Page:Fighting Back (1924).pdf/196

 die's ultimatum at least offers immediate action and that's what I want more than anything else. Also, I need the money! Get me Ford and Fleming on the best terms you can make. I'll be ready to fight in a month."

"I'll feel out Knockout Ford's manager, then," I says, with a sigh. "We'll take Ford first, because I think Fleming's the most poisonous of the two!"

"Get me Fleming, then!" bawls Ptomaine. "I'll be right in a month myself!"

"You big blah!" I sneer. "You couldn't lick Fleming's grandmother!"

"I would if she got giddy with me," says Ptomaine. "No foolin'!"

Well, it wasn't hard to sign Knockout Ford with Kid Roberts and just twice that easy to get a promoter to stage the combat. I gambled on 35 per cent of the gate and as it turned out we drew down for our bit $23,674.85. What the promoter give Ford I never did find out and I don't care. I only know what Kid Roberts give him, which was a-plenty!

I readied the Kid in Sapville, a slab up New York State, about fifty miles from Broadway. Besides Ptomaine, I brought along Jimmy de Long, the greatest trainer of fighters which ever went behind one! I also carried Jack Hill and Battlin' Vernon, a couple of good, beefy heavies which could take it, and Ollie Pierce, a fast welterweight, to develop the Kid's speed. With the prospects of a crack at the heavyweight crown's tarin' him in the face if he got past Knockout Ford, Kid Roberts took to his trainin' like a famished rabbit