Fighting Blood (Witwer)/Round 10
The other night I am wrestling with "Paradise Lost," a novel by Johnny Milton. It's one of the stories Judy picked out for me to read, so it must mean something, but between you and me and Kemal Pasha I can't make head or tail out of it and that's a fact! It's all poetry and, to make it harder, none of it rimes. I wouldn't be surprised if it ain't a little too rich for my blood yet, hey? That's been one of my greatest troubles—separating the stuff which will help me and the stuff which won't from the mass of volumes I am studying. I been taking learning in mass formation, devouring books like "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Art of Embalming" in the same day, and that last one is hard to work into the average conversation, what I mean!
Well, knocking out Gunner Slade for the light-heavyweight crown I realized one of the greatest ambitions of my life—I went to the top in the game I was in. I was a world's champion! Even though I hadn't picked boxing as my life work, the fact that I was king in my division gave me more satisfaction than I can put down here on paper. It's a hobby of mine to want to finish first in anything I try. Why, even if I fell off Washington's Monument my one wish on the way down would be that as long as I was going to hit the ground at all, I'd hit it so hard that it would stand as a record for all time!
After I have smacked Gunner Slade for a mock turtle, Judy reminds me of my vow to quit the ring and bust head first into the business world. I had stalled Judy and talked her out of this thing a million times before, but this time it was a showdown—I have to give up either Judy or the prize-ring, I can't have both!
To quit this game before I've even got used to seeing "World's Champion" beside my name was to me like climbing the highest mountain in the world, reaching the summit bruised and winded, and then deliberately jumping off before enjoying the view from the top. But Judy is—Judy! So while the sport writers is still commenting on my sensational victory over Gunner Slade and guessing who I'll battle next, I throwed a bombshell into their midst by announcing my retirement from the ring.
A lot of my friends thought this was just another one of my publicity stunts and they merely smiled, but it wasn't no publicity stunt, I was in dead earnest. When the sport writers find out I am not kidding, why, they laced into me with a gusto! One paper even said that the beating I had took from Gunner Slade before I slapped him double cuckoo had ruined me for life. Others roasted me to a fare-thee-well and let it go at that. All this stuff was fine for Mr. Gunner Slade which immediately gets terrible rosey. This dizzy boloney squawks that he lost to me on a fluke punch, challenges me for a return bout, and when I don't answer he claims the light-heavyweight title. This makes me laugh, as I know I can take Gunner Slade every day in the week if necessary and I guess the Gunner knows it too, or else he's a fellow which is opposed to learning by experience.
However, there is one baby which don't get no merriment out of my leaving the ring and that's Nate Shapiro.
When Nate reads all that stuff in the New York papers he comes to me in a high rage.
"You wanna quit this clownin', kid," he says, waving a newspaper at me. "We got a quarter-million-dollar year starin' us right in the face and this applesauce you're givin' out about leavin' the ring is gettin' the promoters nervous—you ought to see the wires I got this mornin'. I been busy phonin' the New York papers for the last three hours, tellin' 'em your retirement is April Fool!"
"Nate, I am not clowning," I says, gently but firmly. "I have fought my last box fight, and that's all there is to it! I promised Judy I would call it a day when I win the light-heavyweight championship of the world. Well, I win it, so I'm through. Let's say it was a fool promise—all right, I made it and I got to keep it. Anyways, having won the title, what else is there for me to shoot at as a boxer?"
"What else is they for you to shoot at?" howls Nate, when he can talk. "They's a million dollars for you to shoot at, you dumbell! Have you got so much jack that you can turn down a million without flickin' a muscle?"
"Shut up!" I growls. "Don't make me feel no worse than I already do. Maybe we can make a fortune out of our picture theatre."
"And maybe Lake Erie is a tennis court!" hollers Nate. "I know what's the matter with you, studyin' them books night and day has made you cuckoo! I warned you to lay off 'at stuff. What do you want with a education? The chances is if you'd of had one you'd be a chauffeur of a addin' machine in some guy's office now for about twenty-five bucks a week, instead of bein' able to click off that much a punch! Did you wade through these tomatoes to the championship simply so's you could have the pleasure of quittin' the ring the first chance you got to make money like they make it in the mint? I took you from behind a soda fountain and made you and the minute we both get a chance to collect heavy you throw me down!"
"I ain't throwing you down any more than I'm throwing myself down, Nate," I says. "But—a promise is a promise! If Judy"
"Let me talk to Miss Willcox," butts in Nate. "I bet she ain't got the slightest of slight ideas just what she's askin' you to give up. When I show her the dough we can take down in the next year, the chances is 'at not only will she want you to stay in the ring, but she'll expect you to go around pickin' fights in the streets!"
