The Leather Pushers

Front matter

The Leather Pushers

By H. C. Witwer

G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London

"Through the Looking Glass"

Me and Cockeyed Egan was tourin' "God's Own Country" (Russian for the West), where the natives would rather be Harold Bell Wright than be president, each with a stable of battlers, pickin' up beaucoup sugar by havin' 'em fight each other over the short routes, when Kane Halliday skidded across my path. Besides Beansy Mullen and Bearcat Reed, a coupla heavies, I had a good welter in Battlin' Lewis, and Egan had K. O. Krouse, another tough boy, which made up a set. Them last two babies mixed with each other more times a month than a chorus girl uses a telephone, "without either gaining a decided advantage," as the newspapers innocently remarks. They was steppin' out with each other about four times a week, playin' a different burg each night, and everything was jake till K. O. Krouse shook a mean dice and win $28 from Battlin' Lewis on the ways to Toledo, where we had 'em scheduled to go twelve fast rounds to a draw. Lewis broods and mutters over that for the balance of the railroad ride and knocks Krouse dead in the first frame that night. On account of this cuckoo forgettin' he was a box fighter, and therefore not supposed to get mad, we lose five other bouts we are signed up for with Krouse, which outa petty revenge refused to fight my boy any more. Cockeyed Egan is all for goin' back to New York, because, as he says, if they have took wrestlin' bouts off of the list of felonies there again they certainly oughta stand for the Krouse-Lewis act, where the boys is positively guaranteed to try in the last second of the final round, anyways!

I'm just puttin' a handful of the hotel towels in my suit case on account of you never can tell when they will come in handy, when a bell hop appears at the door and makes me a present of the followin' cable:

Guarantee you thousand Cleveland Bearcat Reed vs. One-Punch Loughlin. Wire if right. Dummy Carney.

Now, this One-Punch Loughlin looked like the next heavyweight champ to the disrobed eye' right then. He had clouted his way through the rest of the large boys like Dewey went through Manila Bay, and his knockout record sounded like the first two pages of the phone book. Dummy Carney was his manager, and him wirin' me, instead of the club doin' it, was the office that friend Dummy had somethin' cooked up. Sendin' Bearcat Reed into a ring with this rough Loughlin person was like enterin' a armless wonder in a bowlin' tourney. If Loughlin was tryin', my battler wouldn't have a chance if they let him climb through the ropes with a ax in each hand; but for a guarantee of a thousand fish I would let Bearcat Reed box five starvin' lions and a coupla irritated wildcats in the middle of the jungle! I wired Dummy Carney "Sold!" grabbed the Bearcat, and lammed for Cleveland. On the en route the sacrifice wants to know how much they is in this fracas for him. Up to that time the Bearcat had the idea that the only guys in the world which eat regular was Al Vanderbilt and Jack Rockefeller.

"Well," I says, "you oughta grab about three hundred men for your end. That's if you can keep from kissin' the rosin for a coupla rounds. But, of course, they is no use speakin' of the impossible!"

"Three hundred for me?" he hollers, leapin' up in the seat. "Say—who am I gonna fight, the Marines?"

"Look here, stupid," I says. "Never mind worryin' about who you're gonna battle—you don't see it botherin' me, do you? You're the most selfish guy I ever heard tell of! I gotta be sittin' up night and day gettin' tramps for you to trim, wearin' my fingers to the bone signin' contracts, gettin' a occasional line of hooch about you in the papers, and the etc., and all you gotta do is put on a pair of nice white trunks, step through the ropes, take a pastin', and get paid off. Pretty soft for you! Suppose I had signed you to fight the Marines—as long as you get the sugar, what do you care?"

"All right," he grins, pattin' me on the shoulder, "don't get sore. Tell them babies they gotta leave their bay'nets in the dressin' room and I'll take a chance!"

