Two gun bob, p.287
Two-Gun Bob, page 287
But Diego Lopez was not to be felled by one blow from any man. He roared and came lashing back like a typhoon. His right was a constant threat of destruction. He whirled it like a war club, threw it like a hammer.
Its thunderous impact against Karnes’ head or body resounded all over the house, and John Reynolds winced with each impact. Between rounds he worked over Karnes. His lips moved soundlessly; his face was ashen. Why was this fighter taking punishment he could avoid so easily?
Karnes could not change his tactics. He had fought this far along the ladder according to Reynolds’ instructions; this fight he must fight in his own way.
Blood was in his eyes, the salt of blood in his mouth. He staggered to the impact of that thunderous right hand, but all the time he was slashing back, and he could see pain growing in the eyes of the giant. A fierce joy surged in him. Again he was the iron man, fighting his old fight, pitting his toughness against dynamite in loaded gloves. Blood was oozing through his trunks, but there was so much blood on both men that no one noticed.
Before the gong opened the fifth, Reynolds made a late desperate appeal.
“Kirby, for God’s sake, snap out of it! Are you throwing me down?” Karnes lowered his head. The crowd groaned to see him shuffle out and resume his crouching stance. The torturing grind began once more.
That destruction-weighted right had reduced the side of Karnes’ face and head to a pulp. He knew he had at least one broken rib, that his left side was raw beef. But he had not been merely taking it; he had been handing it out – savage, slashing hooks that ripped and crushed.
Smash, smash, smash! Four gloves flashing past each other, ripping savagely into quivering flesh. The experts said no man could stand up and trade punches with Diego Lopez. What did the experts know of the Barbary, and the man who served his apprenticeship there? Time rolled back to Kirby Karnes, to a smokier, dingier ring, a fiercer crowd. Again he was the iron man, staking all on his granite jaw, his oaken ribs. They can’t knock him out! It seemed the rafters shook with the roar.
And now Karnes saw, through the blood and mist, a look growing in the eyes of Lopez – the same desperate look he had seen so often in the eyes of the men he had fought in the Barbary. Lowering his head, he slugged away with full body-drive behind each punch, iron fists sinking deeper and deeper in the Honduran’s flesh. Lopez reeled back, spattering blood and roaring – rallied and flailed back. Karnes straightened from his crouch, hooking for the head, and missed. That clubbing right ripped in, low.
Karnes distinctly felt the tearing of his own flesh. Blood cascaded down his thigh and a gasp of amazed horror rose from the crowd. The dumfounded referee sprang forward, but before he could interpose, Karnes sprang like a panther. Caution to the winds now, everything staked on one blasting plunge.
He did not heed the knifing agony in his side. He did not heed the bludgeoning right, falling weaker and weaker upon him. He fought as he fought of old, like a wild man, with fury and destruction behind every smashing blow. Dazed by the whirlwind he had loosed, the giant reeled backward, his eyes glazing, his knees buckling, vainly striving to fight back.
Left to the head, right to the head – left, right – in a constant stream, and each loaded with dynamite – and one last terrible hook ripping up from Karnes’ right hip, with every nerve and sinew and muscle behind it – and there was Diego Lopez motionless on the canvas, his shaggy head in a pool of blood.
Time rolled back again to the Barbary and a gory, terrible figure fighting to keep his feet – “Ten!” tolled out the referee, and Kirby Karnes toppled headlong across the body of the man he had conquered.
The first voice he heard was that of Reynolds, and it shook with horror: “Good God, that wound! It’s been sewed up, and that body blow Lopez landed tore out the stitches. Kirby! Kirby! Why didn’t you tell me?” The battered lips grinned.
“You wouldn’t have let the fight go on. That’s why I stood still and slugged; had to crouch to protect that wound, and was afraid if I stepped around too brisk, I’d tear it open again. I’m all right. Don’t look so sick.
You’re goin’ to manage a champion yet. They can’t knock me out!”
They Always Come Back
“Three years ago you were the foremost heavyweight contender – now you’re a whiskeysoaked tramp in a Mexican saloon!” The voice was hard and rasping, with a bitter contempt that cut like a knife. The man to whom the words were addressed flinched and blinked his liquor-reddened eyes.
