Читать книгу The Tenderfoot - Max Brand - Страница 5

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He was amazed to hear peals of laughter while they patted one another on the back. "This is on you, Paddy!" they said.

"I been made a fool of," said Paddy courageously, though he grew a deep crimson. "But," he said to Allan, "you had me beat, pal. How could I know that you was a professional? And where you been showin' your stuff? On the other side of the pond?"

"What stuff?" asked Vincent Allan. "And I haven't the slightest idea of what you mean, Mr. Casey."

He said it so earnestly that even the bystanders did not laugh.

"S' help me," gasped out Casey, "it's real. It ain't no fake!"

The spectators nodded.

"Look here," said Casey, "what d'you do with yourself?"

"I work in a bank, Mr. Casey," said Vincent Allan.

Then the red joy of prophecy descended upon Paddy Casey. His eyes bulged and his throat was so full of emotion that his voice was small.

"You ain't no bank clerk!" he said in that whispering passion of the seer. "You ain't no bank clerk. Know what you are, kid? You're the champeen of the world. The champeen heavyweight of the world! The champeen heavyweight of all time of the whole world. Or call me a walleyed fool!"

So solemn was this utterance that the others were shaken and awed to quiet by it. As for Vincent Allan, so much had happened in so few seconds that he only knew those who had come to mock had remained to admire, though why they admired he could not quite make out. He had done or said something remarkable. That was all he knew.

"Don't fill the kid's head full of the bunk," said Bud.

"Why bunk?"

"Suppose he ain't got no speed?"

"Is he muscle bound? Ain't he loose and soft all over? Why, Bud, he's as fast as a cat! Did you ever box, kid?"

"Never," said Allan.

"Get the gloves on. Bud. You got twenty pounds and three inches reach on the kid, but I'll bet on him."

"He ain't never boxed," said Bud, scowling. "Did you hear him say that?"

"He ain't never chinned himself, either," said Mr. Casey, and there was much laughter, while a little quiver ran through the body of big Bud.

So the gloves were tied upon the hands of Bud and of Allan and they were brought to an eighteen-foot ring whose resined canvas was smeared and spattered with innumerable dark stains. Allan shuddered when he guessed their nature.

"We're going to make this real," said Casey.

"He ain't never held up his hands" protested Bud, very red. "Am I one to make a choppin' block out of--"

"Shut up and do what I tell you. We got to see if he can take it, don't we, before we can start in campaignin'? Shut up and do what I tell you. You fight four regular three-minute rounds, and I bet on the kid!"

The "kid" was placed upon a stool which swung into the ring from one corner of it. There Mr. Casey knelt behind him and placed a hand upon his shoulders.

"Look at Bud," commanded Casey.

"Yes," said Vincent Allan, and his mild blue eyes looked steadily across the ring toward Bud, who sat on a similar stool with his elbows on his knees, glaring at Allan and meantime kneading the toe of each glove into the palm of the other as though he wished to pack them on more firmly.

"How does he look to you?"

"He seems very angry," said Allan. "What have I done to him?"

"It ain't what you're going to do to him that makes him angry; it's what he's going to do to you, kid! Lemme tell you! He's going to try to smear you over this ring so darned loose that I'll have to scrape you together after he's through with you."

"Ah?" said Allan.

"Are you scared?"

Allan looked inward upon his secret soul. "My stomach feels a little empty," he said thoughtfully, at the last. "And--and I'm a little chilly, all at once."

There was a slow growl of disapprobation from Casey.

"Look here," said Casey. "You can't box none. If Bud wants to hit you, he'll hit you. The only thing for you to do is to get in at him and hit him right back. You understand?"

"Ah?" said Allan.

"That's it. Plough in and before he can hit you the second time, belt him. You won't be able to get at his jaw. He's too smart for that. But sink a fist into his ribs. That's all you got to do. Hit him as hard as you can in the ribs, and that'll be the end of the fight."

"But," said Allan, amazed, "he's much larger than I am."

