Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/18

 Krouse dead in the first frame that night. On account of this cuckoo forgettin' he was a box fighter, and therefore not supposed to get mad, we lose five other bouts we are signed up for with Krouse, which outa petty revenge refused to fight my boy any more. Cockeyed Egan is all for goin' back to New York, because, as he says, if they have took wrestlin' bouts off of the list of felonies there again they certainly oughta stand for the Krouse-Lewis act, where the boys is positively guaranteed to try in the last second of the final round, anyways!

I'm just puttin' a handful of the hotel towels in my suit case on account of you never can tell when they will come in handy, when a bell hop appears at the door and makes me a present of the followin' cable:

''Guarantee you thousand Cleveland Bearcat Reed vs. One-Punch Loughlin. Wire if right.''

Now, this One-Punch Loughlin looked like the next heavyweight champ to the disrobed eye' right then. He had clouted his way through the rest of the large boys like Dewey went through Manila Bay, and his knockout record sounded like the first two pages of the phone book. Dummy Carney was his manager, and him wirin' me, instead of the club doin' it, was the office that friend Dummy had somethin' cooked up. Sendin' Bearcat Reed into a ring with this rough Loughlin person was like enterin' a armless wonder in a bowlin' tourney. If Loughlin was tryin', my battler wouldn't have a chance if they let him climb through the ropes with a ax in each hand; but for a guarantee of a thousand fish I would let Bearcat Reed box five starvin' lions and a coupla irritated wildcats in the