Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/304

 shoot at, you dumbell! Have you got so much jack that you can turn down a million without flickin' a muscle?"

"Shut up!" I growls. "Don't make me feel no worse than I already do. Maybe we can make a fortune out of our picture theatre."

"And maybe Lake Erie is a tennis court!" hollers Nate. "I know what's the matter with you, studyin' them books night and day has made you cuckoo! I warned you to lay off 'at stuff. What do you want with a education? The chances is if you'd of had one you'd be a chauffeur of a addin' machine in some guy's office now for about twenty-five bucks a week, instead of bein' able to click off that much a punch! Did you wade through these tomatoes to the championship simply so's you could have the pleasure of quittin' the ring the first chance you got to make money like they make it in the mint? I took you from behind a soda fountain and made you and the minute we both get a chance to collect heavy you throw me down!"

"I ain't throwing you down any more than I'm throwing myself down, Nate," I says. "But—a promise is a promise! If Judy"

"Let me talk to Miss Willcox," butts in Nate. "I bet she ain't got the slightest of slight ideas just what she's askin' you to give up. When I show her the dough we can take down in the next year, the chances is 'at not only will she want you to stay in the ring, but she'll expect you to go around pickin' fights in the streets!"

But she didn't, and after a four-day ceaseless attack