Dummy Carney met me at the train in Cleveland and gimme the works. One-Punch Loughlin was gonna let the Bearcat stay the limit if he hadda hold him up, and then we was all goin' to Philly for a return bout a month later, which Dummy would properly work up and at which Loughlin would flatten the Bearcat without no more further formalities. The second mêlée would be level, as Dummy figured the Bearcat was too much of a ham to be worth while savin' for any more. For this last fray I was guaranteed $1,500 for the Bearcat's end, and I never seen a thin dime of it, because the second fight never come off. Bearcat Reed steps through the ropes at Cleveland, squints across the ring, and sees his comin' vis-à-vis just climbin' up and bowin' to the wild applause. Up jumps the Bearcat.

"One-Punch Loughlin, hey?" he yelps. "Nothin' stirrin'! Why, this guy would tear my head off! What d'ye mean by throwin' me in here with that baby? You claimed this would be a spread for me!"

"Shut up, you !" I hisses. "We'll fight this guy. He ain't gonna try and—"

"Where d'ye get that we stuff?" sneers the Bearcat. "You mingle with him—I'll watch it!" and he'd of ducked through the ropes if I hadn't grabbed him.

"Listen!" I whispers in his ear. "If you crab this, I'll stick a knife in you the first time you come to your corner! We're gonna fight Loughlin a world series, and this one to-night is only a stall for the real sugar, get me? Loughlin's gonna be under wraps all the way, and all you gotta do is make a showin'. Tear outa your corner like you're gonna bite his nose off, git mad and make faces—know what I mean? If you make this look good to-night, you drag down five hundred bucks for your next start. How 'bout that?"

"This guy will about croak me!" gasps the Bearcat, as white as the referee's shirt should of been. "But, speakin' of makin' a showin'—I'm gonna do that thing for a coupla seconds, anyways!"

Clang! goes the bell.

A wise-lookin' bird, sittin' back of me, jumps up and yells at the Bearcat: "Rush him, kid, he ain't got nothin'!"

One-Punch Loughlin comes slowly out, grinnin' at close friends and noddin' politely to acquaintances.

The next minute two thousand innocent bystanders has gone crazy and Dummy Carney has fell into the water bucket in a dead faint!

The second the bell rung Bearcat Reed, lookin' like a guy on his way to the chair and actin' on the principle of kill or get killed, has charged half-way across the ring yellin': "Old men and cripples, get back of the ropes!" A foot from the dumfounded Loughlin, this bird, which ordinarily could out-dive all the seals in the world once he got in a ring, smashes a right to the button of Loughlin's jaw, and Dummy Carney's comin' champ hits the mat so hard I bet he was pickin' rosin outa his face for a month! The referee counted to "six," took another squint at the study in still life at his feet, and waved the dazed Bearcat to his corner. I hadda throw twelve guys outa the ring so's I could get his gloves off. A artist which could of painted the expression on Bearcat Reed's face as he sat there with his eyes and mouth as open as Central Park, gazin' at One-Punch Loughlin asleep at the switch, would of become famous on that one picture. The Bearcat looked like a guy which has struck a match on lower Broadway and seen the Woolworth Buildin' immediately go up in flames!

Of course it was a fluke win. It wouldn't happen again in a million years, but—it happened then, which was ample for the Bearcat. That lucky wallop got his name all over the country, and started me toward pilotin' a world's champion. Somebody must of slipped all the four-leaf clovers in the world into the Bearcat's hair, because the next day he puts his cut of the Loughlin fight on a 20 to I shot, which win pulled up, and I don't see him again for six months. One-Punch Loughlin fin'ly come back to life, and the first thing he done was to bust Dummy Carney in the nose, claimin' he had been framed, and then he grabs another manager, which took him over to England, where the set-ups runs wild. And there we will leave them, gentle reader, for the time bein', because this is the story of Kane Halliday, alias "Kid Roberts," and that's as far as the poor old Bearcat and One-Punch Loughlin figures in it right now. Them guys was just the preliminary birds I trotted out to entertain the crowd, and now, boys and girls, the "next ex-e-bition bout of the evenin' is Kid Roberts, Yale '17, vs. Battlin' Fate, twelve rounds to a decision. Weights: Roberts, 195; Fate—all the rest. Gents, kindly stop smokin'. I thank you!"

