Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/63

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was murder in the first degree! Roberts tried hard to connect with a solid smash that would end it, but Kelly was the wildest thing I ever seen this side of Borneo, and when he wasn't reclinin' on the mat he was divin' head first into a clinch and roughin' my boy with that extry forty-odd pounds of bone and muscle. The referee give him all the chance in the world to hang on, scrape the Kid's back against the ropes, and wrestle him. That and the generous counts he got durin' the four times he kissed the canvas was the only things which saved Kelly from goin' to bed in round one.

The Kid ran grinnin' to his corner at the bell with his golden blond hair scarcely mussed. The house was in a uproar. "That fellow's sheer strength is remarkable, but he's not a boxer!" says Roberts to me. "I'll end it in the next round—I'm not going to punish him any more."

But he had to do it—much!

Kelly came slowly out for the second round, a pitiful sight. The Kid had chopped him to pieces in the first three minutes, and his hairy body was stained a deep crimson down to his trunks. Suddenly he rushed viciously, landin' a right and left to the body that sent Roberts crashin' into the ropes gaspin' and drove the mob insane. As Kelly lumbered in close to finish him, the Kid caught him with a left uppercut to the heart that could be plainly heard in Siam, the lightin' right cross to the jaw that followed sprawlin' Kelly on the lower rope. He was up at "six," pawin' blindly in the air, but carryin' on smartly, and the Kid coolly circled around him, his flashin' left forever in Kelly's battered face. Three times more Special Delivery Kelly dived