“And what business is that of yours?” he demanded roughly.
“Just the fact that I hate to see a man make a hog of himself – just because I hate to see a man with championship material in him lying around in a one-horse border village!”
They made a strange contrast, those two, and the loafers and Mexicans who lounged in the rear end of the ’dobe saloon eyed them curiously. The man who lolled half across the beer-stained table was young, and in spite of his ragged garments his athletic frame was evident. His face was not a bad face, in spite of the lines of wild dissipation. The face was surprisingly finely molded, with a thin-bridged regular nose that spoke of good blood.
About the mouth there was a sign of weakness, at first glance. A second glance showed a keen observer that it was a sensitive mouth, rather than a weak one – an index to a certain flaw in the character that was erratic and unstable rather than bad.
The man who stood looking down on the other was a slender, wiry man of more than middle age. His lips were thin and straight, his nose beaklike, his eyes hard and bitter. He was dressed in a manner costly but plain, and seemed out of place in this sordid dive.
“Three years ago,” continued his inexorable voice, “you were touted for the next heavyweight champion. Jack Maloney – a classy boxer and a terrible puncher. The man with the mallet right! You slashed through opposition like a second Dempsey. Starting at eighteen, you cleaned up your division and at the age of twenty-one, you were beating at the doors of the title. Twenty-one! An age at which most men are fighting in the preliminaries for ten dollars a round. And you were drawing down the thousands. In three years you came up from nowhere. You were fast as a cat, keen, brainy, and tough. You hit like the blow of a caulking mallet. You were wined, dined, and petted as the favorite of society – the classy pride of the ring!
“Then what happened? You were matched with Iron Mike Brennon, then an unknown. He stopped you in three rounds. You went all to pieces.
You lost your guts. You were knocked out in your next start by Soldier Handler, a hard-hitting second-rater. Then you quit the ring; disappeared.
You went to the gutter. You’d lost your nerve; turned yellow – ” “That’s a lie!” Maloney was stung out of his indifference.
“Alright, I won’t say you were yellow. But you’d lost your guts. You took to booze fighting. Went to the gutter. Went broke. Now, in three years you’ve made a no-stop flight from Broadway to this dump.” Maloney’s mighty fists clenched into iron knots on the table. His eyes flamed through the tousled mass of black hair.
“I ought to kill you,” he said huskily, inflamed by the stuff he had been drinking. “Just because you’ve managed a few champions you think you can talk to a man any way. You don’t manage me.” “I’m not in the habit of managing whiskeysoaks,” sneered the other.
“The men I managed may not have been as fast or as hard hitting as you were, but they were men. They didn’t go all to pieces just because somebody hung a k.o. sign on their chin.”
Suddenly he changed his manner and sat down opposite the ex-fighter.
“You’re still young, Maloney,” said he slowly. “Why don’t you try to come back?”
“Fight again?” Maloney shuddered as from a nightmare memory. “Ugh!” “You’ve brooded over that knockout until it’s become an obsession with you. Get yourself in shape again – ”
“No! No! I couldn’t. I don’t want to try – to even think about it.” “Then you’ve no more guts than I thought,” the bitter rasp had come back into the voice. “I thought – ”
“Listen!” the other cried with a desperate note in his voice. “What do you know of my trouble? You never fought in your life.” “No,” the other admitted, “but I know you fighters better than most of youknowyourselves.AndIknowyou could come back if you had the guts.” “Sit down,” Maloney ordered huskily. “I’ll tell you my side of it.” “Alright, I’ll listen to your tale of woe – and buy you a drink, too,” the older man added with a cutting sneer.
Maloney’s eyesmomentarily flashed, but he had sunk too low to be overresentful of anything beyond a direct insult. He motioned to the bartender, gulped down the fiery draught, and said savagely: “Guts! Bah! What do you know of a man who has the heart knocked out of him? Listen, I was all you said and more. Till I met Brennon. I thought I was invincible. I wore myself out punching him. I ruined myself – ” “And why?” broke in the other. “You mean you were ruined mentally.
