# Six Rounds

Extracted from Popular magazine, 10 July 1907, pp. 61-81.
II — III — IV — V
Six Rounds
By A. M. Chisholm Author of “The Man of Two Packs,” “Little Fish,” Etc.
“Butch” McShane and “Chuck” Wilson sure got a lot of punch into their acting
NOBODY knows exactly what makes a champion. The history of the ring teems with examples of might-have-beens—of men who had everything except something; and as to what that missing something is or was opinions vary. But the outstanding fact is that many fighters of admitted skill, gameness, punch, and fighting spirit, have never reached the top. Which was the case with “Butch,” christened Thomas McShane, and '“Chuck”—by baptismal rites Henry Wilson. Either of them would have made a lightweight champion and, later, a welter extend himself to the limit. And yet they were never even in sight of a match with a champion. Perhaps that was why.
Butch and Chuck were very well acquainted, even intimate. But their relations were not at all those said to exist aforetime between David and Jonathan, being rather in the similitude of David and Goliath, or possibly Cain and Abel. Such relations on their part had been strictly professional and without personal animus; and they had resulted in a mutual respect and something—outside the ring—akin to friendship.
To say that Butch McShane was no beauty is to put it kindly. Starting under a heavy, natural handicap his features had suffered in various affrays, public and private, under weapons of aggression ranging from half bricks to eight-ounce gloves. Their normal expression, carefully cultivated for professional purposes, was ferocious. But one comfort was that the worst had happened. However in the future they might be shuffled, cut, or worked over the result could scarcely be worse, with a fifty-fifty chance of being an improvement.
But, when it came to physique, Butch was there with the goods. He was swarthy, hairy, and solidly built. He owned a jaw like a battleship's ram, endowed by kindly nature with natural shock absorbers and further protected by high, muscular shoulders which, separated by a very short and thick neck, rendered said jaw practically immune from all but high-angled fire. Also he possessed an abdominal armor belt capable of withstanding most broadsides of the yard-arm-to-yard-arm variety.
With his chin tucked comfortably behind his left shoulder, Butch was accustomed to take his medicine until the opportunity came to unhook his right hand, which was his best. When that got across and connected properly—and it usually connected properly when it got across—Butch was wont to turn away nonchalantly, remarking generously as his gloves were unlaced: “Chees, Jerry, dere was one hard guy to punch out!”
On the other hand, Chuck Wilson was distinctly good looking. He was taller than Butch, and more rangily built. His hair was fair and his eyes, normally, were blue. Sometimes they were black and blue, surrounded by a prismatic, puffed area to be reduced by application of the raw flesh of the steer. But as works of the Creator unspoiled by the gloved hand of man they were clear blue with the frank, innocent gaze of happy childhood; intensely puzzling when viewed above two five-ounce mitts of which either held the kick of a gray Georgia mule. He was of the white-skinned type, which bruises and bleeds easily; which also was misleading, for he was at his very best when he looked like a casualty station in a busy sector. His muscular development, while not so obvious as Butch's, was there nevertheless. His were the long, smooth muscles, with tremendous driving power. There was no doubt about his batteries, and many a disgusted fighter had failed to dent his abdominal armor belt.
On such occasions as Butch and Chuck had faced each other in roped and resined arenas the results had been painful but indecisive. That is, they were indecisive as to the principals, though a credulous public was under the impression that on one occasion Butch's right hand had been the sole reason for Chuck's quiescence while a referee counted ten; and that on another occasion this result had been reversed. But in reality these outcomes had been arrived at by private arrangement, in consideration of an equitable division of winner's and loser's ends, plus certain side bets.
On other occasions, failing satisfactory frame-ups, they had given the public full value for its money, going the route to draws after honest and whole-hearted attempts to kill one another. Both had the clear sand of gamecocks and both could absorb punishment and come back for more. Possibly Butch could take a little more than Chuck; and perhaps it was lucky for him that he could. Perhaps his right hand was better than either of Chuck's, but Chuck was quicker on his feet. Butch fought from a crouch; Chuck was a straight-up boxer. Privately each considered that in a finish fight with a blind or lenient referee he could lick the other. And both had of necessity given up the attempt to make the lightweight limit.
For years Butch and Chuck subsisted easily, if not in clover at least in good pasture. But there came a time when not only they, but others of their profession fell on evil days. A wave of hysteria disguised as moral reform overran the country, submerging legislatures and municipal bodies. Reformers, riding triumphantly on its crest, denounced the degrading and brutalizing exhibitions known as prize fights, and refused to see the subtle distinction between the said exhibitions and those euphemistically termed “glove contests.”
In vain practical unregenerates pointed out that a trained man in ring costume is not only a more pleasing spectacle but a better risk than an untrained one running to catch a car. The wave choked their feeble protests, and swept out of existence not only advertised contests, but “athletic clubs” where any fairly skillful gentleman willing to go through the motions might earn a few honest dollars almost any Saturday night. Mayors and city councils developed strong uplifting tendencies, and police departments, speeded up and investigated, played it safe to save their jobs, and threw chests of new and uncompromising virtue. Temporarily, at least, there was nothing doing for fighters whose celebrity did not warrant the erection of arenas in the rude and ungodly mining towns of the West.
The reform wave left Butch and Chuck metaphorically high and dry. They had never taken much thought for the morrow, and they were strangers to the good, old fable of the busy ant. Eventually they were forced to establish relations with a gentleman who did business beneath the sign of three balls, and so got rid of a number of superfluities in the form of jewelry and fine raiment acquired in more prosperous days.
But the proceeds of these forced sales decreased with a rapidity peculiar to resources when all is outgo and income is nothing. They began to adopt simple methods of living; and thus one day they met in an eating place whose chief recommendation was its cheapness. Up till then neither had confided in the other. It was Butch who started the confessional ball rolling by a modest request for temporary accommodation to the extent of ten dollars.
“If I had it loose youse'd get it, Butch,” Chuck replied frankly, “but I ain't. Youse beat me to it. I was just goin' to ask you.”
Butch regarded his old rival at first with suspicion, but decided that he was telling the truth.
“So we're both up against it!” he ruminated gloomily. 'The way it is wit' me, Chuck, if I don't git a fight pretty soon, I'll have to quit eatin'. And I don't see no fight comin'.”
“The fightin' game's on the blink,” said Chuck.
“They got it so's it's safer to wallop a guy wit' a lead pipe in a dark alley than wit' a glove in a ring,” Butch agreed. '“What's birds like me an' you goin' to do?”
The problem was beyond Chuck, and he gave it up.
“I'm sellin' papers when I break into de game,” Butch confided sadly. “I don't know not'in' else but fightin'. I'll say it's a dirty deal we been handed. Here's me an' you, bot' of us hard guys. We could fill a house any night wit' ten rounds, an' pull all our punches so's they wouldn't hurt a baby. An' they won't let us!”
“You said something,” Chuck agreed. “We ain't champeens, Butch, because we done too much fightin'. But get us right, an' either of us could come near cleanin' up on some of these dancin' champs.”
“Ain't it the bloody truth!” Butch rumbled. “I'd rather fight some of them champs twenty rounds than take you ten on de level. They wouldn't be half as rough an' dirty.”
Chuck accepted this tribute in the spirit in which it was offered.
“When it comes to de rough stuff, Butch, I ain't got not'in' on you,” he acknowledged. “De last fight we had, if de referee had knew his job, I'd of win when you foul me in de sevent'.”
“If he'd of knew his job,” Butch corrected, “I'd of win when you foul me in de fift'.”
“Well—maybe,” Chuck admitted frankly. “If you ask me, somebody hands that referee a piece of change to make us go the full route.”
“You said it,” Butch agreed. “He was crooked.”
Silence infolded them as they meditated upon the depravity of the referee who had forced them to fight the full ten rounds. Butch broke the gloomy silence.
“We got to git a fight, 'sall there is to it. S'pose we see Costigan?”
“He's crooked,” said Chuck.
“Straight guys like us ain't got no chance, anyway,” said Butch. “He may be able to frame something for us.”
Mr. Costigan, sometimes referred to as “Honest John,” dwelt in an unpretentious hotel frequented by “sports” of various kinds. Be it said for Mr. Costigan, he did not seek the spotlight. A modest violet of sport, he preferred the shaded nooks, which unkind persons said were sometimes very shady, indeed. However, nothing had ever been brought squarely home to him; which fact might indicate honesty, genius, or pure luck.
As it happened, Mr. Costigan himself was up against a serious financial shortage. The disastrous reform wave had washed out the props upon which several of his activities had rested, and he had been unfortunate besides. He was not entirely without money, though if he had paid his debts he would have been. But he had no intention of paying them just then, being well aware that, though mathematically the position of one having debts and cash just sufficient to liquidate them is exactly that of one having neither cash nor debts, practically the difference is vast. For opportunity knocks vainly upon the door of him who is flat broke. In fact, Mr. Costigan was seriously considering the advisability of letting financial bygones be bygones by the simple method of putting a thousand or so miles between him and Falls City. He was ready to take a chance on making money, but the announcement of Butch and Chuck that they desired to exchange blows for currency left him cold.
“You couldn't pull off a pillow fight in a cellar in this town,” he said. “The lid's down and clamped.”
“We thought youse could find some place like a big barn out in the country or a barge on the river,” Butch suggested hopefully. “An' then, if you tipped off some of them boob sports it was a grudge fight and they'd see a murder for their money, they'd fall for it.”
“Fair enough, only it ain't binding,” Mr. Costigan returned. “That grudge thing is played out. And some people are leery of you boys.”
“Why?” Butch queried in hurt surprise.
“Funny, ain't it?” Mr. Costigan observed, with faint irony. “If you want to know, they say you're too clever to hurt one one other in the ring.”
“Ain't Chuck hung the K. O. on me, and ain't I hung it on him?” Butch asked in aggrieved tones.
“S'posin? we are clever,” said Chuck, “don't they want to see speed?”
