Page:Fighting Back (1924).pdf/33

 and he knew how to keep from gettin' dizzy when a beautiful girl deliberately set out to make him.

Kid Roberts played around with more than a few, but he only fell in love once, and that was with Dolores. Ladies, that kind of boys seldom cheat, once you land 'em! So the Kid was pleasant with Désirée, but he never accepted the invitation constantly in her shinin' eyes. He treated her like a little sister—which, naturally enough, only made her more keen to make him fall. That's always the way, now ain't it?

Well, as pay day approaches we begin to notice a air of excitement about the camp which wasn't there before. Little groups of lumberjacks gets off in corners together and there is much argument and wavin' of arms about somethin'. Ptomaine Joe, all swelled up like a mump, is treated like he's Henry Ford or Dempsey and one mornin' I catch him punchin' a bag in back of the cook house, with a bunch of guys standin' around and watchin' him admirin'ly.

So we investigate the commotion, and we find there's a feelin' between our camp and another one farther down the river like the feelin' between Germany and France. On pay day Ptomaine Joe is to meet the best man in the other camp for the championship of the river. No wonder the lumber jacks is all excited, when you figure they rarely have any fun, buried up there for months in the cold, lonely north woods, and they have bet every dime they got in the world on the result of the comin' fight.

Ptomaine Joe gets the idea about then that this would be a good time for Kid Roberts to teach him that