Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/108

 with your right to this guy and he'll goal you sure!"

The gong rings a half dozen times and the crowd quiets down. People is still coming in. Some is carrying on conversations with their backs to the ring. What do they care about the prelims! The announcer raises his hand.

"Over here, 'Red' Johns of Brooklyn. In the other corner, 'Six-Second Smith, eh—" heSmith,' eh—" he [sic] grins, "the Drew City Cave man! One hundred and forty-five pounders. Six rounds!"

The mob has begun on me before I'm half-ways to the middle of the ring for the referee's instructions. "Where d'ye get that 'Six-Second' stuff?" "He means he'll last six seconds!" By this time I'm so up in the air I don't know if I'm in Brooklyn or Brazil! "Red" Johns leers at me. I'm trembling and tingling all over and I can't stop it and that makes me crazy mad at myself. This "Red" Johns looks like he feels the only way he can lose is for me to pull a gun from my shoe and shoot him. He's been through this a hundred times—this is my first. Somebody's yelling: "Hey, Gale! Hey, Gale!" I peer through the smoky haze over the ropes and I see Spence Brock, jumping up and waving a pennant. In the box with him is Rags Dempster and some of the other boys from the prep school.

I'm goofy, no fooling, but I manage to wave back my glove. I don't know what it's all about—I'm in a trance. Rags curls his lip and whispers to the fellow next to him and then they both laugh. I go up in the air a couple of thousand feet more. "Knocked cold