Two gun bob, p.289
Two-Gun Bob, page 289
I remember when Young Griffo, Hall, Murphy – ” Maloney gave him no heed. The vanished glories of Australia’s fistic past was the one subject on which Grendon was prone to grow garrulous.
The old all-gone feeling came back when Maloney stood in the ring that night in Sydney. The crowd, some of them remembering him, had given him quite a hand, but he was remembering – With an effort he jerked himself out of his crimson reveries and looked across at his opponent: a rangy red-headed fellow, taller than himself but lighter. The announcer was saying:
“ – Jack Maloney, America, weight 195; Red Leary, also of America, weight 180 – ”
At the gong, Grendon hissed: “Remember my five hundred – and that you hate me!” And Maloney found time to wonder at the avariciousness of the man.
Leary, like Diaz, knew Maloney of old, and like the Mexican, he had no desire to serve as a stepping stone on the comeback road of a former great one. But differently from Diaz, he attacked instantly, though warily.
Grendon had taught Maloney more of the real art of boxing than he had ever known before, and now as he blocked and side-stepped the rangy boxer’s leads, Maloney realized that he was a better boxer than ever before.
But the knowledge is not all – the heart must be in the game – and with no horror of bull pens before his eyes, not even his hatred of Grendon could keep the old red memories from Maloney.
He retired on the defensive, flinched involuntarily from blows that did not hurt, and could not seem to untrack himself. The first round was slow; toward the end Leary drew first blood with a volley of straight lefts to the face. Maloney scarcely felt them and retaliated with a whistling left hook which Leary cleverly blocked.
“Can’t you untrack yourself ?” rasped Grendon back in his corner.
“You’re in perfect shape; his best blows are not hurting you. You’re hitting as hard as you ever did in your life. But you don’t hit often enough. You’ve been on the run since the tap of the gong. This second-rater is going to outpoint you if you don’t take a chance.” Then as Maloney made no reply, Grendon snarled bitterly, “Bah! Your heart’s not in your work. You’re going to take a whipping just from pure lack of guts.” Maloney went out brooding over his manager’s words and Leary, taking advantage of his abstraction, smashed a wicked left hook to the body and staggered his man with a sweeping right to the body. Stung out of his apathy, Maloney came back with a hard left hook to the ribs, knocking Leary into the ropes and bringing the crowd to its feet yelling. But the burst of action was brief. As Leary rebounded from the ropes, Maloney seemed to see Mike Brennon’s shadow wavering between, and the heart went out of him. His reason told him that the blow he had dealt Leary had not landed solidly enough to knock down any trained man, but his blind unreasoning inhibitions clamored that here was the old tale all over again–amanwhom his blows could not hurt.
Thus passed the second, third and fourth rounds, and the sixth and seventh rounds. Leary, boxing carefully, taking no chances, piling up an enormous lead, with Maloney defending in his halfhearted manner. Then came the eighth round.
Maloney came up as fresh as he had been at the first gong. He felt no fatigue whatever. But Leary saw only his cut and blood-stained features.
He did not know that Maloney, tough and in perfect trim, had scarcely felt the jabs which had marked him. Leary believed that Maloney’s lack of aggressiveness was from weakness. “They never come back!” And as he rushed out for the eighth, Leary suddenly discarded his former intention of winning on points and went savagely in for a knockout.
The crowd rose roaring; it was in hopes of this that they had sat so patiently through the fight. Maloney found himself the center of a whirlwind.
Leary, though no match in hitting power for his opponent, carried a wicked punch and knew how to use it. Throwing caution to the winds, he battered Maloney all over the ring and floored him in a neutral corner.
Maloney took a count of nine, though he could have risen sooner. He was dizzy, not hurt. As he rose, Leary was on him, wild with the instinct of the kill. Maloney missed a vicious left, landed hard under the heart with the same hand and took a volley of lefts and rights to the head as he backed away, covering up.
Leary gave him no rest. He feinted him out of his position, ducked a venomous right and crashed his own right to Maloney’s jaw. Again he landed. Maloney was dizzy; out on his feet. Suddenly it seemed that he was fighting, not Red Leary, but Iron Mike Brennon. Through the blood which veiled his eyes, he seemed to see Brennon’s snarling face floating before him.