“You got your alibis,” Mr. Costigan admitted. 'You're fast and tough, and you make a good match—when you try. But not for mine. Nothing in it for me.”
“There'd be betting,” Chuck pointed out. “You get money up and wise us, and either me or Butch will drop dead any round you say.”
“That's crooked,” said Mr. Costigan severely.
“Well?” said Chuck.
“And you couldn't get away with it,” Mr. Costigan added, more convincingly.
“We'd do it right,” Butch assured him. “We know how.”
“I guess you do,” Mr. Costigan admitted. “I'll think it over, but I don't see it now. The fighting game ain't what it used to be.”
“It's our business,” Butch lamented, “an' they've went an' ruined it on us. How are we goin' to eat? Tap some guy on the bean, or what?”
Mr. Costigan was not in the habit of casting bread upon the waters, being more than doubtful of its return; but two boys who would do as they were told were in the nature of an investment. After hesitation he produced a sadly attenuated roll.
“I'll stake you to a ten-spot apiece,” he said. “They don't grow on the bushes no more, and I ain't flush myself, so be careful of it. If I hear of anything, I'll let you know.”
“T'anks!” Butch acknowledged, without false shame.
“T'anks!” Chuck echoed. “If you're ever bettin' on a fight I'm in, Costigan, just put me wise.”
II.
In the days when the moving-picture business was in an embryonic state and the present stellar system had not evolved, a concern known as “Brownstone Films, Inc.,” was born of a union of the monetary resources of one Isaac Braunstein and the ideas of a certain Martin O'Hara, who possessed an extensive experience of the managerial end of the theatrical business, and thought he possessed an accurate knowledge of the tastes of the great American public.
“Look ut, now,” Mr. O'Hara was wont to say on such occasions as he aired his views in the premises: “What is it the public gives up to see? Is it a circus or a wild-West show? Once a year, mebbe, yes. Is it these here 'problem' plays wrote by erotic hopheads where the seventh commandment is always busted or goin' to be? Not unless ye can get pulpit publicity, the preachers boostin' for ye by tryin' to knock. Is it the 'spectacular' kind? Most of them go broke. I'm tellin' ye the show the public says it wants, as proved by its steady patronage year after year, is the one that represents the life and the people it knows, mixed up and opposed to the life and the people it knows only by hearsay.
“It's settled that pictures are to be popular-priced; which means they have to be made with popular-priced audiences in view. Now, the backbone of the popular-priced audience is the workin' lad and his gyurl. When the rich lad defies his haughty parents, puts on overalls and marries the foreman's datter they're tickled to death; and the same when the young heiress marries the husky young mechanic.
“As a recipe for a good, dependable show on the stage, the wise ones have always taken a workin' lad and a workin' gyurl, a millionaire with a marcelled wife, a haughty datter and a wild son, a smooth, gamblin' crook to lead the son astray and ruin everybody else; and for seasonin' added an English butler, a parlor maid named Nora O'Shea, and a cop called Dinny Hogan. Then they had a show that would run for years. Ye can name them runnin' now that's playin' to the sons and datters of the b'ys and gyurls that saw them first. And why? Because they have the rock-bottom ingrediencies that never fail to raise the dough, because they're based on human nature. Shakespeare gets by four hundred years after for the same reason. He wrote plays for the folks who went to see them.”
With these guiding principles, which seemed sound enough then, Brownstone Films proceeded to live, movie and have its being, and for a time did very well with a public to which the picture itself was so novel that it did not demand novelty in the picture. It had no high-priced stars and it paid no exorbitant salaries. It produced no special feature films, but it did turn out real—or almost real—human stories that appealed to a public not yet emancipated from traditions of the spoken drama. Its plays were made by a solid, dependable cast. Its leading lady, Georgia Dale, and its leading man, Ned Baxter, had good experience in “stock.” “Stunts ”were not required of them. Brownstone Films thought in terms of the stage, and its productions ran along lines delimited and limited by stage limitations.
But there came a day when the public palate, tickled by more highly seasoned food, refused to be satisfied by the plain, wholesome, but slightly stodgy Brownstone fare; a fact sadly if somewhat belatedly recognized by Braunstein and O'Hara.
“You can lead along a horse to the water a halter by, Marty,” was the way the former put it, “but you can make him drink nix. We got to change our policy. We got to produce special-feature stuff—something with a punch to it.”
“True for you,” O'Hara admitted frankly. “I own up I didn't see the possibilities of the picture business. But one thing I do know—you got to give the public what it wants.”
Braunstein nodded agreement.
“Our productions will cost more, and like we got to get some new people—that can jump off a runaway locomotive into a river and go around the paddle box of a steamer, and ride buck horses and all them stunts.”
“I'd hate to can Ned Baxter,” said O'Hara. “We're friends.”
“On a pay roll,” Braunstein stated, “friendship is out of place—like truth on a epitaph.”
“Well, it isn't his fault if we've been producing the wrong stuff lately,” argued O'Hara, who possessed the virtue of loyalty. “He does that as well as anybody could, and we'll always have to have somebody for the line he's been doing. Stunt actors are in a class by themselves. If we have to get one we will, but I won't can Baxter.”
Braunstein, being fair-minded, nodded. Baxter made love beautifully and was equally at home in evening clothes and overalls.
A week after, Braunstein handed O'Hara a scenario which it appeared had caught his fancy. In due course O'Hara read it. The title was “A Man of His Hands.” The general plot is immaterial, but it had several features, among them a ring contest in which the hero for good and sufficient reasons defeated the champion—class unspecified—a human brute and cave man, to the confusion and financial disaster of the villain and the alternate fear and joy of the heroine who, disguised as a reporter, occupied a ringside seat. There were training scenes and plenty of action. It was close enough to the old stuff to appeal to O'Hara, and it had enough of the new to conform to the new policy. He knew it would film well, but he found himself up against an initial difficulty, for if he had pugilists in his company he did not know them. He hunted up Baxter.
“Ned,” he said, “can you box at all?”
Baxter was a clean-cut, fair-haired man who looked younger than he was, and in make-up looked positively youthful.
“It depends on the other fellow,” he said frankly. “I can if he'll let me.”
“At that youre no worse than some fighters,” said O'Hara. “Could you get away with a fight scene?”
“What kind? Barroom, street, or what?”
“Ring. You knock out the champ.”
“No, I don't,” Baxter returned regretfully. “I'm not good enough to put it across. What's the idea?”
O'Hara told him. Baxter shook his head.
“Well, of course, not everybody can be a boxer,” O'Hara admitted. “But Braunstein likes this thing, and so do I. Only I don't know where the divil I can get an actor who can scrap or a scrapper who can act.”
He put this problem up to Braunstein. The latter was determined, but not helpful.
“You should get an actor who is also a fighter,” he said sagely.
“Give me the name of one,” said O'Hara. “And we need two.”
“Plenty of fighters go on the stage.”
“Old Peter Jackson made a good Uncle Tom,” said O'Hara, “and Jim Corbett gets away with it. Outside them, show me! The public goes to see the fighter himself, not to see him act. Fighters on the screen—murder! The only thing I see for it is to switch the story around so that the hero doesn't fight. Then I can get a couple of pork-and-beaners for the ring scene.”
“The ring scene has to be good,” Braunstein pointed out. “Two bums in the ring will be two bums on the screen. We got to give the public the real goods, Marty.”
O'Hara admitted it sadly.
“Well, I'll do my best to find somebody for the part the way the script reads now,” he said. “If I can't, I'll get a couple of scrappers and shoot the ring scene, anyhow.”
“Get good scrappers,” Braunstein advised.
“How good?” O'Hara demanded. “How much do you want to pay for this ring scene?”
“Understand me,” said Braunstein, somewhat apprehensively, as the high cost of realism obtruded itself, “I ain't saying you should get real champeens. The fighting game is dull just now, account of these here laws against fights. You should pick up two good fighters cheap in a dull market.”
But O'Hara, after diligent search, failed to find two actors who could make even a bluff at a championship contest. He fell back on the alternative of changing the story to conform to the necessities of the situation. It was difficult to eliminate the hero from the ring scene and make everything else fit; but at last he did it. Then he went hunting for two lightweights to go a limited route to a fake knock-out.
Leading exponents of the manly art objected, he learned, to being filmed with an opponent of anybody else's selection; and the necessity for a knock-out, real or pretended, settled the matter definitely for reasons succinctly stated by a gentleman of near-championship caliber, known as “Kid” Slade.
“I don't have not'in' to do wit' no fake kayos, see,” Mr, Slade announced through the southwest corner of his mouth. “S'pose I'm boob enough to let some guy put me out in a pitcher, what happens? Why, of course, he claims he does it on de level, an' dere goes me rep! Maybe some day I lose a fight, an' de papers says I'm layin' down like I done in de movies. Or if de odder guy lets me hang it on him, it's a frame, ain't it? An' a pitcher showin' me in a frame don't do me rep no good. No, bo, not'in' stirrin'!”
O'Hara's pugilistic acquaintance was not extensive, and he soon exhausted his prospects, for the amounts they demanded as a condition precedent would have given Braunstein heart failure. He spoke of his troubles to a friend and this friend advised him to see one Honest John Costigan.
“Who's he?” said O'Hara. “And not knocking him if he's a friend of yours, most of these Honest Johns you run across would have slugged the widow of Scripture for her mite.”
He got a brief account of Mr. Costigan and made up his mind to see him. When he knocked at the latter's door in the River House the owner opened it a mere crack.
“Mr. Costigan?” said O'Hara.
“I'm called that,” Mr. Costigan admitted in a tone which implied that he could deny it successfully if necessary, but he admitted his caller. O'Hara stated his business without circumlocution, and Mr, Costigan assumed an expression of grave doubt.
“Good boys are hard to get now,” he observed, shaking his head.
“They shouldn't be,” said O'Hara bluntly.
“Have you tried?” Mr. Costigan queried.
“Not to mention,” said O'Hara, who had no intention of bulling the market by doing so.
