at the gym,” explained Sim modestly.

“Who fights?”

“The St. Louis Bearcat and——”

“Who made him mad?” from Adele.

The trio of grown-ups began laughing.

“No one, dear, they just fight for fun—they don't hit hard.”

The two males glanced at each other in silent hilarity.

“I want to go,” said Adele.

“No, sweetheart, you can't go. Have some steak, Sim.”

Suddenly Sim remembered he must eat no dinner. Instantly the table took on the glamour of a banquet. He realized with a sinking heart that a pugilist's life was not all symphonies and sunsets.

“Why no, ma'am, I don't want nothing but a half of a glass of milk.”

Mrs. Breen looked up in surprise. “Are you sick, Sim?”

“Oh, no'om.”

“I bet he is!” chirped Adele excitedly. “He was doing something in his room I couldn't see.”

“Why, Adele!” cried Mrs. Breen.

“He wouldn't let me in!” put in Adele hastily.

“I was shaving,” said Sim, flushing and frowning at his empty plate.

“You said you were dressing!” accused Adele, bouncing in her chair and jabbing a small finger at him with each word.

“Do sit still!” implored the mother.

“Ain't I dressed?” demanded Sim in confusion.

“But-you-don't-stop-up-your-keyhole-to-dress!” spaced Adele triumphantly; “I knew you didn't.”

Only the confusion of the moment saved Adele as a wailing sacrifice to the ogre of propriety. Mrs. Breen was trying to restore order.

“Won't you have some spaghetti, Sim?”

“No'om.”

“Not off your feed, are you, Sim?” asked Doll.

By this time the boy had regained his composure and some of his importance returned. “No, us pugs never eat before a battle.”

“Us pugs?” interrogated Breen.

“Uh huh,” casually. “I fight the St. Louis Bearcat t'night.”

The effect was fully as melodramatic as Sim had hoped. The three Breens stared. “You!” gasped Doll.

Mrs. Breen rose in arms. “Sim Toyne, you aren't going to do it! Why, you'll be killed! Did that unprincipled Maroney——”

“Edna!” said Doll.

Authority in a family is a queer thing. It is handed about from moment to moment in the most capricious manner. Even the children may seize it by some lucky stroke of judgment, and for an instant they are regarded by the doctors in the temple.

“I certainly wouldn't, Sim,” mollified Mrs. Breen; “you'll get hurt.”

“I'm going! I'm going! I'm going!” shrilled Adele ecstatically. “Mama, I'm going! Papa, lemme go!”

“No, no.”

“Oh, no, indeed!”

“But I want to!” wailed the child. “I want to see Sim wh-whoop the St. Louis Bearcat!” She openly sobbed her desire toward one after the other of the grown-ups.

“No girls will be there,” stated the father as though that had any bearing.

“Yes, there will,” the words popped out of Sim's mouth, because he habitually abetted Adele's insurgency, and therefore the parents loved him. No sooner were they out than he regretted them.

“Oh, well, let her go,” agreed Doll.

Immediately Sim realized his mistake. He gasped, looked appealingly at the matron. “Oh, Mrs. Breen—I—I can't take her!”

“Of course not, Adele; he's got to fight.”

“Nun-no, I—I—I got a date—” He went crimson again.

Adele stiffened. 'With a girl?” she shrilled.

“Then you can't go, Adele,” concluded Mrs. Breen.

The effect was abrupt. Adele shrieked, tumbled off her chair, struck the floor, rolling, kicking, scratching. She rolled shrieking against the leg of the table, caromed against another, spun across the floor.

Mrs. Breen jumped up from the table with a whitened face. Doll pushed back his chair, hurried for the door, and escaped.

Sim leaped up, his own face going colorless. “Don't! Don't whip her, Mrs. Breen!” he gasped. “Oh, don't, Mrs. Breen!” He ran, caught the whirling form, stooped over it and shielded it from the coming nemesis. “Hush! Hush, Adele!” he implored. “Please, plea-s-e don't, Mrs. Breen!”

Discipline is handicapped. To whip a child is to belabor everybody within sight or sound. One might as well run amuck and be done with it.

“But she gets worse and worse!” cried the mother, almost terrified.

