Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/153

 I'm telling him, and by the time I get through he's so excited that he's mixed the batter all over the table, all over his clothes, and all over the floor, and what Mrs. Willcox says to him was plenty. I will tell you my scheme like I told Nate and I only hope you ain't mixing no batter while you're reading this.

Well, my scheme was just this—I aim to show up as a handler in the corner of every boy the champ fights from then on! How's that for a piece of figuring? The way I look at it, after this guy sees me across the ring watching him and seconding the fellow he's fighting about a dozen times, why, I will begin to get on his nerves. He'll get to thinking about me being there and he'll come to look for me and the first thing you know he'll be willing to do anything to get rid of me. He'll be so crazy mad at me that he'll crave me in a ring so's he can ruin me. Then I'll get a bout with him and that's all I want!

Nate says this scheme is the lion's mane and I have missed my calling. I should of been a Pullman conductor, says Nate, which thinks a Pullman conductor has got a better job than President G. Harding.

Without waiting to hear what you think of the scheme, I will tell you that it worked to perfection. I showed up as a second in the other boy's corner just seven times when the champ had enough. At first he seemed to get quite a giggle out of it and he used to work his man close to the ropes where I'm sitting with the water bucket and sponge and he'd call down all kinds of nasty cracks at me. Like, for the example, he'd say: "Here's what you'll get, Stupid!" and with