“What would these boys have to weigh in at?”
“Weights don't matter—except that they've got to look about evenly matched.”
“Do they have to look like anything at all?” Mr. Costigan asked. “I mean do they have to have good looks? Because beauties are scarce in the business.”
“If one looks like a human being,” O'Hara replied, “the other can be a double for the missing link for all I care. In fact, the less looks he has the better.”
“You mean the human being knocks out the link,” Mr. Costigan deduced sagely.
“Virtue and good looks always triumph—in plays,” said O'Hara.
“The public's a funny proposition,” said Mr. Costigan, who knew something of the animal himself. “How good do the boys have to be?”
“In the scenario the fight is for a championship,” O'Hara explained, “so you can see I can't use dubs. They've got to put over about six rounds of real fast, rough milling—the real thing short of a knock-out. That comes in the sixth.”
“I see,” said Mr. Costigan. “I might be able to get you two real good boys—if you'll pay what they're worth.”
“What's that?” O'Hara asked.
“Well, times are hard just now,” said Mr. Costigan. “Say about five hundred.”
“Try one of my cigars,” said O'Hara genially. “They're milder than that one you're smoking.”
“I thought you wanted good boys,” Mr. Costigan returned. “I can get you pork-and-beaners for twenty apiece.”
“I do want 'em good,” said O'Hara. “But I'm not hiring them by the month. Only six rounds.”
“Now, see here,” said Mr. Costigan earnestly, “I don't claim to be doing this for nothing. I want a little myself. These boys are good. Each of them has about everything a champ has—as high as the ears. What they ain't got above that, and the fact that the right man never got hold of 'em, it what's kept 'em from being contenders. They've got the speed and the punch. They're as fast and tough as they make 'em, and they can put your fight scene across right. If that's worth five hundred to you, say so. If not, it's all right with me. You're the doctor.”
O'Hara reflected and in the end capitulated. He suspected that he was being held up, but the quotation was cheap compared with others he had had, and if these fighters came up to this advance notice they would be well worth the money.
“I'll want to see for myself what they're like,” he said.
“Sure,” Mr. Costigan nodded.
“You understand,” O'Hara_ explained, “we're going to stage a real fight. We're showing training quarters and so on, and the preliminary work. Then we have to show the arena, the crowd—everything. Of course, I've seen a few fights, like everybody else, but I'm no expert. They tell me you know a good deal about the game.”
“A little,” Mr. Costigan admitted.
“You've refereed fights, I'm told.”
“Not for a long time,” said Mr. Costigan. Modestly he neglected to state that his retirement from the arduous duties of a referee had been accompanied by a nimbus of beer bottles and other missiles, expressive of popular disapproval of his humane efforts to nullify the soporific effects of a right hook by taking twenty seconds to count ten. “But any dope I can give you is yours.”
“This is business,' said O'Hara. “I'll pay you a hundred to supervise the setting—look after details of the ring and so on. That satisfactory?”
“Suits me,” Mr. Costigan agreed.
“All right,” said O'Hara. “And now when can I see these boys?”
Mr. Costigan, after a glance at his watch, thought that they could be found working out in a gymnasium back of a saloon owned by an ex-pugilist known as “Happy” Morgan.
“If they work together they're friendly,” O'Hara commented. “Remember, I don't want a love scene—I want a fight.”
“Don't worry,” Mr. Costigan grinned. “If you're satisfied they got the goods, I'll fix it with them. You'd better leave that to me. If they heard you were in the movie business, they might try to hold you up.”
“One holdup is enough for me,” said O'Hara.
The small gymnasium back of Morgan's place was tenanted by a young man with a lowering, ferocious countenance who was skipping a rope industriously; and a second who was putting a bag through its paces.
“Butch McShane skippin'; Chuck Wilson punchin' the bag,” said Mr. Costigan succinctly. “Come over here, boys, and meet me friend, Mr. O'Hara.”
O'Hara reflected that Butch would need no make-up whatever; but when he got a fair look at Chuck he barely stifled an exclamation. For Chuck's natural likeness to Ned Baxter was remarkable. The fighter was some years younger, some pounds lighter, and naturally his costume or lack of it made a difference. He was not Baxter's double, but O'Hara thought that Webb, his make-up man, would have little difficulty in turning Baxter into Chuck or Chuck into Baxter. Which fact naturally was fraught with all sorts of possibilities.
Butch and Chuck were quite willing to spar a round or two for Mr. Costigan's friend.
“Make this good, boys,” Costigan whispered as he laced on their gloves. “There may be something in it.”
“Zat so!” said Butch. “All right, Chuck?”
“Sure,” Chuck nodded. “Let's go!”
Now, Butch and Chuck could give an imitation of murder good enough to deceive the average referee. The three rounds O'Hara saw were apparently faster and harder than some paid-admission bouts he had witnessed between alleged topnotchers. Actually they were “pulling” their punches and “slipping” them with roll of head and give of body. But, nevertheless, it took condition and cleverness to put up the exhibition.
The best of it, from O'Hara's standpoint, was that they were contrasted types. Butch was the brutal prize fighter to the life. Chuck, the fair-haired, straight-up boxer, was the logical—screen—victor. And if the latter was not the dead spit of Baxter, Webb could make him so. O'Hara, at times somewhat skeptical of Providence as an institution, took it all back. It was great luck.
“Will they do?” Mr. Costigan asked, knowing the answer in advance from O'Hara's face.
“They'll have to,” said the latter, who considered it prudent to disguise his satisfaction. “Fix it up with them.”
“When do you want them?”
“Not for a few days.”
“All right,” said Mr. Costigan.
III.
One of Mr. Costigan's rules of life was to get his as he went along, and as much of it as he could. He hated to see in retrospect a bet he had overlooked. Hence he was accustomed to consider all the possibilities of a situation before action, and this seemed to present several.
“You wanted a fight,” he said to Butch and Chuck a couple of days later, “and I think I can fix it. Only it's got to be kept quiet.”
“Sure!” Butch agreed eagerly.
“Not a peep out of us,” Chuck confirmed.
“It's a new stunt,” said Mr. Costigan, “and it ought to work—once. That fellow I brought in to see you the other day—he's a movie man.”
“You're wantin' us to fight for the movies!” Butch exclaimed.
“Chees!” said Chuck.
“Do you think you're heavyweight champs?” Mr. Costigan inquired with dampening sarcasm. “Fight for the movies? Nothing like it. This movie thing is a stall. Fights are barred, but a ring scene for the movies is different; so we pull the fight that way. There'll be a camera with a guy turnin' the crank, and to make it binding somebody'll maybe tell you what to do in the ring. We can get away with it—once.”
“Do we fight on de level?” Chuck inquired.
“If you can,” Mr. Costigan returned, “for about six rounds. Then one of you takes the high dive.”
“Which of us?” Butch asked.
“I'll tell you later.”
“What do we get out of it?” Chuck asked practically.
“A hundred,” Mr. Costigan replied experimentally; “and fifty,” he added, warned by the expression of Chuck's face.
“Apiece?” Butch asked in the interests of clarity.
“Are you crazy?” Mr. Costigan countered.
“Not enough to fight Chuck six on de level for half of a hundred and fifty,” said Butch.
“Well, make it apiece,” Mr. Costigan conceded generously. “It's more than I intended, but——”
“And before we go in the ring,” Chuck interrupted with determination.
“Say, what's the matter with you?” said Mr. Costigan indignantly. “When I say you get it that means you get it, don't it?”
Chuck refused a direct answer. “When we got it, we got it,” he stated. “And I get mine before I draw on a mitt, see? Cash money. In me hand.”
“Me, too,” Butch backed him up.
“Oh, all right,” Mr. Costigan agreed. “For two guys that's broke you're mighty particular.”
“When you're broke you got to be,” Chuck returned. “I could use about fifty of that now.”
So could Butch. Mr. Costigan obeyed the plain hint with obvious reluctance.
“Now, don't go and blow it,” he advised.
“Do you mean on automobiles and yachts?” Chuck returned. “Not me. I was thinkin' of takin' a trip around the world with it, but just as you say.”
“You got a bright mind,” Mr. Costigan observed. “When this fight's over I'll try and get a job for you tellin' jokes in vaudeville.”
He informed O'Hara that the fighters would be ready when he was, and showed a keen interest in details of the fight set.
“How would it be,” he asked, “if I got a real ring crowd of fight fans? There's a lot of them in this town.”
“What would it cost?”
“Not much. I think I can fix it so it won't cost you anything.”
“Go as far as you like that way,” said O'Hara.
This apparently valueless concession appeared to please Mr. Costigan, who repaired to a job printer, and subsequently interviewed various sports of his acquaintance, winding up with an interview with the chief of police, from which he emerged smiling.
Now O'Hara was not overlooking the resemblance between Baxter and Chuck, which might make it possible to use the scenario in its original form. Baxter could get away with everything but the training camp and ring scenes. In the former, Miss Dale as Betty Harrington visited the training quarters of her lover, Jack Somerville with whom she had a pretty little love scene and, disguised as a newsboy, she spied upon the training of the brutal champion. There was also an impromptu rough-house between Somerville and the champion. The question in O'Hara's mind was whether Chuck could make even a bluff at the love stuff cut down to a minimum, and the only way to find out was to give him a trial. Naturally any make-up would suffer in the ring scene, but the solution of that was to make up Baxter in the other scenes, and allow Chuck to step into the ring au naturel.
O'Hara thought it all over and decided to retain the original version if he could. When he told Costigan to bring the fighters around the next day that gentleman did not appear pleased.
“This is different,” he said. “All you told me was that you wanted these boys to go six rounds. That's what I told them. Now you want them to act as well.”
“I'm paying for it,” said O'Hara. “Where does it grind you?”
Mr. Costigan found difficulty in answering.
“Well, let it go,” he said at last; and with Butch and Chuck he did the best he could.
“You'll spar the six rounds,” he told them; “but O'Hara wants some pictures of training camps, and you're to make them. So you're movie actors.”