Adele lay still. “Do I get to go?” she asked in a voice remarkably composed.

“Oh, yes—I reckon so,” agreed Sim miserably.

“Sim, don't you do it!” cried Mrs. Breen indignantly.

“Oh, yes—yes—” repeated Sim in long sighs. He visualized what he was missing—the walk down the dark winding steps, declarations of love, kisses, embraces, promises of endless devotion—he felt faint—sick—but he could not endure to see Adele whipped.

Mrs. Breen stood eying the pantheress and her victim; suddenly she proposed with significance: “Sim, you stay right here. I'll take Adele to my room to dress her. We'll be gone fifteen minutes.”

Adele grasped the ruse more quickly than the boy. As her mother led her from the room, she turned to threaten:

“Sim Toyne, if you run off and leave me. I'll screech till mama whips me.”

So he did not fly, but went glumly to the phone, called up McGillicuddy and arranged new social adjustments. “We'll make a party of four,” he told his friend and rival; “kind of a box-party—” and he thought to himself: “This'll break Maggie's heart.

 

IT WAS quite dark when Peter McGillicuddy joined Sim and Adele at an appointed drug-store and they proceeded to the “Y.” The young lady took her escorts by the hands and converted their arms into a swing by doubling up her legs every few steps.

McGillicuddy was a tall gangling youth and his decorations were weak compared to the fighter's prismatic effect. Peter felt this, and also he felt a wholesome respect for the amazing honor that had befallen his companion.

“Feel O.K., Sim?” he asked anxiously.

“Fine as split silk.”

“Not nervous?”

Sim laughed briefly and shakily. “Training gets all that kid stuff out of a man, Lengthy.”

“I bet it does,” agreed the tall boy enviously.

A short pause, then Peter said with the awkwardness of one boy trying to thank another: “Say, Runt, that—that was pretty dern big-hearted in you—ringing me up like that.”

Sim glowed. “Don't mention it, Lengthy.”

“Does Mag——”

“Shh!”

“'S'matter?”

“Don't call no names.”

“Why?”

“Got a friend in this neighborhood,” explained Sim mysteriously, “who throws a fit when they hear a certain party's name called.”

“That's me,” stated Adele placidly, as she took a luxurious swing.

As they moved along under Adele's weight, Peter mused: “I swan. Ain't they all jest alike?”

“Being a man's awful responsible, Lengthy,” murmured Sim, gazing at a star.

“Ain't that th' truth!”

“Women's feelings cling around a feller so quick—sometimes I think what if some of 'em was to take morphin or jump off'n a clift on my account——”

In the shadow of future tragedies only the female swung away undisturbed.

“A man ort to marry a girl, or not raise no hopes,” moralized Peter solemnly.

“I'm going to, right after this fight, Lengthy.”

“What?”

“Yep.”

“You mean Mag——”

“Shh!”

A dense silence. Adele looked from one to the other suspiciously, but the darkness prevented her reading their faces. Sim added: “That's him.”

The switch of gender put the girl at fault, but left her listening attentively.

“You don't mean it's arranged!”

“Practically.”

“Sim—he's a-foolin' you.”

“Haw!”

“You don't mean ever'thing's settled.”

“Jest about—”

“Then geemeny crimeny!” groaned Peter in anguish. “The way that—that fellow lied to me!”

“Mr. McGillicuddy!” reprimanded the fighter sharply. “I'll have you know you're talking about my finance.”

The tall boy came to himself. “Sim, I apologize—I—I didn't think how it sounded.”

“It sounded like time to me.”

“Financed,” repeated Peter dazedly.

“If I knock out the Bearcat, I guess Maroney will manage me hisself. He sorter hinted like it. We'll be jest one family traveling around fighting all comers.”

Peter seemed not to take it in. He plodded ahead, carrying more than his share of the oscillating Adele. As he went he mumbled in a stricken voice: “Putting my arm around a girl that's financed.”

Sim stared. “Did she let you?”

“She told me not to,” admitted Peter with a dismal sigh.

 

THE Maroney reception-room on the third floor of the Leadville “Y” was redolent of sport. A set of foils crossed over one door, a pair of rackets over another. Sundry loving-cups and medals scattered over the room bore testimony to Maroney's prowess both as a trainer and as an athlete.

