Fighting Back

Front matter

Fighting Back

A Sequel to "The Leather Pushers"

By H. C. Witwer

The Wandering Two

"Fortune can take away riches, but not courage!"

This example of the use writin' implements can be put to was composed by Mr. Lucius A. Seneca, a Roman wisecracker which manipulated a terrific pen and ink in the year 0065. Eighteen hundred years after Seneca paid his respects to Lady Luck, as mentioned above, Kane Halliday made that his motto and proved it to be as true as it was when Luce first pulled it on his admirin' friends.

I guess Kane Halliday is better known to you as Kid Roberts, the name under which he win the world's heavyweight title, with me as his pilot. I got him from Dummy Carney for nothin'—won him on a bet, in fact—when the Kid was just a big, strong, willin' boy, a glutton for punishment and a spendthrift at handin' it out, but with no knowledge what the so ever about the fine points of the glove game. And boxin's got fine points, don't think it ain't! Well, I supplied that part of it and in somethin' like three years I made him a champion. Then Kid Roberts made the fatal mistake of tryin' to box two guys at once—Cupid and Knockout Pierce. The chubby little pinweight with the bow and arrow crashed him in love with Dolores Brewster, eye-soothin' daughter of Senator Brewster, a baby with a criminal bank roll, and a fifty-six degree fight fan. The Kid begin chasin' to dinners and dances, boundin' around nightly with the fair Dolores and doin' his trainin' by proxy. The result was that Knockout Pierce, a tomato the Kid would ordinarily of knocked for a loop in a round, smacked my boy friend from under his title. After that little incident Kid Roberts retired from the ring with plenty jack and wedded himself to Dolores Brewster.

Then the fun begin!

Instead of simply livin' happy ever after like they do in a novel, why, a series of experiences begin for the Kid which made his previous adventures look about as excitin' as the directions for making coffee!

To start with, I don't think we ever had a heavyweight champ which reached the ring by the via of the route Kid Roberts took, or that we've ever had a box fighter like him. He was the mock turtle's monocle and no mistake! He was one of the show spots at Yale when he stalled around the New Haven hideout —football star, trackteam mainstay, and this and that—till his father, J. A. Halliday, the big Wall Street speculator batted out of turn and got sent to the cleaners. The old man lost about everything but his initials, and when the smoke died away the Kid sent him to South America to think matters over, while he 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' over in my mind a dozen schemes to help him out of his jam. The funny thing is that the stunt the Kid actually did, and the one you'd imagine I'd think of first, didn't even enter my head. Kid Roberts had never liked fightin'—hated the game, in fact—and only laced on the gloves in the first place to put his old man on his feet, like I told you. When he lost his title to Knockout Pierce and married Dolores Brewster, he publicly announced that he was through with boxin' for all time, and I guess he meant it, but circumstances alter cases, as the Hindus says.

Anyways, this day the Kid took me into his beautiful library and we pulled up easy-chairs near the big French window overlookin' the lawn. I didn't start to tell him how sorry I was about his father which he had just buried. I just gripped his hand and held it—that told him all of it.

"Well, Joe," he says after a bit, with a kind of nervous grin, "I—I'm broke again!"

"That's where you're wrong," I remark pleasantly. "You got twenty-five grand!"

I had come prepared, and I flung a certified check on the table.

"Half my roll, Kid," I says. "I got fifty-odd grand; there'll be more when you need it!"

Kid Roberts sits forward in his chair and looks at me for a minute with a extremely odd expression on his face. Then he picks up my check and gazes at it kind of wonderin'ly, gulpin' a couple of times and fin'ly blowin' his nose with much violence. I busied myself watchin' the autos shootin' past the house on the Merrick Road till the Kid gets up and slaps me on the shoulder. He pushes my check back in my hand.

"I might have known you would do something just like that," he says. "Old fellow, you put new life in me! But that isn't why I sent for you, Joe. I'm not going to borrow any money, I'm going to earn it!"

"You got to have a stake to go in business, Kid," I come back at him. "I'm ready to tackle anything with you, but we'll need jack to play any game, won't we?"

"Not the one I'm going to play, Joe," says the Kid. "I'm going back to the ring!"

Wam! For a second I think my comely ears is lyin' to me. I'm dumfounded and tickled silly at one and the same time. Before I can make any remarks, the Kid goes on.

"Joe, I have given my rather desperate situation a great deal of serious consideration—lost a good many nights' sleep over it. I've taken stock of myself and my worldly possessions, and I've nothing I can realize a dollar on—except my fists!"