“Us!” Butch gasped.
“Chees!” said Chuck.
“I had a hard time landing the job for you,” said Mr. Costigan, “but I told O'Hara you could do it, and it's up to you to make good.”
“Movie guys drags it down in bunches,” said the progressive Chuck. “We'd oughta get more coin.”
“You'll get maybe a five-spot a day extra,” Costigan informed him. “But don't get all swelled up about it, because the only reason they want you at all is because you look like an actor named Baxter who can't box. The stuff he ought to do and can't, you do for him. They'll fix you up to look like him so the audiences won't spot you for a ringer. So you keep quiet, and don't tell anybody, and there may be a little more in it for you. I'll speak to O'Hara.”
When he had gone the fighting men were more apprehensive than elated. Fighting was their business; but acting was a nervous job. Chuck felt premonitory symptoms of stage fright. He took a vicious right-hand stab at the bag and turned to Butch, who was perched meditatively upon the vaulting horse.
“How do they fix me up to look like that actor guy, huh?” he queried.
“There was a bird tellin' me about a friend of his that had it done,” Butch replied. “This bird's friend is a yegg, see, and the bulls is runnin' him ragged. So he goes to a doc; an' the doc saws some bone out of his nose, an' trims up his ears——”
“Tell!” the startled Chuck ejaculated.
'An' cuts his map open t'ree or four places an' draws it up diff'rent wit' catgut stitches an' leaves 'em in till it sets that way,” Butch pursued, with cheerful relish. “Then he jerks out some teeth, an' scalds his face all over wit' boilin' water till the skin peels off so it'll grow on new. That's all he does. This bird says the yegg says there's not'in' to it.”
“There ain't, huh!” Chuck commented, with strong distaste.
“It don't hurt much, this yegg says,” Butch encouraged. “All the time he's shot full of dope.”
“You can try it, if you want to,” Chuck offered generously.
“They don't want me,” Butch returned with cheerful resignation. “It's youse.”
Chuck was in a state of nervous tension when they presented themselves to O'Hara, but steadied when he learned that beyond a possible touch of pencil and grease paint no liberties with his face were contemplated. He shook hands with Baxter, and surveyed Miss Georgia Dale with a tongue-tied admiration which was shared by Butch, for Miss Dale was not at all hard to look at.
Webb, the make-up expert, had no doubt that he could make Baxter and Chuck indistinguishable for screen purposes, and O'Hara proceeded to instruct his recruits.
“Now,” he said, “here's the idea; this is what you boys have to do. It ought to be easy for you, but get it clear in your heads. Butch, you're the champion, 'Bulldog' Hogan, a man-killer. Chuck, you're Jack Somerville, a college athlete, and your old man's a millionaire, only he's gone broke, and you've quit college and gone to work in a garage——”
“But I don't know not'in' about cars,” Chuck interpolated.
“Nobody in a garage does,” said O'Hara with some bitterness. “Anyway, Baxter will do that overalls stuff. I'm just giving you the plot. You're working in a garage, and all your old society pals give you the go-by, because you're broke and working for wages. You're in love——”
“Huh!” Chuck ejaculated in alarm.
“With Betty Harrington, the datter of the guy that put the skids under your old man,” O'Hara went on, unheeding. “Miss Dale, here, is Betty, and her old man would take a shotgun to you if he could, but Betty's true blue. You've got to make some money, and you've boxed a lot at college, so you challenge the champ and make a match.”
“Vou don't get no crack at a champ like that,” Chuck objected. “You got to have a rep.”
“And not too much of a rep or he sidesteps you,” Butch amplified.
“Shut up and listen to me!” O'Hara snapped. “This isn't real life. You challenge the champ and start training. Betty visits you in your training quarters. You're in love with her, and you have a love scene that——”
“I do—what?” Chuck gasped. “Say, I ain't——”
“You do the best you can,” said O'Hara soothingly. “She'll show you how, won't you, Georgie?”
“Of course I will,” Miss Dale nodded. “I'm easy to make love to.”
“Y-yeah!” Chuck admitted.
“She wishes you luck and so on,” O'Hara proceeded. “You've got to win the championship for her sake, understand.”
“Ain't they no purse?” Chuck asked practically.
“Dammit, can't you get it that this is a play?” O'Hara rasped. “There's a purse of a million or more, stage money, if you want it. Well, then, Betty gets tipped off that the champ has a new man-killing punch, and she gets into boys' clothes and goes to his camp as a newsboy, selling papers.
“Now, Butch, Betty, as the newsboy, makes a hit with you by giving you a con talk about how good you are, and how she's bet her hard-earned nickels on you, and fought another newsboy who says you're a cheese. This tickles you, and you sort of take her for a mascot and she's around your camp a lot. She gets you to show her the punch you're going to use on the other fellow. Then, of course, she wises him up.”
“The skirt double crosses me, huh!” said Butch. “I getcha.”
“That's it,” O'Hara nodded. “You show her the new punch several times, till she's wise to it.”
“But there ain't no new punches,” Butch stated. 'There ain't a new punch since they barred the La Blanche pivot. The old-timers, like old Jack Dempsey an' Georgie Dixon an' even 'Yankee' Sullivan had 'em all. Why, Sayers an' Heenan had 'em!”
“Well, you show her something, old or new,” said O'Hara. “You're not taking any chances with this Somerville. You know he must be good because he's a college champion——”
“Cheese!” said Butch with contempt. “Soon as they see Chuck on the fillum they'll know he ain't no amateur. Amateurs ain't no class. There never was an amateur champ that could last three rounds with a dub perfeshnal, unless he was let.”
“This isn't real life, as I told you before,” said O'Hara impatiently. “You fake up some punch. Then, some days later, you're doing road work and you meet Betty. She's in her own clothes, but you know her, and you get suspicious. You stop her and try to make her tell what her game was. She won't, and you get a little rough. Then Somerville, doing his road work, comes along and interferes. You're starting to mix it when a car full of sports comes along and stops you.
“You're sore, Butch. This mix-up shows you that he'll be a hard man to beat, and you're pretty sure that Betty has given away your pet punch, So you frame it with your sparring partner to quit you, and go over to Somerville's camp and get a job.”
“Who's me sparrin' partner?” Butch queried.
“That's so,” O'Hara admitted. “I never thought of that. We'll have to get somebody. For effect I'd like to get a colored boxer.”
“How about Sam Langford?” Butch suggested humorously.
“Jeannette for me,” said Chuck, grinning.
“Don't be funny,” snapped O'Hara. “Do you know a colored boy who can box?”
“Well, I know a good smoke,” said Butch. “He ain't no Gans, but he can take a punch.”
“Bring him around to-morrow.”
“He won't be out of jail till Thursday,” Butch replied regretfully. “He gets tanked and barbers another coon——”
“No razor artists go on this lot,” said O'Hara. “Get somebody else. Your partner shows Jack your punches—all wrong, of course. In the ring, if he does what your partner tells him, he'll leave himself wide open for another punch you've invented. Get all that?”
“All but the punch,” Butch replied honestly. “This fancy-punch stuff is bunk. What you do in a fight, if the other guy don't like the rough stuff and wants to box you, you tear right into him from the gong; or, if he likes it that way and tears into you, you stall along and cover up, an' lay on him in the clinches an' make him do the breakin', all the referee'll let you, till he loses his steam; an' then——”
“How many times do I have to tell you this is the screen?” O'Hara interrupted. “The punch is the idea of a frame-up, of crooked work, you're putting over on the audience, if you can understand that. That's all there is to the training scenes.
“Then we come to the fight itself. You go six rounds, as fast and hard as you know how. You make it real milling. And in the sixth you try to work this man-killing punch on Jack, but he fools you and knocks you out.”
“Just like that?” said Butch, with some distaste.
“Just like that,” O'Hara nodded. “Make it a good knock-out, too. I've heard you know how.”
He intended to put them through a scene or two, but just then his presence and Baxter's were requested elsewhere, and he left the two fighters to the tender mercies of Miss Georgia Dale.
Miss Dale was a lady of considerable versatility, and a love of mischief which had well-nigh wrecked several companies with which she had been connected in her stage career. She looked upon the ferocious visage of Butch and the deceptively innocent features of the equally murderous Chuck, and was delighted to observe that they were embarrassed at being left alone with her. And she went to it joyously.
“I've always waited to meet real fighters,” she gushed. “Which of you is the best?”
The question was as embarrassing as she had intended it to be. Looking at this divinity, Butch earnestly desired to tell her that he could knock Chuck through the ropes; while Chuck felt an equal urge to confide in her that he could cut Butch to pieces. Both blushed deeply, and awkwardly shuffled expert feet. Chuck at last rose to heights of self-abnegation.
“Butch, he's a pretty tough baby,” he admitted generously.
“Aw, I ain't no tougher than you,” said Butch, not to be outdone in generosity. “Of course I got——”
“You got—what?” Chuck asked coldly, as Butch hesitated.
“Well, maybe I got a better right,” Butch concluded modestly; “but——”
“Yeah—'but,'” said Chuck. “You pack a good right wallop—but——”
“Have you ever fought each other?” Miss Georgie inquired with charming interest. “And which won?”
“Once he win,” Butch replied; “and once I win; and two other times we go to a draw.”
“Wit' a crooked referee!” Chuck amplified meaningly.
“Crooked is right!” Butch agreed, with meaning equal but opposite.
“So then you're evenly matched,” Miss Georgie deduced.
“On de record,” Butch admitted, in tones which impugned its veracity.
“Uh-huh, on de record!” Chuck agreed with equal contempt.
“How interesting!” Miss Georgie commented. “I wish I could see you box.”
“If there was a set of mitts handy,” Chuck suggested obligingly.
“Oh, not now,” said Miss Georgie. “I'm to show you something about acting. Have you ever had any experience, Mr. Wilson?”
“Call me Chuck, won't youse?” said the pupil.
“All right, Chuck. Have you ever had any experience in love scenes?”
