Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/372

 look like rank failure. No matter what they asked for—pick-me-ups, headache removers, nerve steadiers or merely plain drinks—we invited 'em to try my new concoction and once they did that they just set there saying "Wow! What d'ye call that?" and shoving over their glasses and dimes for more. It was the greatest sale since the one Columbus took, no fooling!

When me and Ajariah bottled it and it sold faster than we could ram in the corks and turn it out with our bottling machinery, I knew my days of experimenting with myself was over. This liquid gold mine I had stumbled on had overnight removed the uncertainty and that terrible worry and pain in the heart which, young or old, you can't escape if you're an incurable addict of the drug which put the world over—ambition. It took me a long time to find my game—a long time of trying this and that and taking many a nasty fall along with my few short ascensions. But it was all worth it, for look what I got now. I been down, but I GET UP and there's the secret of success in a nutshell. To add anything to that formula would be using rouge on a rose!

Well, now that the success of my drink is as certain as cold weather in Alaska, the next step is getting a name for it and forming a company to sell it. Like I do on all important questions, I consult Judy about this, but before we get down to business, why, she lays her sweet little hand on my arm. Her beautiful face is troubled and these pulse-thumping eyes of hers is a bit moist, what I mean.

"Gale," she says, "now that you have found your-