The day after Bearcat Reed flattened One-Punch Loughlin and followed that idiotic act by leavin' me flat, I met Dummy Carney, the other victim, in the lobby of the hotel. One of his eyes is garbed in the conventional black and his nose is a trifle outa true. He let forth a beller of the opposite to joy when he seen me, and I was the best part of a hour convincin' him that I hadn't deliberately double-crossed him, and that me and the Bearcat was more stunned than he was when his battler wilted.

"Well, they is one thing about Loughlin—he proved to the wide, wide world that they is somethin' in a name, anyways!"

"What d'ye mean?" growls Dummy.

"Well," I says, grinnin' demurely, "you called him One-Punch Loughlin, and that's exactly what he was! If you remember the late holocaust, the Bearcat only landed one wallop on your ex-man-killer's chin, and he immediately turned in his resignation, didn't he?"

"The big yellah dog!" groans Dummy. "I had him signed for seven fights in the next coupla months that would of win me around twenty thousand berries. From the telegrams I got this mornin' you'd think I had just been elected governor of half a dozen States, and every one of them wires is cancelin' Loughlin. Kin you imagine him runnin' out on me too? If that guy fights for anybody else, I'll have him put in the hoosegow till St. Looey wins a pennant! I can start off by suin' him and—"

"You'll get fat suin' Loughlin!" I shuts him off. "John the Barber sued Dempsey for breach of promise, and all John got was a introduction to all the lawyers in America. Forget about Loughlin—you're well rid of him, anyways. After a exercise boy like Bearcat Reed knockin' him dead with a punch, they wouldn't let Loughlin in a fight club now if he had a ticket! I'm gonna shove off for New York, and you better come along with me. The way they been breakin' for me, I gotta good mind to get outa the fight game altogether and turn square!"

Dummy begins to clear his throat and rub his hands together for a minute, and then suddenly he turns to me and lowers his voice:

"We kin grab a rattler outa here to-night," he says. "Stick around for a couple minutes, and you'll git a flash at the next heavyweight champion of the world and joints west! That's if he shows up," he adds.

"You certainly have become a pig for punishment, Dummy!" I grins. "Who's this guy?"

"Kane Halliday!" he whispers like he was sayin' "The Sheriff of Shantung!" or the like. "How 'bout that?"

"It don't mean nothin' in my young life," I says. "How d'ye play it?"

"You never heard tell of Kane Halliday?" he gasps like his ears is both liars. "The big, now, football star, the weights thrower, the—the—runner, the—ah—what they call a roundabout athalete? You know, one of them bimbos which flings a wicked spear and hurls a mean hammer and that there stuff, get me? Why, they claim this baby beat Harvard and the other college all by himself!"

"That ain't my fault," I yawns. "And I can't identify the body yet."

"Was bein' stupid cold, you'd be zero!" snarls Dummy. "Why, the papers was full of this guy!"

"The papers is got nothin' on me," I says, gettin' up. "I'm full of him too! So long!"

But he calls me back, and in about twenty minutes I have got the low down on Monsieur Kane Halliday.

This guy had been committed to college with the idea that when he come out he'd be at the very least a civil engineer, though most of the engineers I know learned their trade in a and yard and was civil enough as far as that part of it goes. Halliday's people was supposed to have a dollar for every egg in a shad roe, and the boy treated the civil engineer thing as a practical joke and college as somethin' he had been gave for Christmas to play with. The principal studies he devoted his time and attention to was football, wrestlin', runnin', dancin', boxin', playin' saxophone in the Glee Club and poker in the others. He won more gold and silver cups than the Crown Prince lifted from Belgium, was the most popular guy that ever wore a "Y" on his sweater, and as a reward he fin'ly got throwed outa dear old Yale on his ear without even a reference, let alone a diploma, because he had a prejudice against enterin' a classroom. He hit the cruel world about the same time Germany did, and he played with the Allies as a dizzy aviator.

When he come back he was greeted with the delightful information that his old man had gone broke on the war, and it was up to him to make the acquaintance of Manual Labor, provided he wished to continue his daily consumption of proteins and calories, as they wittily refer to food in Battle Creek. Instead of goin' down to the drug store and quaffin' off a beaker of arsenic when he heard of this tough break, Young Halliday borreys enough sugar to send his thoughtless parent down to South America for a rest, brushes back his hair, and starts out to dumfound the universe with stunts that would make a Douglas Fairbanks thriller look reasonable. With the reputation he had grabbed off at college he figured he was in soft, and it was only a question which bank he'd start off bein' president of.