You came out of that fight with only one mark.Acut on your cheekbone and a few bruises. I’ve seen fights in which the winner was carried out of the ring. You took that defeat to heart. Just because you couldn’t stop Brennon, you lost all your nerve, permanently.
“And why couldn’t you stop him? Because he’s a freak. An iron-jawed, steel-bellied gorilla that can’t be knocked out! No man’s ever turned the trick, and won’t until he cracks from the continual punishment. Remember Joe Grim, what Gans, Fitzsimmons, and Johnson failed to stop! But you punched yourself out and took the count. And you let it beat you! Bah!
Your vanity couldn’t stand the shock. You’d gotten to the point where you didn’t believe any man could hurt you.
“If you’d had the stuff it takes to make a real man, that beating would have done you good – taken some of the conceit out of you. As it was, it ruined you.”
“Listen!” There was fury and agony in Maloney’s voice; he was drunk but his mind was lucid. “Listen! I’ll try to tell you – “I’d never met a man like Brennon. I didn’t credit much those stories I’d heard of Grim, Goddard, and Boden – those old-time iron men. I didn’t believe the man lived who could stand up to my punches.
“Then I met Brennon at the Hopi A.C. in San Francisco. I’d heard he was tough – been knocking over a bunch of second-raters on the coast till Steve Amber took him over and began getting him good matches.
“At the first I was impressed by the ferocity of Brennon’s face and the steady glare of his eyes. I half expected him to be awed by my name and k.o. record, but he glared at me as if I were one of the second-raters he had been punching over. Or rather, as if he were a tiger and I a bison he was going to tear limb from limb. I tell you, the fellow isn’t human! He’s made of solid iron and there’s room in his skull for only one thought – the killer instinct!
“At the gong he came out of his corner wide open; no defense at all.
And he knew nothing about scientific hitting.Helifted his swings from the floor, in the old roughhouse style. I went in to finish him quick. I expected to flatten him with the first rush, but when I landed my first blow, a left hook to the body, I got the surprise of my life. Brennon didn’t even flinch; instead of sinking wrist deep into his body, my fist rebounded just as if I had struck a metal boiler instead of a human body!
“I tell you, he was almost as hard as steel. But I didn’t stop to worry; I began throwing rights and lefts to the body and head with everything I had. I was the first first-class man Brennon had met, the papers said. That was his introduction into the first-rate ranks, and I gave him a baptism of fire and blood.
“I battered him all over the ring without a return. He didn’t even know enough to duck or wrap his arms around his jaw. Blood spattered all over us; I closed one of his eyes nearly shut. But he wouldn’t go down. And just before the gong, when I thought he must be weakening, he suddenly landed one of those wide sweeping left-handers under my heart. It felt for a second as if he had caved me in. Took my breath away. But it wasn’t the blow that sentmeto my corner so discouraged; it was the fact that for three solid minutes he’d taken everything I could hand out, and was apparently as strong as ever.
“Between rounds my manager and handlers urged me to go slow; they were getting afraid that I’d fight myself out. But my pride was stung. I’d trained perfectly, but I was beginning to feel fatigued. None of my fights had been at such a pace as this! Just imagine battering away, with all your power, for three minutes straight! And consider the fact that Brennon had taken every blow I started! I could scarcely believe it, but at the gong here he came with his wild beast eyes glaring in his bloody face.
“I threw caution to the winds. Mike Brennon must have gone through hell in that second round. Near the end of it his nose was smashed flat, both eyes closed to mere slits, his face one red mask of pulped flesh and blood. But through the slits of his eyelids his eyes still blazed with their old light – I tell you, you have to kill a man like Iron Mike Brennon to stop him! He’s tougher than Battling Nelson was.
“I felt myself slipping. My blows were coming slower I knew. My arms seemed to be turning to lead; my legs were trembling, my chest heaving.
I rallied with one more ferocious attack just before the gong, and crashed my right four times to his jaw. Think of that! And I’d knocked men out with one blow of that right many a time, to the side of the head or face.