“Sure he has,” Butch put in obligingly. “All de skirts fall for him. Dere was a girl——”
“Shut up!” the Lothario interrupted, glaring at his friend. “He's just tryin' to be funny. I'm a fightin' guy. I ain't there wit' no love stuff.”
“Well, I'll show you how it's done,” said Miss Georgia. “Now imagine, if you can, that you're in love with me. This is your training camp. I hold out both hands like this—take my hands, please—and I say: 'Jack! at last!' And you say: 'Betty! my darling!' And then you embrace me.” With a sudden motion Miss Georgia threw herself against Chuck's highly developed pectoral muscles. “Go on. Put your arms around me—as if you meant it. Hug me—hard!”
Chuck, whose rough work in clinches was notorious, obeyed with a fervor which made her gasp.
“I didn't tell you to break my ribs,” she exclaimed, extricating herself. “Don't you know how to hug a girl?”
“Don't you know no better than to rough it wit' a lady?” Butch demanded sternly.
“You said 'hard,'” Chuck palliated, ignoring his friend.
“I won't say it again,” said Miss Georgie, wriggling her spine experimentally. “That will do for this time.” And she departed, leaving the fighters to their own devices.
Nobody paid any further attention to them, and they left the Brownstone premises together, but with very different feelings, which presently reacted upon their wonted amicable relations.
Chuck was inwardly elated at the part that was to be his. Privately he considered that he might have unsuspected stage talent. Which opened a nebulous but roseate future. He saw visions of himself as a movie actor, as he phrased it, “dragging it down in bunches.” For art for its own sake had no appeal for Chuck. In these visions he saw himself starring with Georgia Dale, from which it may be deduced that that young lady had made a hit.
But Butch was not pleased. He was to be the fall guy for everything. He was to do the screen dirty work, and, as a finish, collect the wages of sin in the form of a left hook or a right cross from Chuck, who stood on a screen pedestal of virtue. Chuck a college guy! Butch snorted disdain. He admitted ruefully that Chuck had the looks. He would make a good enough college bird as long as nobody heard him talk or saw him eat, for Chuck, in the relaxation of private life, considered forks superfluities. But as a fighter he had nothing on him, Butch. Why, then, was he given all the metaphorical fat—including Georgia Dale—leaving him, Butch, nothing but stringy lean?
Admitting that Chuck was a tough bird to punch out, Butch privately considered that he could do the trick, and it ground him to be in a picture depicting his own downfall at Chuck's hands. If those scenes were only on the level he would show him up. He listened sourly to Chuck's cheerful observations on the movie business.
“If youse want to know what I think,” was his comment, “all this movie stuff is bunk.”
“How is it bunk?” Chuck asked.
“Every way,” Butch maintained. “Take that fancy-punch stuff. Take a college guy gettin' a match wit' a champ. It don't happen. And if it did, the champ would make a mess of him.”
“Oh, I dunno,” said Chuck. “Some of them college guys is hard birds.”
“Huh!” said Butch. “You'll make a swell one—I don't think!”
“I'll get away wit' it,” said Chuck, with confidence. “Of course, actin's new to me, but I b'lieve it'll come natural.”
Butch stared at him incredulously.
“Chees!” he said. 'Are you tryin' to be funny?”
“What's funny about that?” Chuck demanded, frowning.
“What ain't?” Butch returned. “If youse could of saw yourself when that skirt asks you to clinch——”
“Looka here,” said Chuck coldly, “you want to remember you're speakin' about a lady.”
“Who said she wasn't?”
“You called her a skirt.”
“Well, ain't a skirt a lady?” Butch demanded.
“Maybe,” the purist admitted, “but a lady ain't no skirt. I don't stand for no raw stuff, see?”
Butch, who was quite innocent of any such intent, was indignant.
“Who's raw?” he demanded.
Nobody better be,” Chuck returned.
“Speakin' of raw stuff,” Butch retorted, “what do you think you pulled when she was tryin' to show you how to act? Youse put me in mind of Joe Walcott in a clinch.”
Which jarred Chuck badly, as containing a certain amount of truth. But he had no adequate comeback.
“Where do you get off at buttin' in wit' that crack you made about me and girls?” he demanded.
“You can't blame 'em for fallin' for college guys—'specially when they's champs,” Butch retorted.
And again Chuck found himself without a comeback.
IV.
Chuck's belief in his natural acting ability was due to receive several rude shocks. O'Hara began by putting him through a training-camp scene with Miss Dale. With all the will in the world to make love to her, Chuck did it rather more woodenly than a cigar-store Indian, and O'Hara began to have doubts. Also after several trials he began to lose patience.
“Come on now, Georgie, while he's punching the bag,” he admonished Miss Dale. “Thank Heaven that's one thing he can do. Stop just inside the door Register shyness, emotion, pride in your lover's skill. That's it. You, Chuck, what th' devil are ye turnin' around for? Keep on punchin'. Make the bag dance. You don't see her, at first. Wait till she speaks. That's your cue. Now, turn 'round. No, not like that. Nobody threw a bottle at ye! Slower. Do it over again. That's better. Now, register surprise, delight. Oh, dammit, look as if you were glad to see her!”
Chuck, in an endeavor to express these mingled emotions opened his eyes very wide; and to give the very best representation of astonishment in his power he also opened his mouth.
“Oh, blessed martyrs, ye had a cinch compared to my job!” O'Hara groaned. “Ye were sure of heaven, anyway. What do ye take the girl for? This is not a ghost scene. Ye are not in low comedy, preparin' to swally half a pie at a clatter. Can't you get it through you at all? Come here, Ned, and show him how a human being acts with a gyurl. If he can't originate, maybe he can imitate. Even a monkey can do that.”
Butch, who had been highly diverted by Chuck's efforts, which he had watched with a broad grin, found this so funny that he laughed aloud. The novice whirled on him.
“What are youse laughin' at?” he demanded in tones charged with homicidal mania.
“I'm laughin' to see how natural actin' comes to you,” Butch returned. “Youse oughta git a lookin'-glass!”
“Not in the same room wit' you,” Chuck retorted. “I don't want no seven years bad luck.”
He anticipated sweet revenge when Butch should be put through his scenes, but to his intense disgust the latter did fairly well and earned the commendation of O'Hara. Butch had not much acting, as such, to do. About all that was required of him in his first scene was to act naturally, which is sometimes hard enough. But it galled Chuck, and was perhaps responsible for a flare-up in the scene depicting the rescue of Betty by Jack Somerville from the brutal clutches of Bulldog Hogan.
“I'll give you the idea of this,” O'Hara instructed. “Just run through it once, to-day. Now, Butch, you're doing your road work. You're just jogging along. Here's Betty, who was the newsboy. You meet. You take a second look at her. You register surprise. Not half bad. Georgie, you try to pass him. Catch her by the arm, Butch. Do it quick and hard. Register, savagery, anger, brutality. That's pretty good. Hold her there, just as you are.
“Now, Chuck, come ahead. Remember, she's your gyurl, your sweetheart that he's treating rough. Remember her old man has a million—if that will help you. Register anger, indignation. You butt in fast and hard. You tear him loose. Then he makes a swipe at you, and, of course, you come right back at him. Try it now. Ready? Go! And for the love of Heaven put some punch into it!”
His last injunction was obeyed to the letter. Chuck caught Butch by the arm with a savage twist; and Butch immediately unhooked a vicious right that landed solidly. In a split second there was a rough-house realistic enough for even O'Hara.
“Stop it!” he roared. “How dare ye waste stuff like that without a camera. Quit, I tell ye!” And when he had effected a forcible separation of the combatants, he gave them a tongue lashing surcharged with vitriol.
“Aw, what's de matter?” Butch rumbled. “Didn't youse say to put some punch into it?”
“Sure, dat's what youse said,” Chuck corroborated, eying Butch hungrily.
“I didn't tell ye to fight!”
“We wasn't fighting,” said Butch.
“When we fight we git rough,” said Chuck.
“'Rough!'” O'Hara exclaimed, and called on the name of his Creator. “Beat it outa here and come back to-morrow. I'll try ye again. Ye can't be worse, that's one consolation.”
Butch and Chuck departed together, more from force of habit than from any desire for companionship. O'Hara's parting speech had not improved their tempers. For some minutes they walked in silence. Then said Butch:
“I've a good notion to quit this movie game.”
“I would if I was you,” said Chuck sourly.
“At that,” Butch stated, “I done better than you.”
“All you got to do is to act tough,” Chuck retorted; “and for you that ain't no actin' at all.”
“If you call what you're doin' actin',” Butch returned, “all I got to say is you oughta take a look at yourself once. You make a swell college guy—not. But I'm goin' to help you look like one.”
“How?” Chuck inquired suspiciously.
“When I git you in the ring,” Butch stated, “Ill make you look like a real college guy.”
“Is that so?” said Chuck.
“Yeh, that's so,” said Butch; and as a matter of ordinary prudence he removed his hands from their customary shelter in his pockets; a movement straightway duplicated by Chuck.
They halted and eyed each other coldly. From sheer force of habit Chuck's left elbow crooked a little. Butch's dependable right hand moved back a trifle. Each was quite unconscious of his own action, but keenly aware of the other's.
“Are youse lookin' for something now?” Chuck demanded.
“I can take anything youse can give,” Butch returned.
“You can, huh!” said Chuck. “Yesterday you started in to tell Miss Dale youse could lick me.”
“I didn't—but I kin!” Butch stated flatly.
“You're a liar—both ways!” said Chuck; and hooked a flashing left upward as Butch's celebrated right whizzed at the angle of his jaw.
They were at it hammer and tongs with a few axes thrown in for good measure when big Con Gallaher, the weight lifter and shot putter of Falls City's finest, strolled around the corner.
When Mr. Gallaher recognized the combatants and the privilege that was his of beholding them in a fight minus the cramping effect of a referee, he blessed his patron saint and leaned against a telephone vole to enjoy the spectacle to the full. But unfortunately there were other spectators. And Mr. Gallaher reluctantly took up the white cop's burden by interposing some two hundred pounds of legal majesty.
