Page:Fighting Back (1924).pdf/267

 championship battle with Bob Young rolled around. Somehow or other, the story of that fracas in the gym had leaked out as them things will and the newspapers printed the interestin' fact that Kid Roberts was goin' into the mill with one eye badly cut in trainin'. None of the papers knew which eye it was and to keep Bob Young from makin' the sore optic a continual target, I doped out a scheme to befuddle him. I carefully went over the Kid's injured eye with theatrical grease paint, coverin' up the stitches and the bluish tinge of the skin. Then I taped a plaster over the good eye and we fooled the world!

The paid attendance figures for the Kid Roberts-Bob Young fight is on the books as 65,854, but when I gazed at the ocean of faces under the are lights as we milled our way into the arena with the aid of some husky coppers, I would of swore it was 65,000,000! We got to pass the bleachers on the ways to the dressin' rooms and the eager mob quickly spots Kid Roberts, swingin' briskly along and towerin' over all of us but Ptomaine Joe. Boy, what a yell went up! Plenty shrilly excited female voices joined in the "Good luck, Kid!" "Knock him stiff, Roberts!" "To-night's the night, Big Fellow!", etc., etc. Kid Roberts grinned like a schoolboy and waved his hands to 'em. That tickled 'em silly and they stood up and cheered wildly till we passed out of sight into the dressin' rooms.

Twenty times that afternoon Kid Roberts had tried to get his wife on the phone, hopin' that maybe at the last minute she'd realize what this brawl meant to him