But the most convincing witness of the director's fitness was Maggie Maroney herself. The trophies explained Maggie like so many footnotes. Amid the garnerings of brawn, one overlooked the paint and enamel and perceived the girl beneath, blowsy with the health that brawn had bequeathed her. Beneath those absurd cosmetics, Maggie's neck was an alabaster column whose lines glided subtly into a white bosom. So arresting and vital was she that Toyne and McGillicuddy, who were not hardened to functions and evening gowns, looked hurriedly away and began talking disconnectedly with the gentleman Maggie was introducing to them.

“Say you come from St. Louis, Mr. Fahey?” babbled Peter.

“I've heard it was a good big town,” added Sim.

“Not as big as London,” piped up Adele on the authority of her geography.

“D'je come up to see the fight?” proceeded Peter with concentration.

“I'm an old friend of the family's,” laughed Mr. Fahey.

“Guess you've seen fights in St. Louis—”

Maggie began laughing, “Boys, Mr. Fahey is the St. Louis Bearcat.”

Amazement seized Sim. This the St. Louis Bearcat! A little man, rather old—positively old. He must have been twenty-six or seven. And this little old man was all that stood between Sim and the bewildering vision hovering at his left elbow. Then the name was wrong.

“Why, I thought the Bearcat's name was Stingaree!” cried the coming champion in bewilderment.

“That's his fighting name,” explained Maggie in bubbling humor; “his real name's Madison Fahey. I've known him all my life.”

 

“MAGGIE tells me you meet me to-night, Mr. Toyne,” observed the little man genially. “Well, you young fellows are bound to show us old boys where we get off at last. If somebody's got to slip me the sleeping sickness, I'd rather it 'ud be one of Maggie's friends.”

A suspicion shot through Sim that the Bearcat meant to throw the fight to him. Perhaps Maroney had arranged it. Sim objected to this.

“Look here, Mr. Fahey,” he said, “if I can't knock you out fair and square, I don't want the honor. I know Maroney's a great friend of mine, but——”

Mr. Fahey gave Toyne a pat on the shoulder that had considerable drive considering the patter's size and age. "I'll totter around as long as I can, Mr. Toyne.” He began smiling in his pleasant way, drew out a watch freckled with diamonds and said he had better be getting down to the dressing-room.

Maggie explained that she and the boys would walk down for exercise. She asked Mr. Fahey to go along, but the Bearcat pleaded that he was not accustomed to the Leadville altitude and the steps got his wind, so he went on without them.

After the party had started for the excitement of the steps, Adele decided that she preferred the elevator. No argument moved her. At last Sim, with a generosity that strained some valve in his heart, offered to ride down with Adele and let Peter and Maggie walk.

Peter, who was still looking fixedly in various directions, said he guessed not; that they would all ride down together.

In the elevator Sim found opportunity to squeeze Maggie's fingers, a caress which was returned with delicate sympathy and encouragement.

For some unknown reason Adele, who stood between them, reached up and landed a savage little blow in the pit of Sim's stomach. It cut off his breath momentarily. The incident passed without explanations.

 

NOWADAYS a prize-fight draws a large human assortment: Lawyers, doctors, yeggmen and the police, social leaders and oil-stock salesmen. The sport waxes. The A.E.F. discovered that fists and the heart to use them may influence the political structure of the world. The willingness to accept a bloody snout and give one, may be the palladium of our liberty, which Fourth of July orators have given such wide publicity. Since the war all manner of county, state, sectional and national championships have been promoted. The squared ring has become a public function.

In the gymnasium under the basketball flood-lights a dais had been raised and roped off. Seats had been taken from the auditorium and massed around it, and already held a sprinkling of humanity. The canvas cover of the platform was snowy white. The yellow Manila ropes gleamed with newness under the arc-lights. The circular rail of the running-track formed a kind of gallery above the pit, and this was already circled with a frieze of boyish heads hanging over, staring with owl-like intentness at the empty ring.

From this ring of worshippers came a shrill, excited, “There comes another one of um! That's Sim Toyne!”

Sim's knees rattled together from stage-fright.

