Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/148

 "You too, eh?" he bites off through his set lips, and sends me head over heels through the ropes with a push. I must have took a funny fall, because off goes the mob into a fresh spasm, and Capato acted as laugh leader. They was still holdin' their ribs when the bell clanged for real; the newspaper guys, havin' made ample notes of all this stuff, settled back to watch a long, tough fight—when, before the clang has died out, Kid Roberts is plungin' into Tiger Capato's corner. The Tiger ain't had time to take the grin off his face, but the Kid took it off with a left jab that spun Capato around like a top and left a jagged, scarlet streak. There was no laughin' now—just a continuous roar, like a billion tons of coal goin' down a tin chute into a empty cellar. Shiftin' his headlong attack without a wasted motion, the Kid pinned the dumfounded Capato against the ropes in his own corner and begins shootin' lefts and rights to the body with the steady rap, rap, rap, rap of a steam riveter. This guy they called the Tiger never got a chance to set before he was half-ways out on his feet. A newspaper guy next to me, callin' the punches to his telegraph operator, give it up in disgust and switches to: "In the first two minutes Kid Roberts belted Capato with everything but the club's franchise."

The frantic shrieks from his handlers stirred Capato into tryin' desperately to duck, dodge, cover up, or dive into a clinch, to escape the hurricane of leather that bounced him off the ropes and back again, but he might as well of tried to stop a grizzly's charge with a pez shooter. A terrific left to the stomach doubled him up like a match stick in its last glow, and, as his