Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/319

 Arts, but he wasn't quite ready yet to hang out his sign and begin business at that trade. I was still doping out schemes for old Ajariah to help keep his stock moving and fussing around the soda fountain where I used to do my stuff, composing new drinks and writing trade-pulling signs to paste on the mirror back of the counter. But this stuff was all applesauce to me. It was just so much child's play. I should of been doing something big and this puttering around was driving me cuckoo. Then there's another thing which was getting on my nerves and wearing me down. That's the difference in the way the town treated me since I become a fightless champion. The kids didn't follow me on the streets no more, instead they'd cross to the other side and make cracks to each other which set 'em all laughing and iooking at me.

I go in Kale Yackley's cigar store one day and over in a corner some of the hard guys from Nichmeyer's Garage is playing stud poker. When I come in they pay as much attention to me as they do to their hole card and that's a face. I hear somebody whisper "Sure, that's him. H's light-heavyweight champ, but the big stiff won't fight nobody! They's a dozen boloneys can take him right now and he knows it. I wouldn't be afraid to take a cuff at him myself!" A couple of months before them guys would of acted tickled all day if I spoke to 'em. Such is life!

Then this Jack Martin stops Gunner Slade in one busy round where it took me four, so Martin claims the title, as I won't accept his challenge. Even my best friends, outside of Judy, commences to hint that