“D'ju hear that?” fluttered Peter in Sim's ear, “Now I reckon you know what Fame feels like.”

Sim moistened parched lips. “It don't uffect me at all, Lengthy,” he said almost in a sick voice.

“Don't it?”

“Not a speck.”

“I guess you—“you're thinking of—” Peter nodded faintly toward Maggie.

“Maybe I am, Peter.”

“Sim—old man—I wish you happiness; I—I don't care if I do say it!”

“Take care of her while I'm gone, Peter,” begged Sim with a touch of melodrama. “You set on one side of her and Adele on the other.”

Peter nodded with emotion. The two men wrung each other's hands.

“Luck, Sim,” called Maggie gaily.

“Can't I go with you?” shrilled Adele.

“Naw, naw you can't!” snapped Sim, “Set there by Miss Maroney.”

Adele pushed tempestuously in between the grown-ups, and stated frankly to Miss Maroney “I hate you!” Then Peter realized he would not have the pleasure of sitting near the breaker of his broken heart. The box-party did not augur well.

In the dressing-room, Maroney's stable of pugs hustled rather sketchy bodies into gym trunks and sweaters. The air was impregnated with the foreboding smell of arnica and witch-hazel. Over in a corner a leaky shower wept monotonous tears.

When Sim pushed through the door into the damp, unaired dressing-room, a chorus leaped at him:

“Have you saw him, Sim?”

“Say, Sim, the dope ain't come!”

“Not a bottle, an' we ordered a case.”

“D'reckon the Bearcat bribed the sody-pop company not to send us no dope, so we won't be stimilated?”

“Have you seen him, Sim?”

Sim made, a careless gesture. “I don't need no dope.”

“Oh, you don't!”

“Geemeny, what's eatin' yuh?”

“Have you seen him?”

Sim began to strip coolly. “Yeh, I've seen him. Why, he's a little bit of a feller——”

Outraged explosions battered down this evidence. “Wha's matter with you?”

“They's bats in your belfry!”

“But I know—I've been talkin' to him!” retorted Sim.

“But look at Reddy McGrue there!” howled a fat boy with a jellied gesture. “He's puttin' back on his clo'es! Look at him! Look at Reddy puttin' back on his clo'es!”

Sim looked. “Well, what o' that?” he demanded doubtfully. “Reddy may be gettin' cold.”

“Yes—it's his feet.”

Sim stared. “You don't mean you're quittin', Reddy?”

“I'm goin' to swop jobs with a rubber,” explained Reddy doggedly. “I think I know one that wants to trade.” He slipped on his shoes and started for the door.

“Why, you're not afraid, Reddy!” cried Sim, amazed.

“Me—oh no, I ain't afraid now—not for myself—I'm goin' to be a rubber——”

“But he's a little bitty man!” expostulated Toyne.

“Little! Geemeny crimeny! Ain't I jest back from peekin' into his dressin'-room?” He turned away his head and paddled at some vision still hovering terrifically before him. “All I know is if I kain't be a rubber, I'm goin' to walk out of this 'Y' standin' up, 'stead of sliding out into a ambulance.”

“But I saw Mr. Fahey a minute ago——”

“Fahey!” derided a chorus. “Why, the Bearcat's name's Stingaree!”

A suspicion shot through Sim that Maggie had been fooling him. It would be like Maggie to introduce some little old man for a pugilist, who was not a boxer at all. Then he guessed why—because the girl loved him. It was to give him self-confidence.

“When a woman really loves a man,” mused Sim, “she is liable to do any fool trick for his good, because when you get right down to it, a woman jest naturally hasn't got no sense noway.”

This added proof of Maggie's devotion touched him with a thrilling tenderness. He continued thinking of the girl as he watched Reddy before the steam-filmed mirror readjusting his tie, and blowing a windy whistle as he deserted.

But the roomful did not hold it against Reddy. His was not a cowardly back-down; it was a strategical retreat before an overwhelming force, rather like the Marne campaign.

 

THE fat boy went to the door and peered into the smelly hall. “Ain't that case o' dope come yet?” he called loudly to the empty passage. He felt the need of something bracing.

