Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/320

 I should fight Martin and stop this talk about me being faint-hearted. They keep after me night and day till I'm red-headed and find sleep comes under the head of the impossibles as far as I'm concerned. I worried off ten pounds in less than two weeks, on the level! Finally, I just can't stand things no longer and one morning after my usual sleepless night I sent Nate to whooping with joy by telling him to accept the offer of $75,000 for a scuffle with Jack Martin. I don't want to promote the bout myself, as I figure it will take all my time and energies to get in shape for this man killer.

When I try to tell Judy how I have been drove into this fight she waves me away, white to the lips. I never seen her so mad. She won't listen to nothing at all, but throws up her job as stenographer in our office and won't even speak to me at her mother's boarding house.

A few nights later Rags comes around, stalling that he wants to see Mrs. Willcox about something or other, and when I come by the parlor around nine o'clock, why Judy is in there talking to him with her mother. Well, that's the last straw which fractured the camel's back, and the next day I packed up and move to the Commercial House, the unhappiest fellow in America by a wide margin. As far as I can see, I have lost Judy forever and a day, and I get so careless in my training for Jack Martin that Nate predicts this boze will flatten me in a round if I don't snap into it. Nate and Knockout Kelly remains at Mrs. Willcox's boarding house, and I get reports on Judy from them. I