But she didn't, and after a four-day ceaseless attack on her objections, Nate throwed up the sponge. Then he turned his attentions to me again and again he is thrown for a loss. I didn't want to quit the ring and toss away the jack I could make as a champ any more than I wanted to go to the hospital and have my ears cut off, but rather than lose Judy's friendship I'd give up anything! When Nate finds his threats and pleadings is useless, he gets maniacal with rage and tells me he's going to sell his interest in our picture theatre, check out of Drew City, and go back to live in New York, taking Kayo Kelly with him. That was a blow to me indeed, as I had come to look on Nate and Kayo as face cards in any man's deck. What I'll do if they both desert me was a fresh problem for my busy mind.
However, Knockout Kelly solved that for me himself in a short but highly interesting speech he made when Nate told him to pack his collars for the voyage to New York.
"No can do, Nate," says Kayo, shaking his head. "Me and this slab is gettin' along fine. I think I'll stick here with Gale and see what happens. Besides, the further away I stay from Broadway the better for all concerned. A married man ain't got no business steppin' out and"
"A married man!" yells Nate, grabbing Kayo by the shoulders. "And I thought you was blonde-proof! Have you went to work and wed somebody on me, you big sapolio?"
Kayo shakes himself loose. "Well, I ain't exactly a matrimaniac yet," he says, with a sickly grin. "But I will be in a few weeks. Me and Mary Ballinger has signed articles for the popular finish fight! I'm a burn picker, hey?"
"You lucky stiff!" I says, shaking Kayo's hand. "Congratulations!"
"Mary's lucky too," says Kayo, calmly. "I ain't exactly what you could call a poor investment for no girl, Maybe I ain't no second Valentino, but Mary will never have to worry about where her next limousine is comin' from! I"
But then Nate has got his breath back and he whinneys with rage.
"Shut up, you ingrateful banana!" he cuts in. "Both you babies is givin' me a pushin' around, hey? Well, either of you try to fight for somebody else and you'll see twice as many lawyers as you thought they was in the business. I got you both sewed up to ironbound contracts, black on white, and if you think you can laugh that off, you're goofey!"
"Nate," says Kayo, laying his hand on our raging manager's arm, "nobody's got no intentions of boxin' for some other pilot. You got it all wrong. I'd part with my right arm in the middle of a fight if you wanted it and I know Gale would too. But—I'm gettin' along, Nate. I can still put the parsnips on the floor, but I ain't as burly as I used to be. The old wind ain't there and I can't take a pastin' like I used to could take one. What is they in this game for me any more but punishment? On the other hand, I got a bank roll, a interest in our theatre here, and the sweetest girl in the wide, wide world thinks I'm the snake's hips. What more could ask? Why, Nate, I wouldn't go six inches away from this burg now! Something tells me that it ain't goin' to be no century before Gale here will be the biggest guy either of us knows. This baby's goin' to get over and don't think he won't. Well, I'm goin' to be with him when that day comes, because I figure that anybody which is with him will be a winner too!"
Nate's ready to tear his hair and I bet he could of got ten years for what he's thinking about both of us.
"But you got to mingle with Battlin' Murphy at Syracuse in a month!" he roars at Kayo, "how 'bout that?"
"I'll file Murphy's application," says Kayo, coolly, "I'm sittin' pretty here now, Nate, and to tell you the truth I don't care if I smack another guy in my life again or not! Anyways, Mary don't wish me all marked up for the weddin'."
"I fail to see what difference it would make whether you got marked up or not," sneers Nate. "You got a pan on you now like a gorilla!"
"Mary likes it!" grins Kayo. "No use, Nate, you can't even get me sore. If I was you, I'd grab myself off a nice little girl in this town and throw in with us. As Nero says when he burned Rome, 'It's all fun!' A married man can go twice as far as a bachelor."
"Twice as far in bad, in debt and insane!" snarls Nate. "I'm off both you bozos for life—get wed and be damned to you. I'm goin' to leave this trap and go to New York!"
But I'm glad to report that Mrs. Willcox prevailed on Nate to stick around and await further developments.
Well, along around this time the New York papers is full of nothing but the big merger Mr. Brock has brought about among the locomotive manufacturers with him at the head of the whole business. His pictuire is printed alongside of Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, and a couple of other fellows which has promising futures, and he's spoken of as one of the richest men in the world. When he comes back to Drew City from putting over that merger in New York, he gets a reception like a king gets—in a movie—and it tickles him silly. It seems millionaires is human beings, even as you and me. So he turns right around and makes the town a present of a quarter-million-dollar hospital and he couldn't of give them nothing more to the point, because the hospital they already had there wasn't equipped to handle nothing more serious than, say, dandruff or chapped hands.