Suddenly the muffled sound of a great handclapping in the gymnasium penetrated the dressing-room. Maroney's athletes paused to listen intently. When the applause died away they could hear Maroney's voice introducing the Bearcat. More applause drowned much of what he said; they caught a phrase here and there:

“It's unnecessary fr me t'introduce t'you th' little man with th' big wallop.”

Prolonged applause—“battled three times f'r champeenship of th' lightweights—An' may I add, I had th' great honor of 'nauguratin' th' Bearcat's triumphant career. Jest eight years ago I trained Teddy Stingaree in St. Louis.” Uproar. “T'night, Mr. Stingaree in his tour of the West, meetin' all comers, gives an exhibition with my Y.M.C.A. boxin'-class. I ask each and all to watch clost every fight, f'r jest as I trained a world's champ eight years ago in St. Louis, so I'm trainin' one to-day in Leadville. To-night, in the boys' dressin' room of this buildin', la'es zan gents, a future world's champ is makin' ready for his first battle!” Immense sensation.

Turmoil drowned the speaker's last words. In the dressing-room itself a peculiar thing happened when Maroney mentioned a future world champion among their number. Every lad braced up. Even the demoralized Reddy McGrue hesitated, and finally resumed a seat on the bench by the lowers and began nervously removing the collar he had just restored to his neck.

At that moment two rubbers passed the entrance with a pail containing ice, bottles and granges. Another rubber stuck his head in the door and called, “Billy Shugart!”

A short, black-haired youngster started nervously, pulled his sweater more tightly around his thin shoulders and moved for the door as if he were screwing up his courage to fling himself over a precipice.

As he went, he looked back at his comrades with round eyes. “Good-by, boys,” he said with a grimace meant to register as a smile; “send flowers.” And the dark passageway swallowed him.

Sim Toyne watched him go with a queer thrill of sympathy. To Sim, Billy's action in presenting his body to be pounded by a world's champion seemed a brave, brave thing. And it was a brave thing! Yet, in a way, it was an ordinary thing. It was one of those triumphs of soul over flesh that bob up everywhere. Indeed, that string of youngsters who presently disappeared one by one, trying to grin, trying to be facetious, was a confutation of the whole theory of the prize-fight. A discerning eye might have seen in these silly hobbledehoys a finer flame than was ever kindled by brawn or science. Amid fear and weakness they were standing by some fantastic code of youth. They all did it, for theirs was but the ordinary human courage, possessed in a pinch by all mankind. And yet it is an amazing thing, this nullification of force, this assertion of soul. It is the fire that purified the Argonne. The youngsters shivering down the dark passageway to meet the world's champion were champions of the world; but the little fellows had no idea what nobility moved their thin legs.

To a spectator at a prize-fight the noises of the audience fall into orderly sequence, and in fact are practically unnoticed, so concentrated is the interest upon the epic in the ring. But when heard from a distance, the uproar of the spectators suggests collective lunacy.

Two minutes after the fight began, screams, laughter, roars, yells, beat on Sim's ears with the disconnection of Bedlam. His nerves turned into an emotional weathercock registering a whirlwind. Now and then came silence as strident as the furor. During these the husky whirrings of the young pugs and the tearful drip of the leaky shower reasserted themselves.

 

THE amateurs passed out one by one and none returned. The rubber who called out their names snapped epigrammatic but horrifying opinions of the conflicts as he shuttled back and forth:

“He played with Jimmy two rounds—He hit Hal just once under the jaw. Reddy McGrue hit the Stingaree—he's mad now! I wouldn't uh stood the punishment John Devine got, not to be champeen of the sun, moon an' stars! He's usin' em up jest as fast as he can. They say the attitude's gettin' his goat.—Jim's got his—Tom's got his—Shorty's got his—your turn to get yours, Sim!”

A shock went through Toyne. He looked around in amazement. The room was empty. Complete silence filled the building save for the tearful drip of the shower. During the last fight, Sim almost had begun to believe his time would never come. The moments seemed to have stopped. Time, as it were, had formed a pool and hung over the brink of the cataract roaring in the gymnasium. The flight of minutes, the vanishing of fighters, seemed to have no effect in bringing his battle closer. His fight had become like death, an event which the passing days leaves as remote and improbable as ever.

