Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/268

 watching me take a proper pasting in the first fight she's ever saw me in, and, for all I know, the last fight she'll ever go to again! Well, I guess that was what I needed—something like that to sweep the last remaining cobwebs from my brain, snap me into it, and make me realize that no matter what had happened, I'm still a champion!

I come out for round four, loaded for bear. Christopher neatly blocks a wicked left hook to the jaw and stung me witha right to the nose. A right swing sends him into a clinch, but I push him off, measure him with a left to the mouth, and as he danced away under instructions from his corner, I sunk a right in his mid-section which didn't do him a bit of good. He then tried hooking his right, but I beat him to the punch with a perfectly timed swing which dropped him on his haunches in his own corner. He leaned on one elbow and gazed goofily at the yelling crowd till the referee reached "nine." Then he got up, shaky and all at sea.

I left his left lead go over my shoulder, stepped in close, and hooked my right flush to his jaw with everything I had in stock behind the punch. "That's the business!" I hear Nate howl as Kid Christopher crashes to the canvas, face down. His legs twitches a couple of times before he straightens out flat, and he never moved again till he was counted out and I help carry him to his corner.

Nate and me fought our ways through the cheering crowd to the main box office, where Spence has come around with Judy. She's a little pale, but her eyes is