For the first time Brennon reeled. His knees buckled, but just as I thought ‘He’s going!’ he straightened and glanced a right from my cheekbone. It opened a cut and for a second I was blinded by a flash of white light in my brain. Oh, I’d been hit before. Hit hard; knocked down. But never such blows as those; and what was worse was the knowledge that I couldn’t hit Brennon hard enough to weaken him.
“My knees trembled as I walked back to my corner, and I looked over my shoulder to see if Brennon was showing the effects of his beating. I shouldn’t have done that. When I saw him walk to his corner without a quiver, something went out of me. I had an all-gone feeling. As I sank onto my stool, I heard the crowd yelling: ‘Hey, whatsa matter, Jack? Lost your punch? How come you ain’t stopped this tramp? This boy must be made outa iron!’
“I began to wonder if I had lost my punch. My brain reeled. This was a nightmare! I, the hardest puncher since Dempsey’s days, had pounded this wide-open dub for two solid rounds without even weakening him! Surely there must be some limit to his endurance! There must be an end even to his incredible vitality!
“My manager was begging me to box him, take my time. Be content to outpoint him. I scarcely heard. I was in a panic. The factor that sent me out to kill or be killed wasn’t so much wounded vanity as you think – it was more fear than anything else! Yes, fear! Just like a man penned in with a tiger who must kill or die!
“I gathered my waning powers and tore out for the third round like a wild man. Brennon with his longshoreman’s style was easy to hit. He fought straight up and wide open. I fought like a man in a trance. Left, right! My left hand broke on his head, but I didn’t notice it. I threw my right again and again, with a wild desperation. Every ounce of weight, power and fighting fury went behind that right hand at every blow. When it landed it sounded like the blows of a caulking mallet. And Brennon reeled, wavered – went down!
“When he fell, all my unnatural fury went out of me; I staggered back against the ropes, completely fought out – an exhausted shell of a man.
The referee was counting. Then to my utter horror, Brennon shook his head and began to get his feet under him. I nearly fainted. I thought I’d finished him– I knew I was done. And he was getting up! The ring floated before my eyes.
“Then Brennon was up and coming for me. I tottered away from the ropes on buckling legs and lifted arms that were no stronger than a girl’s.
I was all gone – out on my feet. Even then he missed-missed-missed. At last he crashed a leaping left-hander to my head. There was a flash of white light again, I reeled and he smashed a terrible swing under my cheekbone.
The lights went out. They said I came up again at the count of nine, and he floored me the second time before I was counted out. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything after that fearful right-hander that first dropped me.” Amomentary silence fell. Maloney’s bloodshot eyes burned unseeingly and when he continued he seemed to be talking more to himself than to his listener.
“That fight made Iron Mike Brennon,” he said huskily, at last. “It broke me. My mind was in a chaotic whirl. I couldn’t get down to training. I couldn’t settle on anything. I stayed out of the ring for four months, then went back in against Soldier Handler. I was all at sea. I hit with my old force, but I had no timing or accuracy. Every time I started a blow the vision of Iron Mike Brennon’s bloody and snarling face rose up before me.
I was wild and awkward. Every time I saw a blow coming, the memory of Brennon’s terrific knockout smashes made me flinch and back away. The crowd booed me, hissed me, called me yellow. At last, in the fifth round I went down and out from the swings of a man I should have stopped in the first rush. The sportswriters said I quit. Maybe I did. I could hear the referee counting over me; I wasn’t unconscious but I couldn’t drag myself to my feet.”
Grendon moved restlessly. His quick nervous energy made it impossible for him to keep still long at a time.
“It’s the mind,” said he. “Your superiority complex got a jolt. You should have recovered by this time. It wouldn’t be impossible for you to get back in shape. I saw the Handler fight. You were like a man dazed or drugged.
Even so he staggered every time you landed, and it took him five rounds to beat you down, in the condition you were in. You were not in shape, mentally or physically.
“As for Brennon,” the harsh rasping note stole in again, “you said you were in shape for him. You weren’t. You thought you’d trained. You’d been going through the motions, but your heart wasn’t in your work. You were too sure of yourself. And that same conceit whipped you; you fought yourself out and when Brennon dropped you – as he might have dropped any man that ever lived – you didn’t have the stuff to take it and come back.
