Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/126

 They's twenty-seven jewels in 'at watch and no two alike. It set me back seventy iron men. You lose it or bust it and I'll make you hard to catch! I made it the point not to get your initials put on it, because you may git up against it some day and want to hock it and you can git more sugar on it if it ain't initialed."

"You think of everything, don't you?" I says.

But I only get sarcastic because I don't want Nate to see my real feelings. Imagine this ten-minute egg giving me a present! And this watch Nate give me is plenty timepiece, too, don't think it wasn't. All it needed was Judy's picture in the back of the case and I get that the same night. While I'm thanking Nate over and over again, he pulls The Police Gazette out of his pocket, and, folding back a page, hands it to me.

"Here's a laugh!" he says, "Lamp this bozo—it says he'll be the next middleweight champ!"

Well, I look at the page Nate points to and—say, I feel almost like I felt the first time I ever knocked anybody cold. There's a picture of me in ring togs in The Police Gazette, where Dempsey and Leonard and all them guys gets their pictures printed!

But that ain't all. Spence Brock gives me a scarf pin, Shiney Jepp, the dinge rubber, hands me a new pair of purple silk trunks with a red monogram, and to top off the day, Mrs. Willcox puts on a big birthday dinner with chicken, lobster salad, mince pie, etc., and she bakes a cake for me with nineteen candles on it. Some birthday!

The next day is Sunday and Nate lets me off from the grind at our camp because, for one thing, my spar-