Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/134

 table before you in fifty-dollar bills it looks like about twenty million. After the boys had "fought" their draw we'd both get back our sugar, of course, and the Kid and Capato was to be present when we collected. The Kid would then make some crack about bein' robbed of the decision and Capato would immediately make a pass at him. Then—wam! They'd both start mixin' it up, and have to be jimmied apart—all this, remember, before the delighted eyes of the sportin' editor. Would that little horseplay smoke up the return bout? Well, what do you think?

On the strength of the above drama the boys would be rematched then and there for a twenty-round open-air bout durin' the Mardy Grass week a month later. The town would be loaded with free-spendin' tourists, and the promoters figured on a fifty-thousand-berry gate if they got the breaks on the weather. This time it would be a up-and-up fight, and may the worst man lose!

Boiled down, the whole proposition was simply the time-worn scheme of drawin' two big crowds instead of one, the fact that the fans which paid their jack to see a fight in the first mill would be gypped not enterin' into the thing at all. New Orleans happened to be Capato's home town, and, as he had knocked a horde of tramps dead down there, he was a heavy local favorite. The prestige he'd gain by holdin' his own for fifteen rounds with the sensational Kid Roberts would boost Capato 100 per cent as a drawin' card, and even if the Kid knocked him kickin' in the second and real fight, he'd still hold most of his followin', who'd point to the showin' of the native son in the first argument and call