“What's this, now?” he demanded sternly. “Takin' a chanst on breakin' yer hands fightin' widout gloves! An' breakin' the peace as well! Be ashamed!”
“Huh!” said Butch, with a presence of mind highly creditable, considering that twin red rivulets stole down from his nostrils to mingle with the carmire of cut lips. “Why, you don't think we was scrappin', do you?”
“Some such idle thought was in me mind,” Gallaher admitted.
“We're in the movies now?” said the resourceful Chuck. “We was just practicin' our act.”
“The movies, is ut?” said Gallaher. “Then so was Gettysburg. I ought to pinch ye for lyin'. I did hear on th' quiet that ye wor framin' up a grudge fight under cover of a movie stunt, but I t'ought it was a fake. Well, duck down this alley, b'ys, an' save th' rest of it for th' ring!” And Gallaher, grinning broadly, moved on in battleship majesty.
The combatants, having “ducked” as suggested, stopped in the seclusion of the alley's end and surveyed each other in disgust.
“Well?” said Butch.
“Well—what?” said Chuck.
“Want to finish it?”
“Naw,” Chuck replied. He regarded his left knuckles which were cut and bleeding. “I come near breakin' me hand, like Gallaher said. I make me livin' wit' them hands, an' when I scrap you again, it'll be wit' de mitts.”
“You won't have so long to wait,” Butch observed. “In the pitcher we go six rounds. You watch yourself in them six frames, because I'm goin' to show you up. I'll make a monkey out of you, like O'Hara said. I'll make you look like a real college champ.”
Chuck grinned the grin of a pit dog.
“Look who's here!” he retorted. “Bulldog Hogan, de man-killin' champ, wit' de fancy punch. Yeh! All right. In the pitcher I put you out in the sixth. Well, I'll put you out good.”
“If that's what you're framin',” Butch returned, “O'Hara can get somebody else. I don't leave meself open for no real punch, see?”
“You don't need to,” said Chuck. “I'll get you on de level.”
“Turn over,” said Butch; “it's just nightmare.”
“In de sixth or before,” Chuck affirmed. “I'm tryin' for a knock-out all de route. Come on, now, fade me!”
“You're faded—but you're crazy,” said Butch. “I'll bet half what we're gettin' you don't put me out. Id bet it all, but I got to eat.”
“Course you can stall an' cover up,” Chuck admitted.
“I don't fight dat way,” said Butch honestly. “I'll be comin' right after you.”
“Then you've made a bet,” said Chuck.
“I need the money,” said Butch with satisfaction. “Come through wit' a knock-out if you can—college champ!”
Ill news proverbially travels fast. So does scandal. In twenty-four hours every sport in town knew that Butch and Chuck had mixed it on the street. Accounts varied, but the salient fact was undisputed. Indeed, the features of the principals corroborated it.
Alone, Butch might have got away with the brilliant fiction that he had run against a swing door in the dark; but taken in conjunction with Chuck's black eye it met ribald incredulity. O'Hara more or less believed the swing door tale until he saw Chuck. Then he began to suspect more than coincidence.
“How did you get that eye?” he demanded.
“I'm playin' ball after supper,” Chuck explained, with engaging candor, “an' I lose a fly ball in de sun. She comes down trough me hands an' biffs me in de lamp.”
“Do you know where the sun is after supper, just now?” O'Hara scoffed.
“You see,” Chuck amplified resourcefully, “she shines on a brewery window back of where we're playin', an' dazzles me.”
“Pretty fair,' O'Hara admitted. “And the dazzle cut your hand, too, didn't it?”
“Oh, no,” said the truthful Chuck; “I skins me knuckles on some gravel scoopin' a ball.”
As O'Hara was not ready to shoot any scenes their facial injuries made little difference. He put them through an intensive course of rehearsals, finding them docile enough, and seemingly not inclined to indulge any grudge they might hold. At any rate there was no more rough stuff.
O'Hara had his own ideas of the ring scene. It must observe the best traditions of fiction. That is, the tide of victory must sway. The hero must be in difficulties, almost out. He must rally by a supreme effort. He instructed the fighters carefully. The picture must show real fighting; and must show, moreover, that first one and then the other had the better of it.
“You find the college champ a hard proposition,” he said to Butch. “You tell the men in your corner he's a tough bird. He keeps coming after you, and in the third round he nearly gets you. But in the fifth you nearly put him out, and you get confident. You're going to get him next round. So in the sixth you go in to finish the job. You feint him open for your secret punch; and that's when, instead of your getting him, he gets you. The knock-out has to be good—a perfect imitation of the real thing.”
But he was not satisfied with the illustration they gave for his benefit. For the real knock-out is seldom spectacular. Apart from those which are the culmination of a wearing-down process where the beaten man is already dead on his feet and the victor can take his time and set himself for a final punch, the average spectator does not know how it happens and even experts have disagreed in famous ring battles. The short, snapping jolt that, traveling but a few inches drops a man cold, is too swift for the ordinary eye; and it is not impressive. The recipient simply crumples at the knees and goes down with the spectacular effect of a wet dishrag—being very apt to receive a totally unnecessary hook or swing while doing so. This unnecessary blow most of the spectators see; but few have seen the first, which really did the trick.
And so in faking a knock-out artists in the business prefer close range and a swift, snappy exchange.
“It's like this,” Butch explained: “Takin' a kayo, if you wait for a punch, everybody makes a holler he seen you stick out your chin for it; or else they say it was pulled so's it wouldn't have bust a paper bag. An' de newspaper guys pans you. So what you do, you come up to a round; an' about the second minute you work in close an' slam away wit' some good stiff wallops; an' de first one dat catches you around de jaw you do a Brodie. An' nobody can prove it's a fake, because everybody seen it different.”
But this sophisticated simplicity did not fill O'Hara's bill. Though a ring crowd might not be able to see a knock-out punch, his audiences must. So he crisply negatived this tried and true system, and decreed a finish wherein a spectacular punch should be brought into play.
The “man-killer” which Butch evolved to meet the exigencies of this situation possessed most of the characteristics of a slab artist's wind-up, and might possibly have proved effective against a paralytic. But it satisfied O'Hara. The latter knew that the real thing—the feint, the lightninglike shift and shooting glove—would never get across with an audience because not one in a thousand would see it. And he told Chuck to evolve a counteroffensive.
Chuck in his simplicity demonstrated the left shift brought into prominence by the late Mr. Fitzsimmons, but that did not suit O'Hara. He wanted something more complicated and a great deal slower. Finally Chuck in sardonic humor called on recollections of a burlesque boxing match he had once witnessed, and to his amazement O'Hara approved. So Butch and Chuck, grinning in spite of their enmity, rehearsed these monstrosities, and finally became punch perfect. But when Mr. Costigan, who had kept himself in the background, witnessed one of their last rehearsals he nearly had heart failure.
“You don't mean to say this is the kind of stuff you're going to pull!” he exclaimed to Chuck, in horrified tones, after it was over.
“Sure,” said Chuck, who had no intention of mentioning his private feud. “O'Hara wants it that way.”
Mr. Costigan exhibited symptoms of nervous breakdown.
“I'll see him,” he said. “This stuff will spoil his fillum.”
But O'Hara refused to consider any change. When Mr. Costigan became insistent he told him to mind his own business, and where to go to do so most effectively. Instead of obeying, Mr. Costigan again sought Chuck.
“O'Hara's so pig-headed he won't take advice,” he said; 'and like all pig-headed guys he's ignorant. You boys can't afford to pull this stuff. You got your reps to consider. It'll make a monkey out of you all over the country, besides spoilin' the fillum. Now, listen: don't say anything to O'Hara. Rehearse this comedy stuff. But when the picture is being made you and Butch pull a knock-out the way you know how.”
“What'll O'Hara say?”
“You'll be doing him a favor. He'll know that when she sees the fillum. You boys pull this right. Let Butch stay out a coupla minutes, and when he comes to he claims he was put out on the level.”
“He does, huh!” said Chuck, who fully intended to furnish a knock-out beyond criticism, but who began to wonder at Costigan's insistence. “Well, of course we're workin' for O'Hara.”
“Who got you this job?” Mr. Costigan asked. “You do what I tell you, and there'll be an extra fifty in it for you.”
“Who from?” Chuck queried.
“Me.”
“Where do you win on it?” Chuck asked, with pardonable curiosity.
“If you win fifty that's enough,” Mr. Costigan returned.
“I get fifty if Butch takes the count so's it'd get by wit' a referee?”
“That's it.”
“I'll take it now,” said Chuck.
“Guess again,” said Mr. Costigan.
“In me mitt,” Chuck insisted, and finally made it stick there.
Mr. Costigan saw Butch, to whom he put the situation much as he had to Chuck. Butch also was reticent. But if Chuck chanced to land him in the sixth, fifty dollars would be a little solace. Like Chuck he wanted it in advance.
Having made these arrangements to save O'Hara from the effects of his ignorance, Mr. Costigan sought that gentleman and requested a couple of days' notice of the day on which the fight scene was to be “shot.”
“I've got a crowd of ring fans, but they've got other jobs, and I have to let them know ahead.”
“Thursday,” said O'Hara. “The set will be ready by then.”
He had already shot the other scenes, reserving the ring scene till the last. The results of the others were better than he had hoped.
V.
Though Chuck was outwardly untroubled, inwardly he was uneasy. When he cooled down after his challenge he remembered that Butch was an exceedingly tough proposition. He had always thought he could beat him in a finish fight, but gambling on rounds was another thing. Butch knew all the tricks of the trade. Butch would make very sure that his bandages incased no plaster, that there was no shot sewn into his gloves, that no eye irritant was rubbed into them between rounds. Of course, if he failed in a knock-out Butch would get the blame, but that was poor consolation. O'Hara would probably raise Cain anyway, if the knock-out was not as rehearsed. But Chuck intended to make his bluff good if he could; and then he wanted to punch Butch out, anyway.