Well, the day the corner stone was laid is a day me and Drew City won't forget for a long time. Mayor Baxter pronounces it a legal holiday and the whole burg turns out for the ceremonies. Eddie Granger's Vesper A. C. Brass Band had a field day, the streets is buried under flags and bunting and speeches flowed like water. The principal spellbinders, as usual, was Lem Garfield, and Judge Tuckerman. When they got through doing their stuff, Mr. Brock tied in. Then comes the big surprise of the day—to me anyways. I am sitting on the speaker's platform with Spence and Judy when Mr. Brock finishes his speech amid a tornado of applause. He turns around and sees me and a big smile spreads itself across his face. Then he nods for me to come over to him. I can't imagine what he wants with me out there before all that crowd of mingled friends and enemies, but up I get and walk over while the mob looks on in astonishment. Mr. Brock lays one hand on my shoulder and holds up the other one for silence. He gets immediate service, like usual.
"Fellow citizens!" he says, in his booming voice. "I wish to bring to your notice the most interesting object in Drew City—Mr. Gale Galen. Yesterday a penniless, friendless, ambition-driven wanderer; today, world's champion light-heavyweight boxer with a modest fortune and a handsome income; to-morrow—who knows? Who can say to what heights this remarkable young man will go? He is still a mere boy, yet consider what he has already accomplished. You young men who are ambitious and determined to make your mark in the world, don't waste your precious time reading the lives of successful men written by flattering biographers, observe the progress of Gale Galen, use him as a living textbook, for one day you will be proud of having produced him in Drew City!"
Well, that's just a preliminary. He says a lot more about me, while my face gets so red I bet you could of saw the reflection a mile away. When he finishes, Spence stafts some applause which grows till it gets to what the "Daily Sentinel" the next day calls a ovation.
Mr. Brock's speech about me makes a awful hit with Spence, Judy, and her mother. They act as proud as if I had really did something to deserve all that praise from a man like him. But it likewise made me a few more enemies, as envy is a staple product of a small town. But in particular, it broils Rags Dempster and his father. They already hated me, and after—Mr. Brock got done telling the world what a knockout he thinks I am, why, their feelings for me before was infatuation alongside of the way they loathe me now.
The first comeback I get from the effects of Mr. Brock's speech on them babies is when the Board of Trade puts on the ice for me and my partners. Although we are owners of a theatre in the town, we are not called into any of the conferences the board holds with the other business men for the praiseworthy purposes of making the natives blow their dough in Drew City instead of taking it into New York. They frame up all kind of schemes, bargain days, "Help Local Merchants!" weeks, and this and that, inviting all the other storekeepers to turn in ideas, but they don't give us a tumble. When I go around to solicit ads for our screen, the only guy I can line up is old Ajariah Stubbs. The rest of these bozos just laugh me off.
I don't have to consult no fortune teller to find out what all this means. Sore at the interest Mr. Brock is taking in me, Rags and his father is simply bearing down on me through the Board of Trade, hoping I'll get discouraged and leave town. But they didn't know me as well as they thought they did! Of course, this stuff annoys me, but the ring ain't the only place where I can take punishment. In fact, I don't get good till the going gets tough! So I go right ahead planning publicity stunts and business getters for our theatre, giving the customers as much as I can for their jack and still make money. It ain't long before I had built up a regular trade which packed the place every night. The mob was all pleased and me and Nate and Kayo was winning dough on our investment.
Then one day Mr. Brock wants to know why I don't appear at the Board of Trade meetings with the other business men. I am no squawker, so I simply says I have never been invited and let it go at that. He gives me a shrewd look.
"Never been invited, eh?" he says, frowning. "So that's the way the wind blows. Well, son, you will be invited!"
"I don't think so, sir," I says. "I can't make them like me if they don't want to."
"No?" he says sharply. "Well, I can! There will be a meeting of the board at ten to-morrow morning. Be there!"
As life to me those days was just one big surprise after another, it took a whole lot to give me a kick, but what happened at that Board of Trade meeting the next day furnished me with a thrill I'll be a long time forgetting. The board appears astonished at seeing me in the hall, but before Mr. Brock got through with 'em they was double dumbfounded. He's president of the board, but seldom shows up at the meetings, as he's too busy with his other interests. When he does show up the fur flies, and this day was no exception. Before any of the business of the meeting could get under way, Mr. Brock calls 'em to order. Then he takes the floor, with me standing beside him.
"Gentlemen," he says, "let me introduce Mr. Gale Galen, proprietor of the Judith. Theatre, on Main Street, and one of the most promising young business men of Drew City. He would be a credit to any city and should be encouraged to stay here and assisted to prosper. I want to see him at these meetings, because his youth, enthusiasm, and ambition will probably make this a real chamber of commerce, instead of a gathering place for knockers and calamity howlers as it is now. I, therefore, move that Mr. Galen be appointed a member of this board!"
