Page:Fighting Back (1924).pdf/17

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

left Yale flat on its shoulder blades and set forth to put his male parent on the Big Time again.

Bein' built for the game, he turned to the ring, and if he missed goin' through college, why, that's about the only thing he didn't go through! We barred nobody, no weight, no distance, no color, no battle ground. Pretty soon we got nothin' but money and the Kid brings his old man back to the U. S. and sets him up in business again. A good son, what?

But the Wall Street bee was still buzzin' around old J. A. Halliday's bean and tryin' to get rid of it was like tryin' to get rid of diphtheria. Him and the Kid dives into the business end of the movie game for a while, but neither of them knew what it was all about, and they dropped plenty pennies in that. Then while the Kid and his fair young bride is takin' a breeze around the world to bust up a dull summer, old man Halliday breaks out with a ambition to corner the grain market. What they done to him was pitiful, no foolin'! This time they didn't even leave him his life, because the shock of this second failure broke him in half and he got a stroke and died. The heart-broken Kid, which had been nuts over his dad, scurries back from Europe to find his father had left him nothin' but debts, and the Kid spends his last solitary dime payin' off. Then he sends for me.

When I got his wire I come on the run, as I'd come from the grave if he wanted me. Me and Kid Roberts was never just manager and fighter, we was the greatest thing two men can be—pals! So when I trip up the marble steps of his Long Island palace, I'm runnin'