"How 'bout this trap here?" I ask, lookin' around a room which must of cost ten thousand bucks to furnish if it cost a dime.

"Mortgaged to the hilt!" answers the Kid briefly, and goes on: "I've had practically no business experience nor training in any of the arts or sciences, and my forced departure from Yale terminated my studies in engineering. On the other hand, I'm still under thirty and in splendid physical condition as a result of clean living and daily exercise. Also, Joe, the present contenders in the heavyweight division, apart from the champion, do not appear to me to be any more formidable than the ones I defeated when I held the title myself. What do you think?"

"Kid," I says, throwin' my arms around his shoulders, "you been out of the game and you ain't gettin' no younger, but I think you can do anything—that's somethin', you know!"

"Well, then, will you take charge of my affairs again?" asks the Kid.

"Absolutely!" I says, slappin' him on the back. "We'll start over the long roads to fame and fortune together, Kid, and I don't know no trip I'd rather take!"

"But it isn't at all necessary!" remarks a soft voice behind us, and we both swing around to face the Kid's wife, Dolores.

She sure was somethin' to think about as she stood there framed in the doorway. I must of saw Dolores Halliday several million times in the past five years, but I never yet been able to gaze at her without gettin' a thrill! The Kid looks at her, frownin', and I reach for my cap, preparin' to take the air. But Dolores stops me.

"Don't go, Joe," she says, smilin' pleasantly at me. "I may need your moral support." Then she turns to the Kid: "I wasn't eavesdropping, Kane," she says. "I just happened to be passing the room, and I couldn't help overhearing part of your conversation. Surely you are not seriously proposing to become a pugilist again?"

Her voice sounds horrified, and the Kid looks a bit uneasy. However, he pulls over a chair for her, and the three of us sits down by the window. It's bright and sunny outside, but I can feel there's a heavy storm brewin' right in that room!

"Dolores," says the Kid quietly, "boxing is the one thing at which I am proficient, and it offers the quickest route to financial independence for me. I can earn more with a few bouts than I could in a few years at anything else I might undertake. I'm not going back to the ring because I like it, but because it is the only alternative for me in this crisis!"

"I do not agree that the situation is as desperate as all that," says Dolores. "And I most certainly object to your becoming a prize fighter again under any circumstances whatever! You know that I have an income from father that—"

"That has nothing to do with me!" the Kid finishes for her, jumpin' up suddenly and beginnin' a nervous pacin' of the room.

Dolores reads the signs and tries another lead.

"Well, you might at least consider me, Kane," she says. "You might think of my—of our—social position and what will happen to it if you become a professional boxer again. Then there are my political aspirations—what of those? I threw myself into politics to please you, Kane—you needn't smile, I did! I didn't want to just live on your money. I wanted a career of my own, knowing how you detest parasites of either sex. Now, when it is almost certain that I will be nominated for State senator from our district, you are contemplating a step that will ruin everything!"

Kid Roberts stops his patrol of the room and looks down at her.

"It will ruin your career if the fact becomes known that your husband is proceeding about the business of earning his living?" he asks her, with a grim smile.

Dolores grabs him, layin' her pretty head against his arm. "Oh, Kane, do give up this absurd idea!" she coaxes, and, believe me, she'd give a stone statue a kick! "Things are not nearly as bad as they seem to you. Why can't we—why can't we live on my money until something better presents itself!"

"A moment ago you expressed your contempt of parasites; now you would have me be one, eh?" says the Kid, pattin' her head. "No, Dolores, as Joe would say: 'That's out!' I have seen too many good men—that is originally they had character and ambition—ruined by that same arrangement; living on their wife's money. Surely it is more honorable for me to earn my living boxing than to exist on your bounty, isn't it?"

"There is nothing honorable about prize fighting!" snaps Dolores, lettin' go his arm. "I despise the whole low, sordid atmosphere that surrounds it. How can you even think of entering that beastly profession again?"

Kid Roberts looks like he had a hot comeback on the tip of his tongue, but at that critical minute Dolores's father, Senator Brewster, enters the room, and she greets him with a sigh of relief. Re-enforcements is comin' up, so to speak.

"Father!" says Dolores excitedly, "Kane wants to become a prize fighter again: what do you think of that?"

"I think it's splendid!" booms the scrap-lovin' senator, shakin' the Kid's hand heartily, while Dolores Jets forth a gasp.

"And I thought you would help me dissuade him!" she moans, and begins to weep.