"Size ain't nothin', kid," said Casey. His thick, muscular hand began to pat the shoulder of Vincent Allan--whose sticky softness now had so much meaning. "Look at the old yarn about David and Golier. Look at old Bob Fitzsimmons. That baby didn't weigh no more'n a hundred and sixty-five and they didn't come too big for him. You got five pounds on old Bob, and--lemme whisper to you--you're twice as strong as old Bob ever was. If only you can learn to hit, kid!"

Half a hundred people had collected by magic. Someone struck a gong.

"All right, kid," said Casey. "Sop that big bum in the ribs and we'll call it a day's work."

Having been shoved off his chair and seeing Bud rushing toward him, Allan walked with measured steps toward the center of the ring--with his hands hanging idly at his sides!

"He don't know nothin'!" screamed Casey. "Put up your mitts, you fool, you--"

"What did you say?" said Vincent Allan, and turned his head toward Casey.

At the same instant Bud struck with all the energy of a hundred and ninety pounds. He had to finish this contest in short order if he wished to get any glory out of it, and into that first blow he put all of his might. He did not need to feel out his antagonist with any artistic sparring for an opening. He had only to drop his head, lunge with all his weight behind the point of his shoulder, and drive his right fist with a straight piston movement into the chin of the greenhorn. And straight and true sped that terrific right-hand drive. The head of the kid was turned toward Casey. Therefore the "button" was exposed and upon the button landed the punch. That is to say, it struck an inch from the point of the jaw and the thud of that impact was as audible as a hammer blow throughout the big gymnasium.

The audience rose upon its knees with an indrawn breath and then emitted a wild "wow!" of fury and joy. It is the same cry which rises from the crowd during the ninth inning rally; or when the touchdown which will win the game is in the making. The whole half-hundred of the onlookers tilted to one side as though in sympathy with the coming fall of the kid.

He did not fall.

Instead, the blow seemed to pick him up, put wings beneath his feet, and float him back across the ring until his shoulders pressed against the padded ropes. There he stood, looking with the same mild blue eyes toward his foe, a little surprised, rubbing with the tip of his glove the place which had just been struck.

If there had been a shout before, there was furious babel now. "He can take it! Oh, how that kid can take it!" they yelled. And Casey turned a handspring! As for Bud, he looked down in amazement upon the good right hand which had failed him.

"He's got sawdust in his jaw!" he grunted at last and moved onward, daunted but still ferocious, to the attack.

He washed young Vincent Allan before him with a shower of blows. He stood at long distance and smashed across tremendous facers and body punches which sounded on the ribs of Allan like beating on a drum. So Allan leaned through the hurtling gloves and clutched his opponent. He felt that stalwart body give in his clutch. There was a frightened gasp from Bud and then: "Take that bear off of me! Is this a wrestling bout?"

"I'm sorry," said Allan, stepped back.

"Soak him, kid!" screamed Casey.

Allan, obediently, tapped the other upon the cheek.

"No! All your might!" shouted Casey through his cupped hands. But the other shook his head. "He's no good after all," groaned Casey. "The stiff ain't got no fightin' heart!"

In the meantime. Bud had recovered a little from the effects of that tremendous hug. He pushed out an automatic straight left, that keystone upon which all good boxing should be built; he stepped in, rising on his toes, and as he descended to his heels, his right fist darted out, stooped over the shoulder of Allan, and landed solidly upon his jaw. It was a right cross, delicately executed, with nearly two hundred pounds of brawn to give it significance, and it rocked Vincent Allan like a ship in a gale.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" yelled Casey, seeing his protege driven into retreat.

Instinct and imitation were teaching Allan. He put up his hands as his opponent did; he began to strike out with a straight left arm; but there was no spirit in his blows, and Bud shook them off and slid in for further execution. He came to half-arm distance, dropped a fist almost to his knee, and whipped it to the head. It landed on the point of Allan's jaw and tilted his head back on his shoulders. He was not stunned. These heavy blows in a shower had not affected his brain. But the scraping glove had flicked off a bit of skin. He touched the stinging place with his glove and, lowering it, he saw a dark little round spot. In that instant one self died and another self was born, for the gentle lessons of pity, of mercy, of human kindliness were shed from his mind into a deep oblivion. He had been aware, before this, of driving fists, of the perspiring, shining body of Bud, of the yelling voices around the ring, of the snarling, lashing voice of Paddy Casey, but now all of this was forgotten. He stood in the midst of a thick silence and there existed before him only the bright, battle-eager eyes of Bud; there existed within his heart only a ravening desire to make those gleaming eyes dark as night, helpless, blank.