It took the kid about a month to find out that the young men which writes all the movies, novels, and plays in which they is a hero amongst the other characters is slightly addicted to exaggeration. The fact that his father had been granted a absolute divorce from his bank roll had leaked out, and his one-time buddies become the busiest guys in North America when he went to call on 'em.

Now, if Halliday had only known a scenario writer, he would of been tipped off to sneak out immediately for the "great open stretches of the untamed Northwest," where, as a six-day-old infant knows, "a man has his chance to live clean, fight hard and square, and win his way to the top with his pure-hearted, fearless, flashing-eyed, and becomingly, though sensibly, garbed mate at his side." Or he could of gone to punchin' cows, reformin' all the rough yet golden-hearted cowboys by his inability to cuss and his ability to fan a six gun, windin' up by weddin' the rancher's sensationally beautiful daughter, which had been to New York and is through with the cold, merciless, and gilded sham of the city, and craves for the sweet smell of the pines, rodeos, cactus, sagebrush, and steers.

Instead of this, Halliday got as far as Ohio, where, whilst waitin' for somethin' to break, he joined a troupe of professional football players made up of ex-college stars. He played full back and had been gettin' from fifty to a hundred a game, which was enough to keep him both full and back. Full of food and back in the spotlight. The All-Star Team, however, was bustin' up in Cleveland, and it was at this point that Dummy Carney, which could dive into a haystack and emerge with ten dollars' worth of needles, come across him. Dummy had heard some of the kid's history from Tin-Ear Fagan, a ex-pug, which was with the team as a rubber and some from Halliday himself.

"...And so," winds up Dummy, pullin' out one of his favorite brand of cigars, which is called "Last One I Got"—"and so I have worked over this baby for a week. He looks like platinum to me! You know what the demand is for heavies right now, and if this guy has got anything at all I can take him around the sticks, and then bring him into New York and clean up with him. In about a year or two, if he's still steppin' out, we'll go after the Big Guy. Say—can you imagine me pilotin' a world's heavyweight champ?"

"I prob'ly could if you would make me a present of a bite of that opium you musta been chewin'!" I sneers. "A college guy, hey? Well, I'll stake you to him! I'm off them amateur champs."

"Wait till you get a flash at this bird!" interrupts Dummy. "Why, he's got a left hand that—ssh!—here he comes. Play dead, now!"

Halliday was class, they's no gettin' away from it. The boy stood well over six foot and was dressed like he had placed all of his football plunder on his back, From my first quick size-up I judged he scaled around 195 ringside when right. He had the light, sure tread of a prowlin' cat, which meant speed, and the cleancut, smooth-muscled bulk, taperin' gradually from the walkin'-beam shoulders to the unusually slim waist, advertised punchin' power. I knew right away that baby packed a nasty wallop somewheres. Dummy said he was twenty-three. He looked older.

Apart from them shop items, he inventoried about as much like a prize fighter as I'm Mary Pickford's double. I thought what a shock it was gonna be to him the first time somebody flattened his nose. It was! But the thing that struck me odd was his eyes. They didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the layout at all. They should of been baby blue and starin' innocently at the world to go with that golden blond hair. But they wasn't. They was a kinda chilled steel gray, and for all the flickin' they did they could of been glass. It was like lookin' into the barrels of a coupla "gats."

He stopped in front of us, nodded kinda nervously to Dummy, and flashed them eyes on me kinda cold.

"S'all right, kid!" says Dummy, catchin' the look. "This guy's my—eh—private secretary. Anything you say in front of him will be used—I mean—well, what d'ye say?"

Halliday grinned as we all sat down and pulled his chair closer to Dummy.

"I've decided to accept your proposition, Carney," says Halliday slowly, settlin' back like he was gettin' ready for a long speech. "Now, in the first place, let us—"

But Dummy was on his feet, slappin' him on the shoulder.