That goaled 'em!
Rags Dempster's father looks like he's on the brinks of death from appoplexy, and my enemies rallies around him, bawling angry protests. Mr. Brock says nothing at all, leaving it to the bootlicking jazzbos which worships the ground he walks on to take his part and mine. At the end of a boisterous half hour I have been elected to the Drew City Board of Trade by a vote of 20 to 4.
Old Man Dempster immediately resigns and takes the air.
Well, now that I was out of the ring I didn't have to train no more and I found time hanging heavy on my hands. I never was born to stall around, that's a cinch! Even if I had a million I'd find something to do and don't think I wouldn't, but as things stood then I was far from a millionaire. I lost a frightful bunch of jack promoting that fight with Gunner Slade, and the fire we had in our theatre also put a heavy dent in the old bankroll. I'm commencing to get worried and restless. The papers is still riding Nate for not matching me with somebody, and of course, Nate's still riding me.
Not only are my hands itching for the feel of the padded gloves, but I actually need the money. So I make up my mind I'll take a long chance and tackle Judy on the subject of box fighting again, not that I got much hope that she'll remove the ban, but a marvelous offer from a big New York promoter for a fight drives me to doing something. So one day in the office I put it up to Judy, cold.
"Eh—say, Judy, would you mind if I went back to the ring for just one more scuffle?" I stammers, losing forty pounds of nerve with every word as she stares at me with wide open eyes and a gathering frown between 'em.
"I thought we were all through with that subject, Gale," she says in kind of pained surprise. "You are well started on a business career, a member of the Board of Trade, your theatre is making money, and"
"Just a minute, Judy," I butt in. "The theatre is making money all right, but when the profits is divided between me and Nate and Kayo Kelly, why, none of us gets enough to go wild about. As far as being started on a business career is concerned, maybe I am, but I don't think I got the right kind of a start. In other words, I feel that to wind up merely as part owner of a small-town picture theatre, after all my trials and tribulations, is much ado about nothing, as Willie Shakespeare says!"
Judy don't say a word. She just sits there looking out the window at Drew City and tapping her desk with a lead pencil. So I took heart and trot out some more facts and figures.
"I wouldn't of mentioned the adjective box fighting to you, Judy, under no circumstances," I says, "only Nate's got a offer for me to fight Jack Martin, this new sensation which has been flattening one and all in the light-heavyweight class. There's seventy-five thousand dollars in it for me and with that amount of jack added to the little dough I already got I could go into some business with a more exciting future to it than running a picture theatre in Drew City. Seventy-five grand would be important money to Rockefeller, and I certainly can't dismiss it with a curl of my lip!"
"Nevertheless, Gale," says Judy, swinging around and facing me, "if you return to the ring, our—our friendship comes to an end. There is no use arguing about it because I will never change on that point. The picture theatre is only a beginning, and you are young. With Mr. Brock's influence and your own prestige here you have a splendid and honorable career facing you. If you go back to the prize ring, you will lose all of that—everything you have been striving for"
"Including you, Judy?" I butt in.
"Including me!" she says—and then, her face suddenly flaming red, she flounces out of the office.
Well, I'm in a fine state of mind and don't think I ain't. I don't want to lose my chances with Judy no more than I want to lose my neck, but at one and the same time I can't get no kick out of my position in life then, no fooling. However, I let the subject drop as far as Judy is concerned and continue studying every book I can lay my hands on and attending lectures with her at Columbia's College, New York.
In the meanwhile Rags is put in charge of the carpet factory by his father, which is forced to go to Europe for his health, according to the Drew City "Sentinel." However, a few days later it comes out in the New York papers that he just dropped $300,000 in Wall Street, so I guess he went across the bounding main to get over his dizziness, and I don't blame him. Anyways, old Mr. Dempster must of been still suffering from shell shock when he made Rags manager of his rug plant, because Rags is no more fit to handle men than I'm fit to handle Dempsey. He ain't been on the job a week before he brings about a strike through his surliness, inexperience, and high-handed methods of dealing with trained workers which had been years on his father's pay roll. So for the first time in its history the Dempster & Co. mill shuts down. Then Rags pulls the boss boner of a lifetime devoted to making boneheaded plays. When a delegation of the men comes to pay him the honors of a visit, Rags refuses to treat with 'em, calls 'em ungrateful hounds, and slams the door in their faces. Not satisfied with a stunt like that, this 87-carat dumbell brings down a lot of gunmen and the like from New York to take the places of the strikers at about twice the wages the old hands was getting.
Then the fun began!