The rubber repeated: “You get yours now, Sim; come on.”

Sim leaped up. “Sure—say the altitude's gettin' his goat?”

“They say so, but I don't b'lieve it,” declared the rubber, who by now worshiped his idol.

Sim felt the partizanism in the boy's tones.

“Well—I'll go in and help the altitude,” he uttered with dry lips. It was his little jest. The other boys had made one. He had made one, although there was none to hear except the hostile rubber.

Luring Sim like a mirage through the smelly hallway floated a wedding with Maggie. To that bliss, the Stingaree's body was the ladder he meant to ascend. His day-dreams were solidifying. Maggie and marriage, no longer a nebulous paradise, a reality just beyond the passage door. His heart began pounding. His whole body felt light as a feather. Sim did not know it, but among all the orderers of dope in the dressing-room, he alone had received a stimulant.

A wide buzzing struck the boy like a breath. Somebody laughed harshly, and stopped as quickly as if he had been choked.

A brilliant core of light under the arcs formed the center of the gymnasium; from it washed a sea of nebulous human heads. The air was warm and stinking and stripped of oxygen. Amid this blur of impressions, four or five saliencies pinned Toyne's attention. Maggie sat watching the brilliant ring with anxious eyes, shielding her face from the glare overhead with her handkerchief. In the middle seat, Adele gripped her chair-arms and stared into Sim's face with wide, scared eyes.

Action spied briskly in the ring. Two negro rubbers, naked to the waist, massaged a huge, white figure. The blacks worked furiously, kneading the thighs, arms, and great pectoral muscles of the champion. Occasionally one poured ice water over him, rubbed his face with a sponge or let him chew it.

It was as Sim had feared: Stingaree was not Fahey. This man was immense.

As Sim skirted a shoal of legs and feet toward the ring, his eyes fixed on his opponent, to his amazement, the man's features did melt into those of Fahey. It was Fahey, this huge naked man; huge with that sense of hugeness super-developed muscles give to anything—even a two-inch statuette.

Maroney came to the edge of the ring, reached down and bounced Sim lightly over the ropes on to the canvas. There were spots of blood on it here and there.

“La'es zan Gents!” he boomed, “Mr. Sim Toyne, the last and final number on the program.”

“You mean pogrom!” laughed a voice.

A scattering of hand clapping.

“Bow!” whispered Maroney in a breathy voice.

Sim bowed to a high tide of shadowy faces that seemed about to inundate the brilliant ring.

Maroney took advantage of the moment to aspirate, “Th' altitude's got him—heart's hunderd'n forty—eat 'im raw!” Then he propelled Sim toward a corner with stools, and buckets in it.

Almost before the boy sat down, the negroes lifted the St. Louis Bearcat, and practically brought him across the ring to Sim's corner.

The boy got up ready to hit or dodge. He quivered from head to foot. But the Bearcat only reached for Sim's hands, felt them over carefully, picked up the gloves and felt them. As he did so, Sim saw Fahey's hands were tightly bandaged. The champion offered these to Sim, who took them blankly.

One of the negro rubbers whispered in a soft, blubbery voice, “Feel uv um. Boss, I feel uv um—let on lak you is ef you ain't.”

Sim felt of them. He had no idea why. Then the two “Y” rubbers leaped at their principal and began jamming the new green gloves on Sim's hands which he extended stiffly against their pushes.

In the center of the ring Maroney boomed out something about “Marquis of Queensberry—fighting allowed in clinches—break clean—” It was all confusion to Sim. Then the trainer beckoned the fighters together for final instructions. Suddenly the brilliant white square seemed immense to Sim. He had to walk a long way to reach the center. The trainer put his arms about the two boxers' shoulders and was saying something with nods of his head and cigar. The crowd leaned forward in their seats with a wide rustling. Then complete silence. The gong rang. Maroney jumped back, leaving his neophyte in the center of a vast canvas square.

Boy and man touched gloves at arm's length, gingerly—that was the handshake, then the Bearcat bounced back and fell into a kind of rubbery vibration. He jigged like an enormous gnat in the beating light. He dabbed at Sim from one side, now from another. He was queerly compact, all in a ball, flipping, snapping—here—there—a big gnat dancing in the light—

The situation began to hold a sort of fantasy for Sim. It annoyed him; he tapped tentatively at the face which hovered right before him. It jiggled aside and suddenly, a glove out of nowhere rapped him on the nose.