Suddenly Jack Maloney went crazy. He had suffered enough from this phantom. At last his instinct was fight, not run. He had forgotten all about Leary. Now he bunched himself into a solid cannonball of destruction and shot forward, blasting his terrible right hand full into the ghostly face which mocked him. And that blind smash found Red Leary’s jaw.
Maloney, waking as from a nightmare, heard the referee counting and saw at his feet the limp form of his victim.
Grendon came to him in his dressing room.
“Here’s your part of the purse; five hundred and fifty-five dollars.” Maloney snatched it from his hand. “Now then, here’s your money, you – ”
Grendon seemed not to notice him; he drew from his pocket a newspaper cutting. “Read this.”
The date of the paper was a month old. The paper itself had been torn and was pasted together in a crude manner. Maloney read it and cried out incredulously: “Mike Brennon knocked out!Why, this can’t be true! It says, ‘Red Leary knocked out Iron Mike Brennon tonight in the first round of a scheduled fifteen-frame go. It was Leary’s last fight before leaving for Australia.’ Why – ”
He sat down, his brain reeling. He had whipped the man who knocked out the terrible Mike Brennon. A wild feeling of exultation swept over him.
He whirled on Grendon, his hatred of the man submerged in his new emotion.
“You’ll keep on managing me! You’ll get me some more fights! If I whipped the man who whipped Brennon, I can whip any of them! Including Brennon!”
“Handler’s in England,” said Grendon with a strange eager gleam in his cold eyes. “Do you think you can take him?”
Maloney laughed like a boy.Aterrible load seemed lifted from his shoulders and only then did he realize how black and terrible it had been, distorting his entire viewpoint on life.
“I can take a roomful of him! Grendon, you’re managing the next champion!
First Handler! Then Brennon! Then whoever stands between me and the title! I’ll flatten them all!”
“And, say,” as Grendon started for the door, “here’s your money.” “Keep it!” Grendon rapped. “I never accept money from my fighters.
Keep it and pay me back by winning the title!” Fight fans of London will remember the Maloney-Handler battle as long as they live, after the memories of longer, harder-contested struggles have passed into oblivion. It was short, but it was sensational – the kind of fight which brings fans to their feet holding their breath and which sends them away babbling deliriously.
Before the gong sounded, Maloney sat in his corner, fresh and glowing with health after his long sea-trip, vibrant with fierce energy, which many took for nervousness. Across from him Handler sneered confidently. Had not he stopped this youth three years before? Maloney had been better then, surely. The burly Soldier had heard of his life since then. What if he had pushed over a couple of dubs since he started his comeback? Handler laughed confidently; he himself was at the height of his career.
At the gong Maloney shot from his corner like a thunderbolt. And like a thunderbolt he smote the astounded Soldier. Gone were all the red ghosts that once lurked in Maloney’s brain, chaining his limbs. Again he was Jack Maloney, the Virginia Thunderbolt.
Handler had scarcely time to get out of his corner before the whirlwind struck. A sizzling straight left rocked his head back and as his jaw came up from behind the hunched and protecting shoulder, Maloney’s fearful right crashed over. Only a born hitter can deliver a blow like that; the whole body working in unison, the mighty shoulder following the drive of the arm, the body pivoting at the waist, the feet thrusting powerfully upward and forward – and all done in the flash of a split second.
Handler dropped face down, nor did he move until he was brought to in his dressing room. His first words have come down the years with other ring classics:
“Baby!” caressing his chin, “That galoot don’t hit! He explodes!” Two more fights followed in England; to Maloney they were mere incidents, stepping-stones on his upward trail. His eventual goal was the title, he felt, but even that was subordinate to his desire to meet Iron Mike Brennon again. For this he lived.
Shortly after he knocked out Soldier Handler, he was matched with Tom Walshire, the champion of England. The clever Briton eluded the wrath to come for nine rounds, but Maloney was not to be denied, and in the tenth he cornered Walshire and smashed him to the canvas for the full count.