Well, both the Kid and the senator rushes to soothe her, and I felt as out of place as a pair of white duck pants in a coal mine. While Dolores is enjoyin' a good, comfortin' cry, Kid Roberts explains to her father just why he has to say it with wallops again. The senator looks thoughtful, hems and haws a few, and then volunteers to place any sum, in or out of reason, to the Kid's credit at the bank. That made the third offer of important dough Kid Roberts had that day, and it was like offerin' a dress suit to a guy in prison for a minute later the Kid files his third refusal.

The senator acts somewhat put out, but I thought I seen a glint of admiration in the old boy's eyes as he shakes the Kid's hand again and turns his back to Dolores.

There is no admiration in her eyes, though, and that's certain! The more Kid Roberts talks about his plans to become a leather pusher again the more his charmin' spouse burns up, and pretty soon a red-hot argument is under way. It winds up by Dolores declarin' that if the Kid as much as laces on a pair of boxin gloves, she will go abroad till he "comes to his senses," as she puts it. Kid Roberts pleads with her to see America first, but he gets no further with Dolores than she gets with him in her attempt to keep him out of the ring.

Both stubborn and high-spirited, there's no give to either of 'em, and the results is that a couple of weeks after this stormy session Dolores shove off for Europe with some of her playmates. So's that their friends and the newspapers won't get hep to the split, Kid Roberts goes to the dock with her, and they put on what has all the earmarks of a lovin' farewell. It might of fooled the innocent bystanders, but it didn't fool the Kid or Dolores. It's a cinch that both of 'em knew that this partin', their first, was what is known in Idaho as a crisis!

So Kid Roberts has not only to grab himself a bank roll, but he also faces the man's-size job of winnin' back his own wife.

I guess the beauteous Dolores was just about passin' Sandy Hook when Kid Roberts tells me to get him a scuffle at once.

"With who?" I ask amiably.

"Why, with the heavyweight champion, of course!" he answers promptly. "As an ex-champion, I should be given preference over any other challenger for the title, according to all traditions of the ring. A few weeks' training will have me in shape to put up the battle of my life."

I grinned at him.

"Listen, Kid," I says. "Not so fast. If we're goin' to start at all, we might as well start accordin' to Hoyle. In spite of the fact that you're built like a watch and are in wonderful condition, you'd prob'ly be a pushover right now for the worst boloney I could excavate for you, let alone the champ!"

"But I can't afford to be idle long," says the Kid impatiently. "I must2"

"And you can't afford to have some tenth-rate banana knock you kickin' in your first start either!" I shut him off.

"I guess you're right, Joe," says Kid Roberts after a minute.

The matter of a contract between me and the Kid don't use up five minutes. We make the same deal we did when Kid Roberts was boxin' before—65-35 on the loot and no papers to be signed—a "gentlemen's agreement."

The next important subject is the best place for the Kid's trainin' to begin. Well, I pick a lumber camp as fillin' the bill in every way. I figure the hard work in the open fresh air will be the quickest way to toughen up the Kid's frame and work him into fightin' trim—or else convince the both of us that he can't come back. We also make up our minds that what the sport writers don't know about us won't hurt 'em, that is, till we find out for ourselves whether or no Kid Roberts can make the grade. So we get all dressed up like a couple of tramps and begin to wander from one employment agency to another, pesterin' 'em for a pair of jobs as lumber jacks.

We fin'ly get hired and shipped with a mob of fearful-lookin' rough and readies to a loggin' camp in Canada. We ain't been in it a hour when we get in a jam and Kid Roberts is forced to do his stuff. It come about like this: Me and the Kid goes down to St. Thérèse, the little slab which is as far as the rail- road brings you to the camp, to lay in a stock of clothes which our foreman says we'l! need in order to hold our jobs.

Cravin' to shop, we go in the general store run by a French Canuck entitled Honoré Collet. As there has just been a pay day on the river, the joint is packed to the doors with lumberjacks wantin' to buy everything in sight.

There's only two people to wait on 'em, Mons. Honoré Collet and his daughter, Désirée, and believe me, Désirée was considerable female! I'd guess her age as seventeen, and as she packed a face and form which would create a disturbance on Broadway, why, you can imagine what a panic she must of been up in that little timber town, where a good-lookin' woman is about as common a sight as a six-headed cat.