Bud came in, with both fists whipping to the mark, but Allan put a hand against his breast and pushed him away. He seemed to float off like a feather. Before he was settled, Allan was at him. He came as the tiger comes, with every nerve tingling, with every muscle working. He was inside the reach of those milling gloves. His feet gripped the floor as though glued there, his toes digging for a hold, and then he struck. His fist struck; something cracked. The fist sank in, in to the very vitals, and Bud sank in a writhing heap on the floor.

He became aware of the shouting through its cessation, then. Half a dozen men swarmed through the ropes and lifted Bud while Vincent Allan stepped closer and looked down into dull, dead eyes which gazed up to him without recognition. It would be pleasant, now, to say that Vincent Allan felt pity and remorse, but if the cruel truth must be told, he tasted only an incomparable sweetness of victory. He wanted only one thing from the bottom of the animal heart which had awakened in him, and that was to fight again.

They carried Bud from the ring; they stretched him on a couch; a doctor hurried in with a satchel in his hand and kneeled by the motionless figure.

"Two ribs gone," he said. "A lucky thing he was not hit on the left side or you would have a dead man here, Casey."

Then they carried Bud out.

No one carne near to Allan during all of this time. He knew their eyes were feeling him over from head to foot, watching the easy rise and fall of his breast, studying the smooth rippling of those mysterious muscles which clothed his arms and padded his chest, and lay thick and dimpling across his shoulder blades. But no one came to him with a friendly word or a hostile one, and their eyes reminded him of the eyes of children watching the black panther of the zoo asleep in a shadow of his cage, himself deeper black than the shadow.

Then Casey, without a word, grappled his arm and dragged him back to his private office. There he searched Allan from head to foot, white-faced, tight lipped. He kept mumbling to himself: "I dunno how it is--I dunno where it comes from. How d'you feel here? And here?"

With a hard forefinger he prodded the jaw and the body of Allan where the crashing blows of Bud had landed.

"Don't you feel nothin'?" he asked almost savagely.

"Oh yes," said Allan. "My chin stings a great deal."

"Your chin stings a great deal!" mocked Casey with a snarl. "Oh, the devil! And don't you feel nothing here on the jaw--or where he soaked you in the stomach?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

"You're afraid, are you? So's a buzz saw afraid of wood! What you thinkin' about now?"

"I was only wondering when the next man boxed me," said Allan.

"You'd like to start ag'in?"

Allan sighed. The whole picture of that boxing contest was flashing again and again through his mind. He was seeing all the intimate little details without missing one, just as his practiced eye could run up a column of figures with dazzling speed and then put down the total without an error. There was the time when Bud had struck so heavily at him the very first time. Suppose that he had ducked under that driving punch and then hit up sharply at the lunging body? Or when Bud dropped the right cross upon his jaw, what if he himself had flicked his left hand straight into the face of his foe, with a shoulder twitch behind it?

"I'd like to do that over again," said Allan. "I see so many places, now, where I could have struck him."

There intervened a long moment of silence.

"Do you know who Bud is?" asked Casey.

"No."

"He's a crackerjack heavyweight. He's a comer. Fought eighteen times. Four decisions, two draws--and twelve knockouts! He ain't never been beaten--never! And then this--this! One round!"

"It wasn't a minute," said Allan anxiously. "I was just beginning, you know. And if--"

Paddy Casey groaned.

"You go home," he said. "To-morrer you trot down to that bank and tell 'em that stayin' behind a counter ain't your line. Look, kid! I been waitin' for five years for this to happen. I been waitin' for a right one to come along. And you're it. Not too big to be chain-lightnin' with feet and hands. Nothin' hurts you. And thunder in both fists. In six months d'you know what? The Garden for yours and the championship of the world! Go home. Be a good kid. Tomorrow you and me start!"