At first, the strikers just parade and hold mass meetings. Then one morning Rags drives down to his office and discovers every window in the factory has been broke during the night. After that a couple of mysterious fires in the plant is just discovered before they get going good. This would of been the tip-off to anybody but a egg like Rags that the time had arrived to get a rush of brains to the head and talk matters over with the strikers, before they quit kidding with him and do something serious. But Rags is one of these thick headed babies which has got to die of pneumonia before they learn that neglecting a cold is dangerous. He keeps on aggravating the men till he's got 'em all ugly enough to cook him and one night they try to do that!
I am buzzing along the State road near the carpet factory in my car with Judy when we hear a yelling and shouting like I've often heard at a ringside when a fellow is getting knocked stiff. The next minute we swing around a bend and I got to jam on the emergency brake to keep from running into a howling, milling mob which completely blocks the road. A lot of them is running around tearing open pillows and gathering up the feathers, and on one side is a barrel of boiling pitch. Two fellows is prancing around with a long fence rail between 'em, hollering for the others to speed things up. None of 'em gives me and Judy a tumble, but Judy gets a bit scared and tells me to turn around and go back.
"What's all the excitement?" I call to one fellow which comes up with his arms full of feathers.
"We got this young Dempster skunk," he snarls, "and we're gonna teach him he can't take the bread and butter out of our mouths and get away with it. We're gonna tar and feather the yellah dog!"
"And ride him on a rail out of town!" adds another ex-carpet weaver joyfully.
Judy gasps and I must say for a split second I felt highly tickled. Rags has double-crossed, framed, and fouled me so often that I wouldn't be human if I didn't get a kick out of seeing him get the worst of it, a reward he richly deserves. I step on the gas and start to steer my bus back through the mob and then all of a sudden I stop dead. I don't know what's the matter with me, but I'm simply crazy about fair play! If just one guy had wanted to tar and feather Rags I would of declared the scheme a good thought and wished him the best of luck, but there's over two hundred of these strikers, and two hundred to one is no fair, not even against a Rags Dempster, now is it? So I dash out of the car and shove my ways through the crowd. I know nearly all of 'em and all of 'em knows me and even in the excitement they make room for the world's light-heavyweight champion.
Rags is in the center of the mob and he sure looks like he's been through the mill, he does for a fact. Half his clothes has been tore off by willing hands, his chalk white face is all bruised and scratched and two or three huskies is pushing him around between 'em like he's a medicine ball.
"Lynch him! String him up! Get a rope!" they commence to howl on the outskirts of the mob.
Rags looks wildly about, recognizes me all of a sudden and grabs me. "Save me, Galen, save me—they're going to kill me!" he babbles.
The fellows around him falls back and glares at me. Some of 'em jostles against me, and I backed away carefully, pushing Rags behind me. I didn't make the mistake of hitting nobody. That would of spoiled everything—including me.
"Well, what are you buttin' in for?" growls a big guy, shoving out his chin invitingly.
"I am butting in to prevent you babies from committing murder," I says. "I don't like this Dempster no more than you do, but if he dies as the results of your nursery sports here to-night the grand jury will indict the lot of you for manslaughter. What's the use of getting yourselves in a jam like that on account of a fellow like this? Look at him. He's half dead now—a total loss if there ever was one!"
There's plenty growling, but the ringleaders around me looks thoughtful. The mention of "manslaughter" and "grand jury" had cooled 'em off a bit and then at this critical minute Rags slumps down to the ground in a dead faint. The crowd begins to melt away around us and somebody tells the others which comes crowding up to see what stopped the festivities that Rags has dropped dead. That was enough! In twenty minutes there was nobody on hand but me and Rags and Judy and we drove the slightly shopworn young man home.
Well, with nothing else to do I spent most of my spare time hanging around Ajariah Stubbs's drug store with Spence Brock. Spence had graduated from Printeton and was now a full-fledged Bachelor of Arts, but he wasn't quite ready yet to hang out his sign and begin business at that trade. I was still doping out schemes for old Ajariah to help keep his stock moving and fussing around the soda fountain where I used to do my stuff, composing new drinks and writing trade-pulling signs to paste on the mirror back of the counter. But this stuff was all applesauce to me. It was just so much child's play. I should of been doing something big and this puttering around was driving me cuckoo. Then there's another thing which was getting on my nerves and wearing me down. That's the difference in the way the town treated me since I become a fightless champion. The kids didn't follow me on the streets no more, instead they'd cross to the other side and make cracks to each other which set 'em all laughing and iooking at me.
I go in Kale Yackley's cigar store one day and over in a corner some of the hard guys from Nichmeyer's Garage is playing stud poker. When I come in they pay as much attention to me as they do to their hole card and that's a face. I hear somebody whisper "Sure, that's him. H's light-heavyweight champ, but the big stiff won't fight nobody! They's a dozen boloneys can take him right now and he knows it. I wouldn't be afraid to take a cuff at him myself!" A couple of months before them guys would of acted tickled all day if I spoke to 'em. Such is life!
