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 and some New Jersey Scotch. I fell for the smokes, but passed the brew up, as it's a hobby of mine not to take embalmin' fluid till after I'm actually dead!

"Well, yegg," I says, "what's your racket? And, remember, I don't help you stick up no banks!"

"Why get rosey with me?" says Eddie in a pained voice. "Why can't me and you be friends?"

"Why can't a rat and a ferret be friends?" I sneer. "Eddie, you're as crooked as a ball player's thumb! You been wrong all your life and when you bump off you'll proposition the devil for the asbestos concession in Hades and then gyp him. They're holdin' mail for you now at Sing Sing! Why should I find you tasty?"

"For one thing," says Eddie, unmoved, as he pours himself a generous snifter, "I'm goin' to give you a fight with Young. Think that over!"

I leaped off the chair.

"If you're clowin' about this, I'll cook you!" I says. "Where's the phone? We'll get the sport writers here and"

"Don't get so swift!" interrupts Eddie, holdin' up his hand. "We're champion and we'll call all plays, get me? You guys got to do what papa tells you. I says we'd fight you and we'll do that thing—the minute you knock Fred Fleming and Kayo Ford for a loop!"

I sunk back with a groan.

"You big stiff!" I hollered when I got my breath. "Some day they'll pinch you for tryin' to get a camel through the eye of a needle! We got to stop Ford and Fleming first, hey? That's like a guy havin' to