It stung. A roar of laughter arose out of the darkness. Sim felt foolish and backed away with a warm sensation about his nose and lips. He might as well have backed from a wasp. The Bearcat hovered like a horror in a dream just outside his guard, now close, now far, one side, the other side—a blurred movement; something struck Sim's jaw.

A throb of anger went through the boy. The crowd already hot in its lust for bruised flesh could endure no preliminaries. It began hooting, “Hey git action!” “Quit running—'sain't no marathon!” “Biff him, Sim!” “'Chout, he'll bite your mit, Sim!”

Anger and the goading burnt up Sim's caution. He swung back an arm to annihilate that jigging phantom—he telegraphed his blow seconds ahead—

The arc light seemed to explode. Pain and a gong-like ringing roared through his head. he felt himself reeling, falling. The ropes caught him and bounced him back. Thanks to his brief training he dropped into a shaky crouch, covering stomach and head with gloves and forearms. When his ears could hear, the yelping and roaring of the house filled them. The Bearcat was turning to his corner when one of the negro rubbers yelled and pointed at the boy half doubled, dazed, but still on his feet in the center of the ring. The Bearcat flashed at his victim. A terrible fear of losing Maggie shot through Sim. He stumbled forward, guard down. The Bearcat swung viciously—the gong rang.

In Sim's corner, the boy rubbers started amateur ministrations. They could really do nothing. Sim was not tired yet. His head rang and ached from Fahey's blow, and his nose still bled from that first light tap. This made breathing difficult in the fetid atmosphere. The ice-water sponge felt good to his head and bruised mouth. The boy tried to see Maggie, but his eyes were too unsteady to make her out. He heard voices betting that he would not last out another round. There was a good deal of laughter, and somewhere a child was crying. The boy seemed hardly to drop on his stool before the gong struck.

The “Y” rubbers boosted Sim to his feet and he went forward with a more careful guard. But the Bearcat rushed straight from his corner and landed on the boy's sore mouth. Pain made the novice furiously angry. He lashed out with both arms, bulled his way into a smother of blows. The boy worked with the peculiar awkwardness of tyros, swinging his thin arms desperately, much into air, now and then into gloves, occasionally landing on meat. Yet he made a great flutterment as the lightweight snapped under and over his guard, jabbing, upper cutting, hooking; doing it all deftly, without lost motion as the string of openings developed before him.

With a shift of sympathy, the house began cheering the boy. Adele's piping stood out above the uproar. The child seemed on the verge of hysteria, “Hit him, Sim! Hit the mean ol' man—he's a mean ol' man!”

The round ended with Sim dripping from sweat and utterly exhausted from his surprising flurry. When the bell released him, he got to his corner, flopped on his stool and hung arms and head limply over the ropes. His body was marked with pink oozy patches, that flamed into fire as the boys massaged him. One of his ears felt torn off.

But his attack had electrified his assistants. The whole house had taken notice of their man and now they worked with immense morale. From time to time they glanced at the two negroes operating on the champion and imitated their movements.

This kneading brought back some faint tone to Sim's spent form. In further imitation of the negroes, one of the boys grabbed a towel and began fanning. Sim opened his mouth and gulped the air. Beside the platform a small voice wailed forth,

“Is he a-dying?”

“Naw! Naw Sis, Naw!” cried one of the attendants, “he's puttin' up the scrap of his young life!”

Laughter rippled through the buzz of bets and speculation in the shadows.

“S-Sim, le's go home— I—I want to go home, S-Sim!”

The boy dropped down one of his arms, found Adele and petted her dumbly. He felt her clutch his arm and press her hot cheek to his skin. Her hair tickled.

“Kain't we go home now?” she asked shakily, “What makes you wear such a big glove, Sim? Did he hurt you, Sim?”

The boy shook his wet head above her.

“He's sick!” cried the child in alarm. “I tell you, he ought to go home! What you doin' to him? she screamed at the rubbers. The crowd laughed again, and a woman's voice said, “That's a shame!”