Then this Jack Martin stops Gunner Slade in one busy round where it took me four, so Martin claims the title, as I won't accept his challenge. Even my best friends, outside of Judy, commences to hint that I should fight Martin and stop this talk about me being faint-hearted. They keep after me night and day till I'm red-headed and find sleep comes under the head of the impossibles as far as I'm concerned. I worried off ten pounds in less than two weeks, on the level! Finally, I just can't stand things no longer and one morning after my usual sleepless night I sent Nate to whooping with joy by telling him to accept the offer of $75,000 for a scuffle with Jack Martin. I don't want to promote the bout myself, as I figure it will take all my time and energies to get in shape for this man killer.
When I try to tell Judy how I have been drove into this fight she waves me away, white to the lips. I never seen her so mad. She won't listen to nothing at all, but throws up her job as stenographer in our office and won't even speak to me at her mother's boarding house.
A few nights later Rags comes around, stalling that he wants to see Mrs. Willcox about something or other, and when I come by the parlor around nine o'clock, why Judy is in there talking to him with her mother. Well, that's the last straw which fractured the camel's back, and the next day I packed up and move to the Commercial House, the unhappiest fellow in America by a wide margin. As far as I can see, I have lost Judy forever and a day, and I get so careless in my training for Jack Martin that Nate predicts this boze will flatten me in a round if I don't snap into it. Nate and Knockout Kelly remains at Mrs. Willcox's boarding house, and I get reports on Judy from them. I find out she's got a job in New York, but what this job is neither Nate or Kayo seems to know.
Then one day, weeks after I have left Mrs. Willcox's, I am putting Nate through the third degree when he says he's heard Judy speak of "rehearsals" and "make-up." This information makes me a first-class lunatic! I know what it means.
Sleep and me couldn't get together at all that night, and the next day I follow Judy to New York without her knowing it. My worst fears is realized when I find out that she is one of the chorus girls in a Broadway musical comedy. Just think of it, Judy a chorus girl! I got a ticket away back in the balcony, where she wouldn't be liable to see me, and I sit through that show like a fellow in a dream—a nightmare! I ain't got the faintest idea what the play is all about, and I couldn't repeat two words from that show if my life depends on it. All I can see is Judy, and I imagine everybody around me knows how I feel and notices that I dig my nails inches into the palms of my hands as I watch the girl I am crazy about, out there on that stage for all these fatheads to look at. There's no use of me trying to explain my sensations to you. If you really wish to know how I felt, go and get in love!
The minute the curtain goes down on the last act of this frolic I beat it around to the stage door, determined to have it out with Judy for once and for all. I'm prepared to make any concession if she'll quit this show. With these thoughts in my head I tear around to the back of the theatre and all but stumble over Rags Dempster. Of course he's waiting there to see Judy, and he makes a couple of cracks to me with the regards to her being in the show which put me in a murderous frame of mind, but I lay off him because I know a meelee outside the theatre with this hound would ruin any chance I might have of making up with Judy.
I give the doorkeeper my card to take in to her, and Rags sends his in too, and then we stand there waiting, glaring at each other like a couple of strange bulldogs. Finally the doorkeeper comes out and hands me back my card. Judy has wrote on it: "I will be out in twenty minutes. Wait!"
Just looking at her handwriting again sends my heart banging against my ribs, and I can't help grinning at Rags when I read her message. The doorkeeper turns to him and says: "They was no answer for you, young feller, so on your way. It's against the rules to allow you Johns to hang around the stage door. Take the air!"
I took Judy home from the theatre that night, and I only wish she had lived in San Francisco instead of Drew City, which is a mere thirty-eight miles from New York, and when we get there I ain't touched on a tenth of the subjects we got to talk about. The main thing, of course, is the question of whether or not she will give up the stage. She's got just one answer for that and nothing will change it. If I will call off my coming fight with Jack Martin and keep my word to stay out of the ring, she'll leave the stage. If I fight Jack Martin or Jack anybody, she will go on the road with this show, which is due to leave New York in a month for forty weeks around the U. S.
Well, when I am with Judy, I would promise her anything. Nothing she asks sounds unreasonable to me. So, without thinking or caring about the consequences, in fact, thinking only that if I fight Martin I lose Judy, I give her my word I will cancel the bout, although it's already been heavily advertised and I got a ten-thousand-dollar appearance forfeit up. A fellow in love is a hot sketch, ain't he?