Anyways, she's wrappin' up this and wrappin' up that, the while laughin' and kiddin' with the red-blooded and slightly stewed he-men from God's Country, as the authors calls it. The second she pegs Kid Roberts she immediately shows him all her pretty white teeth and starts right over to wait on us. I have yet to see the lady which didn't get pleasant the minute she seen Kid Roberts. However, I know that he's overboard over Dolores, so I don't get frightened, as even if Désirée Collet has fell for my boy friend, it takes two to make a romance the same as it does to make a quarrel.

Well, Désirée had been in the midst of waitin' on somebody else when she drops everything for the Kid. The deserted customer, a six-foot husky as drunk as a monkey, gets red-headed. He grabs the girl roughly by the arm and tries to pull her back. This don't fall in with her plans, and she lets forth a little scream, gettin' instant action!

Kid Roberts had started plowin' his way through the crowd when the souse started for Désirée, and he reaches her just as the anti-prohibitionist is puttin' a arm around her shapely waist. There was no time wasted on introductions. The Kid grabs the lumberjack by the back of the neck with one hand and by the bottom of his corduroy jacket with the other and shakes him till the buttons flew off. Then he arches his powerful back and throws Mr. Drunk through the door.

"Merci, monsieur," says Désirée to the Kid with a smile that amply repaid him for his trouble, or should of.

"Don't mention it—glad to be of service," says the Kid, grinnin' back and presentin' her with a bow which has goaled many's the drawin' room. "I would like to see a mackinaw, not too vivid in color and about forty-two chest, I believe."

Before Désirée can answer, somebody shoves in between us and snarls at the Kid: "Where d'ye get that stuff—tossin' people out of here, you big stiff?"

One glance and I see the panic is on!

The stranger looks to me like he just stepped out of some circus where he was makin' his livin' bitin' sledge hammers in half and havin' automobile races run off on his chest. Kid Roberts views him with interest, but Désirée is plainly scared stiff. She seems to know who this mug is, as does the rest of the gang which gathers round us with pleased grins on their pans.

Beyond that first curious glance, Kid Roberts pays no further attention to this baby, and, tryin' to smooth things over, Désirée nervously asks can she wait on him.

"No!" grunts the cave man. "I want this fellow here to wait on me!" With that he grabs hold of the Kid's shoulder and swings him around. "What's the matter—lose your tongue?" he sneers. "Or are you just plain yellow? You was brave enough when you throwed 'at poor helpless drunk out of here to show off before the girl, wasn't you? Well, I ain't drunk; le'ss see you throw me out!"

"Be yourself, you big scissor-billed dumbell!" I sneer, edgin' between 'em. "The first thing you know you'll get a proper smackin'. You get rosy with us and we'll lay you like linoleum!"

"Easy there, Joe!" warns the Kid, steppin' in front of me. "Don't get excited over nothing, old man," he tells this big hick, "and don't take my hot-headed friend seriously. I didn't intend to create any disturbance by ejecting that drunkard. He was annoying the young lady, and I only did what any other man would have done under the circumstances. There's nobody hurt, so let's forget about it."

"Forget nothin'!" growls the other guy, rollin' up his sleeves. "I'm goin' to give the both of you the lickin' of your lives, you dirty2"

Never mind what he called us—that was his hard luck! Désirée gets fiery red and backs away. The crowd laughs and moves closer. I snatched a very comfortin'-lookin' ax off the counter and was heftin' it, when the Kid come through. His face has went as red as Désirée's did, and then it gets fightin' white. He measures the big guy with his blazin' eye, then checks up that measurement with a straight left. The big fellow's lowered head come up with a jerk in time to keep a date with the right hook which had once made Kid Roberts a world's champion. Plock! Down goes Mister Big Boy with a crash which shook the store, and I guess if they hadn't swept him up he'd be lyin' there yet. When me and Kid Roberts walked out through a lane of dazed-lookin' lumberjacks five minutes later, the Kid's prey was still gettin' first aid from disgusted friends.

Well the next day we get routed out of the bunk house at the horrible hour of five in the mornin', and the camp boss sends us out in the woods with a crew. It was colder than Zero's home town, so it's a case of work snappy or turn into a icicle. Kid Roberts throws himself into the job of toughenin' up his long idle muscles with a gusto, but it was different here! After three or four hours of choppin' and sawin' I was satisfied that lumber-jackin' was all wrong.

When I moan to Kid Roberts he laughs at me, sayin' that he's takin' as much punishment as I am and likewise it was me which choosed the lumber camp in the first place. His advice to me is to take it and shut up. This fails to comfort me to any great extent and many's the time I wished we had picked a cream-puff factory or the like as trainin' quarters. Be- lieve me, I got all the lumber campin' I could tolerate, and every time I see a toothpick any more I get a pain in my back from thinkin' of that wood factory in dear old St. Thérèse!