A grateful fancy played through Sim's aching head. When he and Maggie married they would have a little daughter— Gong!—and the rubbers heaved their hero into the arena.

The champion may have been trying to finish quickly before the altitude really prostrated him. It is a long ascent from St. Louis to Leadville. The air is thin in Colorado and in this particular spot deoxygenized. At any rate the Bearcat was on Sim before the boy was well out of his corner.

Next moment the air was filled with terrific impacts. The boy's head rocked and roared. As he staggered backward, a swing to the pit of his stomach brought him cramping agony. Again the ropes caught and unmercifully held up the collapsing youngster to further punishment. Sim clung to the manila with a terrible vibrating figure before him. It worked like some infernal dynamo, shocking him, making the lights flare and fade. The ring, the crowd, the whole house danced before his wobbling head.

At last pity touched even the crowd, “Hey stop it! Cut it out! Stop 'em! Lay down, Sim! Lay down!”

The very ropes to which Sim clung were melting to nothingness, when he heard a shriek, rather like a fighting tomcat's, right under him. Next moment, he saw dimly a small beribboned figure scramble through the ropes and dart at his persecutor.

The little virago gripped the monster's leg, her mouth snapped to his hip, and Adele, still gurgling her scream, took a furious mouthful out of the light-weight champion of the world.

Fahey stared down and twisted from the closing teeth.

“Sister! Here Sister, Sister!” he protested earnestly, trying to press back her beribboned head with gentleness.

In that brief respite, Sim caught a wavering glimpse of a jaw. With his last foot-pound of strength, he struck.

The boy, the spent athlete and the little girl, all slumped over on the white canvas beneath the beating light and lay still.

And that shadowy wave of heads broke over the brilliant arena in a roar. Maroney jumped for Adele and handed her to a rubber with ice water. Then he waggled his arm over the men and counted ten. He himself had no idea whom he was counting out.

Then ice water brought both fighters around. Amid bedlam they shook hands. this time quite fraternally. The crowd was yelling for a decision to settle bets.

“It was a foul!”

“Who fouled?”

“Who lost?”

“The boy knocked him out!”

“The first one that came to, won.”

“That was the little girl!”

On the lap of one of the rubbers, Adele was saying with astonishing composure, “I don't like that St. Louis Bearcat, he's a mean man.”

The rubber grinned, “You ought to know. You tasted him.”

Eddies from the departing crowd drifted back to shake Fahey's hand. They also shook Sim's hand. After all, glory comes through hard knocks; brides are won by brawn.

The boxing class appeared, smelling of witch hazel, their faces interesting studies of yellows and blues.

Then Sim saw Maggie standing between her father and the St. Louis Bearcat.

Maroney was saying, “Gents of my boxing class, tried and trusted friends of me and muh family, and friends, I hope, of Mr. Fahey, who you have just fought with so much honor to yourselves and Leadville—noble young friends, I now invite you to adjourn to the auditorium of this building, where the Rev. Maudsley, our b'loved Bible instructor, will solemnize the wedding of the St. Louis Bearcat with muh daughter, Maggie. They leave on the two o'clock, so's Mr. Fahey can pull off his match t'morrer night at Denver. Come one, come all. This'n's on me!”

Cheers! Whoops! Renewed shaking of hands.

A dizzier feeling than Mr. Fahey ever punched into Sim swept over the boy. A rough hand clutched Sim's left glove and the voice of McGillicuddy shook in his ear, “Godfrey's Cordial!”

A pull on Sim's right glove dragged him down to the level of a small girl who threw both arms about his neck, and plastered faintly perfumed kisses on his bruised lips. Between kisses she jigged in ecstacy,

“Oh. I'm so glad! I'm so glad!”

Maggie's face and neck were shell pink. Her clear eyes clung to her huge-looking little champion.

Suddenly renewed enthusiasm filled the air. McGillicuddy first got the definite statement.

“EATS, Sim!” he yelled, “Eats in the audotorium!”

Toyne disengaged Adele's arms and got to his feet, “I'll go,” he said gloomily, “and I'll eat, and I may seem light and gay, Lengthy, but deep in my bosom'll gnawr a secret sorrow—I'll tell that to the world.”