Butch himself was not worrying. it was up to Chuck. If O'Hara blew up, as Butch saw it, it meant only sparring an extra round some other time, which would be pure fake. But in the six rounds he would show Chuck up so that everybody—including Miss Dale—would know which was the better man. So he proceeded to get himself into the best possible shape for eighteen minutes of heavy weather.
On Thursday when all was ready to “shoot” the fight scene, O'Hara was surprised at the number of simon-pure sports, who crowded into his small “arena.” Mr. Costigan himself, stationed at the entrance, appeared to be taking in tickets, which rather puzzled O'Hara. These, on investigation, he found to be passes admitting bearer to the premises of Brownstone Films.
“What junk is this?” he asked. “I never authorized these things.”
“You authorized me to get a real fight crowd any way I liked, as long as it didn't cost money,” Mr. Costigan replied. “When I gave a few of them out the guys began to show them around and tell their friends they were working for the movies. Then their friends wanted to get in on it, too.”
“Good work,” O'Hara approved.
“I told 'em you wanted action,” Mr. Costigan went on; “so some of 'em will root for Butch and some for Chuck, and I've fixed it so's they'll flash stage money and make ring-side bets and so on. Is that all right?”
It suited O'Hara down to the ground, and when the chief of Falls City's police appeared, he greeted him cordially.
“Come to see that the law is observed, I suppose,” he remarked facetiously. The chief grinned.
“Call it that,” he said. “But you watch me rub it into some of those sports when it's over. I'll just naturally kid them to death.”
O'Hara did not quite see the humor of the situation, but was too busy to ask.
“All set, Jimmy?” he asked his camera man. “Right. Let's go!”
Chuck, wearing the conventional bath robe bearing a mystic device supposed to be a college emblem, made a spectacular vault of the ropes. He looked round at the familiar faces of Fall City's sports, and a puzzled expression grew in his. own. Butch, who came next with the proper pomp of a champion, looked puzzled also, but he turned his celebrated, ferocious fighting scowl upon his opponent. Both fighters had their hands carefully taped, and they examined these bandages and the gloves with considerably more interest than they had shown in rehearsals. They sloughed their bath robes, and the referee—a stranger supplied by Mr. Costigan—called them to the center for the customary instructions. The camera recorded merely his hard-boiled but earnest face and lifted finger, but the remarks he delivered in a husky whisper were much to the point.
“You guys get this, and get it now,” he said. “You got to make this good all the way. Cut out the comedy and pull a K. O. in the sixth that's a twin of the real thing, if you want to park your dogs around Morgan's lunch again. This ain't no movie crowd. This is a fight crowd, get me? They come to see a fight, and you give it to 'em the way Costigan told you, or somebody'll spill the real dope on them old fakes of yours, and that won't do you no good. Do you make me? That's all. Take your corners.”
And, meantime, a heavily avoirdupoised sport arose in a front seat and shook aloft a sheaf of currency.
“Even money on Butch McShane!” he bellowed. “Come an' get it!”
Promptly Mr. Costigan responded: “Get it here. How much of it?”
Here and there in the crowd money was offered and taken; which was good grist for O'Hara's mill. He was pleased with Costigan. This money stunt was good. He got what he wanted, via the camera, and signaled for the fight to begin.
Butch and Chuck came out of their corners with the well-simulated eagerness which was part of their stock in trade; but when they met in the center they sparred warily.
Both were puzzled by the referee's words. They did not know him, but there was no doubt that he was a friend of Costigan's. And there was no doubt that the crowd was exactly the crowd which would have attended a real fight in happier days. They intended to put up a scrap which would satisfy the most exacting, but, knowing each other thoroughly, each waited for the other to develop his line of offensive. Which was a waste of time and film that did not please O'Hara.
“Get in there and fight!” he roared. “What do you think a camera is for? What am I——”
The remainder of his remarks were drowned in the loud disapproval of the spectators, impatient of stalling. Chuck remembered suddenly that six rounds was a very limited route. So he feinted, shot a short left for the face, and ripped a right for the body. Butch grinned, and his own right missed Chuck's chin by a fraction of an inch. They gave the crowd a full minute of fast work, and then clinched.
“Rah-rah-rah!” Butch hissed in what he intended as a sarcastic imitation of a college cheer as he lay on Chuck heavily. “Come on, college champ, git me! You only got five frames more!”
“Quit your layin' on me,” said Chuck, refusing to waste his strength.
The referee broke them, and from force of habit warned them against holding.
“Now, college champ,” said Butch, who knew that the phrase annoyed Chuck, “show us a flash of dat higher edjication!”
Chuck obliged him with a sample which, if not strictly academic, at least left no time for conversation. Butch took a jolt that snapped his head back, a right under the heart, and another that was almost too low. He came to another clinch, chopping a vicious right for the kidneys.
“How do you like dat college stuff?” Chuck inquired, grinding a hardened chin into Butch's collar bone.
“Quit your foulin',” Butch rumbled. “You're dirty!”
“Come an' clean me, then!” Chuck retorted, as he broke and slammed with his first free hand.
In the second round he played for the head and face and Butch thought he knew why.
“Wit' me lamps closed I'm easy, huh!” he jeered, leaning heavily into Chuck. “Well, say! ain't youse college ginks there wit' the deep stuff!” And perhaps by accident a moment later he landed hard on Chuck's left eye, cutting the brow with a cunning twist of the glove which would have done credit to the art of Mr. McCoy; so that the blood, running down, caused Chuck considerable inconvenience.
But the latter though he intended to put up the shutters on Butch's optical works if he could, was also trying to tempt him into carelessness of body defense. So he continued to shoot high and fast, and when he shot low he shot slow, though perfectly aware that there is nothing like the body punch to lower its recipient's steam gauge.
Butch, having the like knowledge, trained his batteries low, on the theory that solid punches around the belt line would draw some of the dynamics from Chuck's dangerous gloves. So they made the round so good that not even the hypercritical. could find fault with it; and came up to the third nicely warmed up and going strong. And in the first minute of it Chuck dropped Butch with a left jolt that had the snap of a rivet punch.
Now, though O'Hara had decreed that in the third round the hero should have the best of it and nearly get his man, the stark suddenness of the knockdown as contrasted with the somewhat labored effect of the rehearsals, startled him. Miss Dale who, with Baxter, was an interested spectator, gripped his arm.
“Ned! I believe that was real!”
“He's all right, anyway,” said Baxter.
Butch, on one knee, his head singing a little, but rapidly clearing, was taking full advantage of a slow count by a puzzled referee who kept an eye on Mr. Costigan. At “nine” Butch came erect and, neatly smothering Chuck's flying gloves, clinched.
“Thought youse had copped me, huh!” he grunted.
“I got your number,” said Chuck. “You've went back, feller. I kin drop you any time.”
“Lemme last a coupla rounds more,” Butch pleaded with heavy sarcasm. “I got me widow and orphants to support.”
“Break!” the referee commanded.
“He's holdin' me, Mr. Referee!” Butch complained.
“He's a liar,” said Chuck. “He's stallin' and layin' on me.”
The referee broke them, not gently, and Butch gave proof of his recuperative powers by a savage, two-handed attack that drove Chuck to the ropes and into another clinch, which he reached at the cost of two hard body blows pumped in at close range. Both hit viciously on the break, and the bell found them going to it with the relaxed abandon of Kilkenny cats.
The fourth round had been a hummer. Both were fighting under a full head of steam, boring in, taking to give. The crowd stood on its hind legs and howled. The chief spoke to O'Hara.
“I've seen fights that were church festivals to this. Do you mean to say you rehearsed all this stuff?”
“The main features,” O'Hara_ replied. “The idea is to give a realistic representation of a fight.”
“You're doing it,” said the chief.
“In the next round,” O'Hara explained, “the hero gets into difficulties; but rallies and wins by a knock-out in the sixth.”
“I thought he'd won by a knock-out in the third,” the chief commented. “It ought to make a great film—if the censor doesn't get to it!.”
But Mr. Costigan was uneasy. Without doubt the fighters were carrying out his instructions to make it a fight which the public could not tell from the real article; but the trouble was that he could not tell it himself. There was too much steam behind the punches; they roughed it in the clinches; and, though he could not hear the words, he suspected that each was engaged in the gentle art of getting the other's goat. He had excellent reasons for desiring that Chuck should win, and win in the sixth by a cleverly faked knock-out; but he knew that if just one of the whizzing rights that Butch was shooting across happened to connect in the right place, there would be no sixth round. At the end of the fourth, he spoke to the referee.
“If those boys ain't fighting then I never saw a fight,” he said, as that official leaned over the ropes.
“I told 'em to make it good, like you said. I'll say they're doin' it, too.”
“Tell 'em to go lighter,” Mr. Costigan whispered. “First thing they know something'll land by accident.”
And then the bell rang for the fifth.
Now, in the fifth, as arranged by O'Hara, the college champion was to find himself in trouble. He was to get the worst of it and the sympathy of the audience, which was to be rewarded by his final success.
But Chuck had no intention of getting the worst of it, if he could help it. He had no time for artistic details, which he had forgotten, anyway. Having nearly closed Butch's right eye, he was playing for the body. He thought Butch was beginning to slow down, and if they had been going fifteen rounds or even ten he would have been fairly confident. But over the limited route he had to force the pace, and he drove in from the bell, being warm, and limber and at his best. He made up his mind to get Butch at the first opportunity. If five rounds such as he had put up didn't satisfy O'Hara and Costigan it ought to. So he concentrated on looking for an opening.
In this life it is unwise to concentrate on what you are going to do to the other fellow to the point of forgetfulness of what he may be trying to do to you. Perhaps Chuck reached that point. At any rate, he failed by a split second to remove his chin from the predestined groove of a left hook, and he went down with a bang and a hazy idea that a corner post had jumped up and hit him.