When we come in for chow that night we got quite a shock. The hard work in the clear frosty air of the north woods has made our appetites like a boa constrictor's, and me and the Kid give the meal such a beatin' that the cook, known as Ptomaine Joe around the camp, comes into the mess hall to look us over. That's where we got the shock. The cook is no less than the big guy which Kid Roberts slapped for a turnip the day before in Honoré Collet's store!

Both me and Kid Roberts figure we're in for a brawl, and we jump from our stools, ready for action. But, after a puzzled look, Ptomaine Joe comes over to us with a broad smile on his homely pan and a hand like a ham outstretched to the Kid.

"Howdy!" he says. "Boy, you sure can sock, I'll tell the cross-eyed world! What did you have in your hand when you cuffed me?"

"I believe it was a right hook," smiles the Kid, shakin' his hand. "I'm sorry I—"

"Never be sorry for no clout like 'at," interrupts Ptomaine Joe. At was a peach! Say—is they any chance of you teachin' me 'at punch?"

"Why, I'd be glad to," says Kid Roberts. "You like to box, eh?"

"Like it?" snorts the fightin' cook. "Why, I'm a boxin' fool! I have made everybody on this man's river like it, and they won't be nobody in this outfit push you around whilst you're here, because when you took me you took the champeen of the camp. I don't mind tellin' you 'at I'm goin' to check out of this trap pretty soon and become a perfessional pug!"

Well, he was big enough, there's no question about that, but that glass jaw of his which the Kid had connected with killed off my interest. Still, I figure he might be developed into a good sparrin' partner or handler, so I egged him on.

"Gettin' tired of boxin' the old pots and pans, eh?" Kid Roberts asks him.

"You said it!" says Ptomaine Joe. "I'm goin' to step into the ring as soon as I finish my contract at this dump here. And if you don't take a flyer at the fight game with 'at right hook you got, you're a chump! Of course, you're kind of awkward and clumsy on your feet and you ain't got no class, but you could easy pick at up with experience. In fact, I got a couple of punches I'll teach you myself, 'at's if I find out you're game and willin' to take a little punishment so's to learn how to handle yourself."

Ptomaine Joe tells this to a guy which was once heavyweight champion of the world!

Well, friend cook has been devotin' so much of his valuable time to me and Kid Roberts that the other parsnips sittin' around the chow table begins to bang their knives and forks together and howl for their food. Ptomaine Joe swings around on 'em swiftly and angrily.

"Stop that squawkin', you goofy-lookin' yokels!" he bellers. "I'll throw you your meat in good time. If I hear another peep out of any of you sapolios, I'll knock the lot of you for a trip!"

Them lumberjacks certainly must of thought Ptomaine Joe was good, because the results of that blast was instant silence!

After that things went along smoothly enough, though as a full-blooded New Yorker I never could get infatuated with attackin' them trees with a ax at six o'clock of a foggy, frosty mornin'. Me and manual labor has never been what you could call buddies. Who ever heard of a box fighter's manager workin'? On the other hand, Kid Roberts took to lumberin' like puss takes to cream. He actually seemed to like it, but then the Kid always was a pig for punishment. However, he was most positively doin' himself a world of good. His skin was commencin' to take on a healthy tan, his wind was improvin', his eyes was bright and clear and the soft fat around his belt was bein' replaced by muscles ridged like a washboard. So far I hadn't let him do no boxin' what the so ever; I wanted his body right first.

For a while I thought Désirée Collet was goin' to be quite a problem. Me and the Kid stopped in the store from time to time, buyin' gents' furnishin's and what not, and you didn't have to be no mind reader to see she was rapidly gettin' cuckoo over Kid Roberts. But in spite of their temporary bust-up, the Kid was more than in rove with his wife, and even though she had went to Europe he played the game. He'd learned a lot about the interestin' adjoinin' sex before he got wed, and he knew how to keep from gettin' dizzy when a beautiful girl deliberately set out to make him.

Kid Roberts played around with more than a few, but he only fell in love once, and that was with Dolores. Ladies, that kind of boys seldom cheat, once you land 'em! So the Kid was pleasant with Désirée, but he never accepted the invitation constantly in her shinin' eyes. He treated her like a little sister—which, naturally enough, only made her more keen to make him fall. That's always the way, now ain't it?