Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/242

 Columbus they thought Kid Christopher was the parrot's beak and a better man than I'll ever be. Yet I'm champion in his class and he's failed to challenge me for a quarrel. All right, I'll challenge him!

"Judy," I says, "write a letter to Kid Christopher's manager asking him how much wages he wants for his visible means of support to fight me for the light-heavyweight title."

She raises her beautiful eyebrows in surprise. "But the highest bid from the New York promoters was forty thousand dollars—thirty for you and ten for Christopher," says Judy. "And Christopher has refused that amount. I have the correspondence all here, and"

She starts for the files, but I stop her. "Never mind the letters, Judy," I says. "And never mind the New York promoters. I'm going to promote this fight myself!"

Judy looks at me with these eyes which has been goaling the boys since she's been seven years old.

"What do you mean, Gale?" she asks, plenty interested.

"I'll tell you, Judy," I says. "I been thinking matters over, and I have reached the conclusion that I can use a million the same as a fight promoter can! I got just as much brains and twice the ambition as any of them birds, get me? Why should I go in there and get my head beat off for ten or twenty thousand bucks so's some wise guy promoter can draw down a hundred thousand for himself? Why shouldn't the fighter get the big money for doing his stuff? Who draws the