Gunboat Sloan followed. The Gunner was past his prime, but he still had his old-time ring craft and a left hand as deadly as a crossbow bolt.
Boxing superbly, he kept Maloney at bay for four rounds and in the fifth landed that terrible left flush to the jaw. Maloney’s knees buckled, but even while the crowd held their breath expecting his fall, he lurched headlong into the Gunner and brought him down with an inside right under the heart.
It was a few days after this victory when Maloney rushed into Grendon’s room. The relations of the two men had changed subtly. Grendon’s manner had altered after Maloney’s decision to continue in the ring, and Maloney’s feeling had changed from hatred to a grudging admiration. He had stayed with Grendon because he realized that the man was one of the cleverest pilots in the game and could aid him in his climb. At last he had come to have a secret liking for the Australian and had often wondered if the man’s cold, hard attitude were not a mask to hide his real sensitive nature.
But now as he entered Grendon’s room, his brain was in a turmoil.
“Look here!” he waved a newspaper in his manager’s face. “Last night in America, Iron Mike Brennon was knocked out by a fellow they call Iron Mike Costigan! In the first round! And the paper says that’s the first time Brennon has been flattened!”
Grendon nodded.
“But you told me,” stammered the fighter, all at sea, “you told me that Red Leary, whom I whipped in Sydney, had knocked Brennon out! The knowledge that I’d whipped Leary has been what’s holding me up!” Grendon shook his head. “More than that, Jack. You needed something then to brace you. Now you’re able to go on your own.” Maloney frowned and cogitated, then suddenly threw back his shoulders and grinned with the pleasant arrogance of youth.
“You’re right; I’m over all that stuff. I realize that it was just mental – just an inhibition or complex or something that I’m rid of. I’ll go on and fight – ”
He halted, suddenly realizing something of which he had not thought before.
“Brennon must be terribly battered, or he couldn’t have been knocked out.”
“The last time I saw him,” said Grendon, “months before I first met you in Mexico, he was a battered wreck. Nearly ready for the padded cell.
Anybody could have pushed him over in this last fight. That’s the way these iron men go; they seem invincible for years, then they crack suddenly.” Maloney shook his head pityingly. “I’ve hated him for three years. I don’t hate him any longer and I don’t want to fight him. Anyway, the paper says he’s retiring. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t push over a punch-drunk ruin – say, get me Costigan, the fellow that knocked him out!” “But, Jack, he’s an iron man too! Just a counterpart of the Brennon who knocked you out nearly four years ago.”
“No matter – and Grendon, I want to say that at last I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I was a hog and you made me a man against your will. What your original object was I don’t know – ” “Why, Jack,” Grendon’s hard eyes were strangely soft, “years ago when you were just a hard-slugging kid, I kept my eye on you; wanted to manage you but couldn’t buy your contract. I’ve always liked you as a fighter; of late I’ve come to like you as a man.
“When I found you wasting your life in that little border town, I wanted to see if you were capable of getting out of the gutter, even with help. I told you that time that the alcalde in the town was my friend. He was and is. I framed the whole thing. You didn’t sock an officer; you were too drunk to do anything, or remember anything. I didn’t bet any money on you. There wasn’t any fine to pay.
“I admit it was cruel sending you in against Diaz in your condition. But I wanted to find out if you had anything left. Even if he flattened you with the first punch, I didn’t intend leaving you there to rot in those low-class dives.
“But you showed me in that fight that you still had your superhuman physical ability. I don’t believe the man ever lived before who could have knocked out a fighter in good condition after having gone through what you’d been through! And I saw your heart was in the right place, too. Nothing wrong there. The same old fighting heart. But it was your mind. You needed a bracer.
“I was afraid to show you the paper about Leary and Brennon before the fight, and if you’d lost I’d never had used it. But you see the result.” “How’d you frame that?” Maloney asked.
Grendon smiled. “You noticed how the paper was torn? I simply tore out a few words and pasted the torn edges together. The original lines were: ‘Red Leary was knocked out by Iron Mike Brennon in one round!” Maloney laughed. “It served the purpose. It made me regain my confidence.