The next morning I move back to Mrs. Willcox's from the Commercial House, a thing which gives Knockout Kelly and Nate a lot of laughs. Nate says watching me and Judy is more fun than watching a circus, but when I tell him I ain't got the slightest intentions of boxing Jack Martin, why, all the fun disappears as far as Nate is concerned. At first he just simply won't believe me, but when I convince him I am not kidding he goes triple cuckoo, raving around the house like a maniac. Two or three times we nearly come to blows and would of did so, only I don't want to cuff Nate by no means, though some of his comments about me running out of the Martin match would of made a rabbit cuff a bulldog.
When the sport writers recovered from their amazement at my second resignation from the ring they went after me with their heavy artillery in earnest. What they called me before was affectionate terms of endearment alongside of the way they referred to me now. "Cheese champion," "false alarm," and "yellow" is just a few of the labels they tacked after my name in their columns, and many of 'em recognized Jack Martin's claim to the light-heavyweight championship since I refused to defend the title.
In Drew City I am treated like I got smallpox, even people which used to be my warmest admirers giving me the air. Judge Tuckerman, Lem Garfield, old Ajariah Stubbs, Spence, and a lot of others don't hesitate to tell me they think I am making a serious mistake in not meeting Martin, but the hardest blow of all is when Mr. Brock sees me at a Board of Trade meeting one day and wants to know what's all this nonsense about me canceling my fight with Jack Martin. When I tell him it ain't nonsense he acts like he's astounded and says he's disappointed in me. Then he walks away before I can explain matters to him, and when I meet him on the street a couple of days afterward he gives me the ice.
I heard from Spence later that his father had bet $25,000 on me to whip Martin, and as it was a "play or pay" bet he stands to lose the jack if I don't fight.
Well, the next couple of weeks in Drew City was about the most miserable I ever spent in my life. Although I have banged around considerable since I been a kid, and took a lot of punishment, both mental and physical, I am not used to being treated like a dog and I never will get used to it! Judy was simply wonderful to me, and of course that helped a lot, but it did hurt to have all my old friends practically pass me up. Then again, to lose my standing in Drew City through no fault of mine after all the time I had spent trying to mean something there, was not easy to take either. However, I said nothing to Judy, though a word from her would of sent me into the ring against Jack Martin and change all this. I figured she thought she was doing the best thing, in keeping me from boxing, and I'd rather have her friendship than all the others put together.
Then one day, just when things look blackest for me, the sun comes busting through the clouds, as it always will if a fellow will have the nerve and patience to face out the rain. I was sitting out on the porch after dinner, alone as usual, when Judy comes out and lays her hand on my shoulder.
"Gale," she says quietly, "I have been thinking things over and I realize the position I have placed you in by making you cancel your fight with Jack Martin. I can't stand them calling you a quitter and a coward, and I don't think it is good for a spirit such as yours is to suffer that sort of thing in silence. If you want to fight Martin, go ahead. And I hope you'll win!"
Well, for a minute I can't believe my ears, and then I let out a yell of joy. I beat it over to the theatre and tell Nate the good news and we both cavorted around in the lobby till the incoming and outgoing customers views us with alarm. While Nate goes down to the railroad station and keeps the telegraph operator awake sending wires to the newspapers, Jack Martin's pilot and the fight promoter, me and our moving-picture operator fixed up a slide and throwed it on the screen in our theatre: "Six-Second Smith has just agreed to fight Jack Martin for the World's light-heavyweight title!" The applause like to raise the roof, and it did raise my spirits to a height they had not been for many's the day.
The next day I am back in training again, and the big barn which Nate had fitted up as a first-class gym was packed to the doors every afternoon. Mr. Brock drops around in a few days to watch me work out, and he's as friendly toward me as he ever was now that I'm going through with the fight. Besides Knockout Kelly, Tommy O'Ryan, and Two-Punch Jackson, which helped condition me as usual, I got a couple of fast lightweights down from New York to box with for speed.
I figured it was high time I paid more attention to the scientific end of the game, feeling that I'd been taking too much punishment and too many unnecessary chances in my fights through my willingness to trade punches. I wanted to avoid getting cut up in the future. The rough and tough stuff was all right when I was a preliminary boloney, but now that I was a champion I wanted to fight like a champion and not like a longshoreman on a dock.
Nate, however, yelled murder about my method of training for Martin. I ought to devote all my time to developing my punch, says Nate, and leave the boxing run for the end book.
"You're a prize fighter and not no chorus girl, and it don't make no difference whether you get marked up or not, as long as you win!" Nate tells me. "I don't like to see you learnin' so much about gettin' away from punches—you can't knock anybody dead by back pedalin' all over the ring. You got a poisonous wallop, and I don't want you to sacrifice it to speed. I've saw dozens of guys which was natural hitters like you lose championships when they tried to become boxers, You can sock and you can take it—any further knowledge to a scrapper like you is a handicap!"