"Fine business!" he cackles. "Inside a year your income will sound like the population of China multeyplied by two, and like as not I'll have a couple of pennies myself! Now, they's no use of you gettin' all tired out talkin'; lemme take charge of that part of it. We start in to-morrow night rakin' in the golden stream. Wait here till I send a wire!"

Oh, Dummy was a fast worker, they's no doubt of that.

Halliday looked after him kinda dazed, and then he wiggles them pliable iron shoulders of his and laughs. We traded a few remarks about this and that, holdin' each other even till Dummy come bustlin' back.

"Now we're all set!" he says to Halliday. "I kinda thought you'd see the light, so I booked you in Sandusky a few days ago at the Crescent A. C. We're gonna box young Du Fresne, heavyweight champion of Canada, twelve rounds to a decision. You'll prob'ly kill that bimbo with a punch, and then we jump to Columbus, and—"

Halliday turns a slow smile on Dummy and holds up his hand.

"Your opinion of my ability is certainly flattering, old man!" he interrupts, "and your system at least seems to have the merit of originality. My first bout is to be with the Canadian champion, eh? What do you propose that I do—start at the top and work my way down?" He chuckled like the kid he was.

"Heh?" snorts Dummy. "Oh—this Du Fresne guy? Say—if he's champion of Canada, then I'm next in line for the English throne; get that? He used to fight in the preliminaries around New York under the name of Set-Up Jim Byrnes, and he's wore out more tights reclinin' on the floor of a ring than any fighter which ever pulled on a glove! Lefty Murray's rechristened him and is takin' him around the flat-car circuit till somethin' breaks. D'ye think I'd let you go in there if this guy was any good? All I hope is that you don't fracture his skull!"

"But—" begins Halliday.

"This playin' football was a bright idea," goes on Dummy. "It's kept you in steady trainin' all the time, which saves me a lotta trouble." He turns to me. "Boy, he says, "that football thing is one tough pastime. Kin you imagine them cuckoos doin' that stuff for nothin'?" He swings around on Halliday again, which was watchin' him like he was a curiosity. "You ain't mixed up with no dame, are you?" he demands, suspiciously.

The most astonishin' change come over the charmin' features of Monsieur Halliday. His eyebrows becomes one straight line, and them cold eyes gets down to about the size of match heads. I found myself givin' a little shiver, and he wasn't even lookin at me. He took a half step forward, and I says to myself: "Fare thee well, Dummy Carney!" and friend Dummy's complexion got a shade lighter, whilst a silly grin appeared on his nervous lips. But they was no bloodshed.

Halliday coughed a coupla times, and then his color came back.

"Eh—we will leave the personal element entirely out of our discussions for the present, Carney," he says, his voice a chill breeze. "As I understand my arrangement with you, it is a purely business affair. We will keep it that way!"

"Sure!" nods Dummy quickly and with the greatest of relief. "And there's that! Now, speakin' of business, from now on your name will be Kid Roberts, unless you get trimmed under that name, in which case we will get you a nice fresh new one and start you over again. That Kane Halliday is a swell name for a collar or a hotel, but it don't mean nothin' in the ring—O. K.?"

They was no argument about that end of it—in fact, it seemed to please Halliday, which from now on, gentle reader, we will call Kid Roberts, as they never was no necessity to change it.

"A lulu, hey?" whispers Dummy in my ear when Kid Roberts has gone upstairs to pack up. "He's been workin' out here for a week up at the Arena Club. I've had him under a pull to save his hands, but he's flattened a dozen handlers with a left hook that don't travel over six inches! That's poor, eh?"

"He looks worth a bet," I says, carelessly. "I only hope he don't blow up on you to-morrow night, that's all."

"What d'ye mean blow up?" snarls Dummy. "He oughta be able to take a roomful of guys like Du Fresne—you know that!"

"Oughta be able and can do is different," I grins. "A lotta wise birds figured Willard should of let Dempsey come in with a gun to make it a little more even, but look what happened! You wanna figure that this boy will be doin' somethin' to-morrow night he never done before, and that conditions is gonna be a whole lot changed for him. The first shock of that crowd is gonna have some effect on your battler, Dummy, and whether it'll be good or bad, I can't guess. I've seen some it made quit cold and some it made fightin' fools; it's accordin' to how a guy's nerves is hooked up. Now—"

"The crowd won't bother this guy," interrupts Dummy. "He's fought before witnesses in college and the like."