Now I’ll never lose it again if I live to be a hundred. And now I want a match with Costigan!”
“Jack, you’ll gain nothing by fighting this iron man; just now he’s at his prime. Dempsey couldn’t knock him out, neither could Fitzsimmons. If you beat him you’ll gain considerable prestige, but if he beats you, you’re ruined. These iron men are the worst opponents in the world for nervous, sensitive fighters like you. Pass him up and take on a fast, clever fellow like yourself!”
Maloney shook his head. “I’m older now. I won’t make a fool out of myself again. I won’t punch myself out on Costigan as I did on Brennon, but I want to beat the man who beat the man who broke me. Till then I won’t have regained my fullest self-respect and self-confidence.” This is an item which appeared in the newspapers a month later: “Jack Maloney, whose sensational rise and fall four years ago was the talk of the sporting world, rose another step on the fistic ladder which he is remounting when he outpointed Iron Mike Costigan, the conqueror of Iron Mike Brennon. Maloney seems to have regained all the speed and punch which four years ago caused sportswriters to christen him the Virginia Thunderbolt, and to predict his early accession to the heavyweight crown.
“This was Maloney’s first battle in an American ring since he began his comeback campaign. He held the upper hand throughout the bout, taking every round of the fifteen-round go, and in the last frame sent Costigan twice to the canvas for counts of nine. Only Mike’s superhuman endurance and vitality saved him from the first knockout of his career, and it seemed that if it had gone a few more rounds, he would have taken the count in spite of his ruggedness, which is of a quality to make Joe Grim jealous.
Maloney, though he did not score a knockout, deserves praise for superb work, and seems a cinch for the title.”
Black Wind Blowing
I - "I Take This Woman!"
Emmett Glanton jammed on the brakes of his old Model T and skidded to a squealing stop within a few feet of the apparition that had materialized out of the black, gusty night.
"What the Hell do you mean by jumping in front of my car like that?" he yelled wrathfully, recognizing the figure that posed grotesquely in the glare of the headlights. It was Joshua, the lumbering halfwit who worked for old John Bruckman; but Joshua in a mood such as Glanton had never seen before. In the white glare of the lights the fellow's broad brutish face was convulsed; foam flecked his lips and his eyes were red as those of a rabid wolf. He brandished his arms and croaked incoherently. Impressed, Glanton opened the door and stepped out of the car. On his feet he was inches taller than Joshua, but his rangy, broad-shouldered frame did not look impressive compared to the stooped, apish bulk of the halfwit.
There was menace in Joshua's mien. Gone was the dull, apathetic expression he usually wore. He bared his teeth and snarled like a wild beast as he rolled toward Glanton.
"Keep away from me, blast you!" Glanton warned. "What's the matter with you, anyway?"
"You're goin' over there!" mouthed the halfwit, gesturing vaguely southward. "Old John called you over the phone. I heered him!"
"Yes, he did," answered Glanton. "Asked me to come over as quick as I could. Didn't say why. What about it? You want to ride back with me?"
Joshua jumped up and down and battered his hairy breast like an ape with his splay fists. He gnashed his teeth and howled. Glanton's flesh crawled a little. It was black night, with the wind howling under a black sky, whipping the mesquite. And there in that little spot of light that apish figure cavorted and raved like a witch's familiar summoned up from Hell.
"I don't want to ride with you!" bellowed Joshua. "You ain't goin' there! I'll kill you if you try to go! I'll twist your head off with my hands!" He spread his great fingers and worked them like the hairy legs of great spiders before Glanton's face. Glanton bristled at the threat.
"What are you raving about?" he demanded. "I don't know why Bruckman called me, but--"
"I know!" howled Joshua, froth flying from his loose, working lips. "I listened outside the winder! You can't have her! I want her!"
"Want who?" Glanton was bewildered. This was mystery piled on mystery. Black, howling night, and old John Bruckman's voice shrieking over the party line, edged with frenzy, begging and demanding that his neighbor come to him as quickly as his car could get him there; then the wild drive over the wind-lashed road, and now this lunatic prancing in the glare of the headlights and mouthing bloody threats.
