Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/248

 sand more for the preliminary bouts, and around fifty thousand for rent of a arena, timekeepers, ticket sellers, ushers, referees, advertising, etc and etc., we get a grand total of about $70,000 for expenses, without counting my share of the purse.

As champion, I'm entitled to at least a third of the gross receipts, and I figure with proper publicity the fight will draw almost a $200,000 gate. With expenses and my share totalling, say $130,000, that leaves seventy thousand profit to go to the people which put up the forty thousand in Drew City, or almost two to one for their money. That's, of course, if everything goes O. K.

Nate glances over the list of investors and he suddenly looks up.

"Does Rags Dempster ever crack anything about 'at ten grand he gypped you out of?" he asks.

"I never see him no more, Nate," I says, "and I'm just as tickled."

"Yeah?" snarls Nate. "Well, I'll make him or his old man come through with 'at jack if it's the last thing I do!"

He gets up and grabs his hat. "Wait here," he says, with a odd smile. "You think you're good as a collector—well, I'm going over and bear down heavy on old man Dempster, and I bet I can make him see his way clear to investin' ten thousand in our fight!"

Nate's gone before I realize that he's going to try and make Rags Dempster's father pay back the ten thousand his sissy son got away from me.

A hour comes and goes and no sign of Nate. Then