"I bet he never heard no ringside prattle like he'll hear to-morrow!" I says. "And they's another thing. Your child wonder may pack a mean wallop, but the thing is—can he take it? You know this Du Fresne, bein' led to the slaughter, will be all hopped up to make a terrible flash in the openin' canto. If he shakes Kid Roberts up with a coupla chance swings, and the crowd begins to roar for the Kid's blood, will he stand up under fire or will he wilt? Think of Bearcat Reed knockin' One-Punch Loughlin dead! Can this Roberts baby fight with a closed eye, or a busted nose, or—"

"Aw, shut up!" hollers Dummy. "You should of been a undertaker! Kid Roberts won't have to take it—he'll flatten this guy with one clout. I'll lay you a hundred even it don't go two rounds—what d'ye say?"

"Sold!" I says. "Dummy, I ain't figurin' your boy yellah. I'm figurin' on a thing called temperament which I have run up against before. I wouldn't be surprised if the muss went the limit, because I'm afraid if Roberts gets hurt early, bein' green, he'll play safe and be satisfied to stall the rest of it and dog it."

Dummy snorted, but he looked worried. "If he can't take it, I don't wish no part of him," he says. "I'll leave him flat in this Sandusky joint if he don't come through on the bit!"

Well, I went to Sandusky with 'em as Dummy's guest, and also at the sudden request of Kid Roberts to go behind him in his corner for his first fight for money. He seemed to have taken a likin' to me for some reason, and they is no doubt I was for him strong. You couldn't help fall for him; he was just a big, swell-lookin', boy. For instance, goin' down in the train he made friends with about a dozen kids, and when we pulled into Sandusky he was drawin' Pictures for 'em of elephants on the back of his contract with Dummy. Kid Roberts belonged in the ring the same way I belong in the White House!

Dummy was afraid of sendin' him in too cold after the train ride, and, findin' that the club had a gym in connection with it, he sneaks the Kid down there and has him step around a little with a big dinge which was workin' out. They had been at it about a minute when the Kid rocks the tar baby with a right to the body and brings up his left for his man's jaw. But this dark guy knew too much for Roberts, and with a grunt he shifted his bullethead just enough to let the wallop swish by. The force of the punch carried Roberts forward on his toes, and his fist crashed into a steam pipe with everything he had behind it. Dummy let out a wild shriek and waved the dinge away, but the Kid only grinned kinda sheepish, like he was ashamed he had been so clumsy. The hand was red and swollen a bit when we come to tape it before the fight, but it didn't look like nothin' serious, so Dummy soused it with arnica and let it go at that.

The Kid was cool enough, though a trifle pale whilst we was sittin' in the dressin' room waitin' for the semifinal to wind up, and his eyes happened to fall on a newspaper I had brung in. On the front page is a picture of some well-to-do heiress which had just come back to New York from Shantung or some place where she had been wilin' away the winter. Roberts snatches it up and gazes at it with a hungry look. I don't blame him. She looked as pretty as $5,000 a week would look to a motorman.

"What a rotten photo!" he mutters, half to himself. "She looks fit, though."

"Friend of yours?" I says, drapin' the bathrobe over his shoulders.

He's still in a trance over the picture.

"Oh—eh—yes—eh—quite so!" he mumbles. "How the devil can I get to New York to-morrow?" he inquires of himself, not even noticin' me.

I filed that one away for future reference. I heard a whole lot about the lady afterward—in fact, I met her under exceedin'ly odd conditions. But—

It was about ten o'clock when we swum through the cigarette smoke, pushed down the aisle, and climbed through the ropes, amid the dull rumble of excited voices, as the papers says. The mob, which had never heard tell of Kid Roberts before and, for all they knew, never would again, presented him with a wild cheer. All they knew was that two big guys was gonna mingle, and the chances was excellent that at least one of them would be knocked cold. The Kid bowed very solemnly to the cheer, which act drawed a laugh that didn't help his high-strung nerves a bit.