Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/274

 me? No! It was what it says under his picture—'Champion of the World!' Judy, with that as my signature I could die happy. Champion of the world at boxing, brick-laying, street digging, anything, but—champion!"

Judy just sits there staring at me with her lips parted, them heart-stimulating eyes the bit misty and a kind of far-away and long-ago expression in 'em. I gaze at her and do a piece of wishing which would make Aladdin's requests look like the lamp was wasted on him. I get a grip on myself quick, you can bet, because I'm afraid another minute of this pause and I'll be kissing her sure and she'll toss me right out of her sweet young life! I figure she's weakening on the boxing argument, however, so I change the subject with break—your-neck speed.

"Well, I'm certainly a sap for the ages, Judy," I says suddenly. "I got a real surprise for you and I come near walking out without saying a word about it! Speaking of going in business, as people will, me and Nate and Kayo Kelly has already took a flyer in something apart from the ring. Laugh that off!"

She comes back to Mother Earth with a start and claps her hands together, plenty excited. "Splendid!" she says. "What is it, Gale?"

"We've pooled fifty thousand cash between us," I explain. "And we're going to buy a lot here in Drew City. Right on top of that lot we're going to throw together a little small office building with a moving-picture theatre downstairs. That gives us a ace in the hole should anything happen to any one or all of us in