Never the less I kept on training in my own way right up to the day of the fight, and I went into the ring with Martin determined to give him a boxing lesson and amaze the crowd with my science. The cold reception I got from the mob, mostly because they thought I had tried to avoid meeting Martin, only made me more determined to show them some sparring the like of which they had never witnessed before.
Martin come out carefully at the bell, expecting my usual rush, but I surprised him and the customers by tripping around like a dancing master and letting him do the forcing. We exchanged a half dozen light taps, with Martin taking no chances, evidently fearing my pacifist tactics was a trick. He worked a wicked straight left that I couldn't seem to solve, and before we have gone a minute I can see I am up against a master boxer which is making me look like a novice. The crowd hoots and howls for me to quit being yellow and fight, but I continue to dance around Martin, occasionally shooting in short rights, most of which bounces harmlessly off his bent arms or shoulders. This fellow was a boxing fool and no mistake, and he's getting more confident every second as the expected avalanche of wallops fails to mow him down.
The first round ended in Martin's favor by a wide margin, though neither of us had did any real damage. The attendance is bitterly complaining and howling "Fake!" During the rest Nate tells me if I don't quit clowning and tie into this baby he will walk out of the arena and leave me flat.
Martin rushed in with a stinging left to the jaw at the beginning of the second frame, but I blocked a tight to the same place and made him change feet with a torrid left hook to the heart. After a short clinch we begin light sparring again, and again the crowd howls for action. Martin then missed an overhand right for the jaw, and, suddenly changing his boxing tactics, begins swinging them from all angles, evidently figuring to catch me by surprise by his sudden change of pace and probably knock me kicking. The crowd came to its feet with his flurry, and I was a busy young man for the next few seconds trying to keep on my feet. I still continue to box, and a right swing to the jaw buckled my knees under me. I tried to dive into a clinch till my head cleared, but Martin had me figured and swished over a terrific left swing that broke my nose at the bridge and covered me with gore just as the bell rang.
The house was in a uproar as I slid into my stool, but they ain't in half the uproar I'm in, and that's a fact. In spite of all my precautions and the time I wasted studying a defense, this big banana has broke my nose and marked me for life!
Before the echo of the bell has died out for Round Three, I am in Martin's corner swinging both hands to the head. I have forgot they is such a thing as boxing in the book. I want to pulverize this baby and show the howling mob whether or not I'm yellow.
Just to prove that I can take it, and am not adverse to doing the same, I let Martin throw four punches at my head and jaw without a return. Then I set myself and shot a left to the body and a right to the jaw. Martin crashed against the ropes and rebounded into another right I had started, which toppled him clean through the ropes out of the ring. Wow, you should of heard the crowd!
Well, they was plenty of jack bet on Martin, and he's shoved back into the ring by dozens of willing hands. The referee has reached "eight" when Martin struggles to a upright position with his back against the ropes. He's out on his feet, and I don't want to hit him, so I ask the referee to stop it. This kind-hearted official snarls for me to go on fighting, adding that the fact of Martin still being on his feet has probably broke my heart. While I'm standing there arguing with him, with my hands at my side, Martin stumbles up from in back of me and shoots a right at my head, knocking me flat. Then—the bell.
Well, that foul blow of Martin's removed my last scrupple about making him like it. I rushed across the ring at the gong for the fourth frame and staggered him with a left to the head. I then ducked a wild right haymaker and dug both gloves into his body, fighting him off with short inside rights when he tried desperately to clinch. On the break Martin caught me flush on the jaw with his right, but I had just about punched the steam out of this baby, and the blow didn't even shake me up. I closed his left eye with a couple of well-timed rights, and then proceeded to beat him from pillar to post. Only by continual clinching did Mr. Martin save himself from going out in that frame.
Seeing their man had no chance, his seconds set up a cry of foul when I dropped him to his knees with a right to the stomach just before the gong. That punch was as clean as a baby's heart, as most of the crowd knew. The referee is about to allow Martin's claim of foul when Mr. Brock, who is sitting in a box with the chairman of the State Boxing Commission, butts in, and after a couple of minutes' wrangling the boxing official orders the fight to go on, to the great joy of the crowd and the great sorrow of Jack Martin. When this fight first started, the mob was with Martin almost to a man, but in the last round, when he butted, ripped, heeled, and fouled me in every way known to the game, they are on their chairs bellering for me to knock him out.
The end came one minute and twenty seconds after the bell for the fifth round. I come out to finish this bird, but run into a wild right which like to upset me. We clinched. I shot a hard right through a opening and Martin reeled back like a drunken man. "He's going!" howls the mob. A left hook under the heart dropped him to one knee. He was too groggy to take a count and got up at "four." I took my time and measured him with a light left. His head come up, and I threw a right flush to his jaw, sending him down and out.
Thus endeth Jack Martin.