If the opening had been for Butch's right instead of his left the referee might have counted a hundred and taken his time about it. As it was, that startled official began to count late and did it slowly. The first sound that reached Chuck's temporarily benumbed brain was the word “five.” It carried no special meaning, but “six” did. At “seven” he gathered his unwilling legs together, lifted his body at “eight,” was on one knee at “nine,” and came up at “ten;” a little unsteady but well covered up, in a bombproof crouch, his chin tucked home and his elbows guarding his engine room; in which head-on position he met the typhoon that Butch immediately loosed.
But it was by no means the first heavy weather that Chuck had ridden out to a temporary drag. He took everything Butch had in stock on his gloves and arms, and ducked into a clinch with the relief of a steam-tossed mariner crossing the harbor bar. When he pinned Butch's arms he saw blue sky again, and he hung on hard while the numbness passed from his brain and the spring came back to his legs.
“So I've went back, huh!” Butch taunted in his ear. “What was that number of mine you said you got?”
Chuck did not waste his valuable breath in reply; but on the break he uppercut Butch on the jaw and drove a right into his stomach with a steam which showed a rapidly rising gauge. The round ended with both going great guns and the crowd going wild.
“Ned,” said Georgia Dale, “they're really fighting.”
“All the better for the picture.”
Miss Dale glanced at the crowd.
“There's something funny about it. These people aren't just 'extras.' They're seeing a real fight, and they know it. I believe they came to see one. The betting—now I wonder if it was real money?”
Baxter whistled softly.
“I wonder! Costigan was taking in what he said were passes. He was taking bets in that stage money, but now I come to think of it all the bets he made were on Chuck. I wonder if he has put something over. I've been told he'd stand watching.”
Miss Dale chanced to meet Butch's good eye. The fighter's ferocious countenance expanded in what he intended for a happy and confident smile. He indicated Chuck with a meaning and derisive jerk of the head. She glanced at Chuck; and Chuck, who through the ministrations of two hard-looking tickets in his corner had ceased to bear a general resemblance to a slaughter house on a busy day, beamed back at her and wigwagged with a glove. Superficially, at any rate, neither was worried.
When the bell rang Chuck came out of his corner with a furious attack that drove Butch to the ropes. Butch tried to clinch, but Chuck evaded, slugging him off, working him into a corner. Butch broke out, and began an offensive of his own. A minute of hard fighting passed. In the second minute neither showed signs of slackening pace. Chuck, with time running against him, was shooting in everything he had.
“Look here,” the chief exclaimed, “this is no movie stuff, O'Hara. You can't fool me. This is real fighting. What have you been trying to put——”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” O'Hara cried, scarcely hearing him. “You'll see the knock-out now. Butch is getting ready to deliver his trick punch. Then Chuck gets him.”
Quite by accident Butch had assumed an attitude resembling that of the rehearsals; the accident being due principally to a hard right to the body and left to the face. But he swung a left of his own which missed. He should then have brought the complicated man-killer into action.
“Here it comes,” said O'Hara to the chief. “Watch this!”
Butch had half turned with the force of his missed swing. For a moment he was almost unbalanced, and Chuck seized the opportunity. He went in hitting with both hands, putting a left to the head, a right to the body, and a wicked left hook to the jaw. There was a world of steam behind the punches, and Butch staggered. He stood swaying, seemingly almost out upon his feet. Chuck shot his left to the jaw again, but still Butch refused to go down, though his head sagged and his knees quivered.
Chuck thought he had him, and with the certainty he felt a wave of sympathy. Poor old Butch! He was a game bird, a hard guy to punch out. It was hard luck to be shown on the screen throughout the country, badly whipped, taking a knock-out. Chuck almost hated to put over the final punch. But it was necessary, and he intended to do it neatly, with no messy work. Just one clean punch, and Butch would take a well-earned rest. So, mindful of the camera which would show him as the victor—and of Georgia Dale, who would see that he had it on Butch every way—Chuck struck an effective pose, judged his distance, and drew back his right for the soporific.
He was so sure, so engrossed in landing that final punch exactly right, that he was careless of everything else. He was wide open, posing, set for the knock-out.
Too late he saw a wicked grin chase the helpless vacuity from Butch's battered visage. He started his frozen punch, but, even as he did so, he knew Butch had beaten him to it. The latter's celebrated right came up and across with the speed of a coil spring and the impact of a high-velocity shell. And then Chuck distinctly saw a tall colored man turn out the lights.
When Chuck opened his eyes upon the world he found himself in a neat, white bed in a setting of strangely sanitary surroundings. He had a misty recollection of something like an earthquake and a railway collision, but the whole thing was a blur. His gaze rested upon a quantity of flowers, tastefully arranged. Being accustomed to associate floral tributes with the last sad rites, he stared at them apprehensively.
Then he beheld a face angelic enough to support the hypothesis that he had joined the celestial throng. However, it was surmounted by a starched cap instead of a halo, and if its owner had wings they were effectively concealed by a uniform.
“Good morning,” said this being, negativing Chuck's attempt to sit up by pressure of a surprisingly strong hand on his forehead. “Steady, now, till your motor picks up a little.”
So Chuck perforce lay still and admired the angelic countenance of Miss Mary Smith, who was the most efficient nurse in Falls City's hospital and as hopelessly practical as she was distractingly pretty. His head felt sore, and so did his jaw. His investigating hand discovered that the former was bandaged.
“What's the matter wit' me?” he demanded.
“Not a thing,” Miss Smith returned cheerfully; “or there won't be if you keep quiet for a few hours. The way I get it somebody hit you on the chin——”
“I getcha now!” Chuck exclaimed, with sudden illuminating recollection. “Butch, he cops me wit' his right in de sixt'. An' it was a pippin!”
“I heard it was a peach,” Miss Smith murmured. “You were out so long they phoned for the ambulance. And unfortunately a hose wagon hit the ambulance and you got another crack on the head that put you out for fair. That was yesterday. But you'll be all right now.”
“Them fire guys is too careless!” Chuck frowned.
“Altogether,” Miss Smith agreed. “Do you think you could eat a little something?”
“I knew you was an angel when I lamp you first,” Chuck returned with enthusiasm.
The angelic Miss Smith blushed, and when she entered the kitchen she said to the diet nurse: “Come through with another dollar, Brownie!”
“No?” Miss Brown exclaimed incredulously. “You don't mean that tough scrapper pulled that stuff, too?”
“He said he knew I was an angel when he lamped me first,”” Miss Smith returned. “Is that good enough?”
“I guess so,” the diet nurse admitted sadly. “I'll owe you the dollar, because I'm broke. And I won't bet any more.”
“All right,” said the angelic Miss Smith. “Darn it, I wish some of my cases would get a new line for a change. I'm fed up on that angel stuff!”
And, later, when Chuck had cleared his tray, she ushered in a visitor whose face possessed no angelic attributes.
“Butch!” Chuck exclaimed joyfully.
Mr. McShane, who had been tiptoeing in approved sick-room manner, brought his heels down and grinned horribly.
“How's de boy, Chuck?”
“Wit? good nursin',” Chuck returned hopefully, “I'll pull through.”
Mr. McShane looked after the departing Miss Smith and grinned again.
“You got it soft,” he stated, glancing around. “It's Miss Dale sends you them flowers.”
“When I lamp 'em first I think I'm a stiff,” was Chuck's acknowledgment.
“That ain't no lucky word,” Butch protested. “When you stay out, an' they phone for the ambulance, the chief he's goin' to pinch me for manslaughter.”
“It was a pippin of a right youse copped me wit',” Chuck testified frankly.
“I broke me hand wit' it,” said Butch exhibiting a bandaged starboard battery in proof. “I wasn't figurin' on landin' no knock-out; but in the last frame youse nearly had me, an' I got about one good punch left. So I let me knees shake, an' when I see you wide open I send it across.”
“I'm froze an' flatfooted,” Chuck admitted. “What happens after? What does O'Hara say?”
“He blows up,” Butch replied, “but there's a lot of inside stuff we ain't wise to. You seen the chief at the ringside. Well, he butts in an' says he's goin' to pinch O'Hara for stagin' a real fight. It looks like he has the goods on him, too. Maybe you wondered how all them fans come to see a movie stunt. I did, meself. It's because Costigan slips them the word it's goin' to be a real fight, wit' the movies for a stall, same as he told us at first; an' he sells 'em seats at from one to five bucks.
“He knows the chief will hear of it, so he has the crust to tell him he's sellin' tickets to play a joke on these sports, an' that they'll get their money back. The chief falls for it, an' when he thinks it's been put over on him he's red-headed. O'Hara has a job to show him. Then Costigan bets even money you win by a knock-out; an' one to five you do it inside six rounds. He gets the coin up, too. It's a cinch. But when I cop you, it pretty near breaks him. He beats it outa town last night.”
“He was crooked,” said Chuck virtuously, “and look where it lands him.”
“Sure,” Butch agreed with equal virtue. “He never let us in, and us doin' the work. It was comin' to him. Well, O'Hara was wild at first, but now he says the picture will be great, an' all we got to do is to fake a round when you get out, instead of the sixt' the way it is now; or else he'll stop, when you drop me in the third. He don't know which he'll do yet. But he's goin' to make more pitchers wit' boxin' an' trainin' stunts; an' he gives us steady jobs—if we quit beatin' each other up.”
“When you put me away in six rounds that's good enough for me,” said Chuck.
“Chees, chees,” Butch returned generously. “You fight diff'rent when you only got six frames to go. An' then you're thinkin' of the camera when I land you. It ain't like straight fightin'. When do you get outa this hospital?”
“I dunno,” Chuck replied, glancing at the door which framed the incoming Miss Smith. “Wit' a wallop on the jaw an' a crack on the head like I got, I can't take no chances. I got to be careful.”
“I don't blame you,” said Butch. “Youse want to watch this guy,” he said to Miss Smith, “or the first thing youse know he'll be incurable.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1960, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 63 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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