Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/218

 "You big black tramp!" I snarls. "What d'ye mean by lettin' anybody in to see the Kid this afternoon? Didn't I tell you—"

"How come?" butts in Dynamite, losin' his grin. "Ain't nobody been botherin' around heah, 'ceptin' yo' ownseff. Like y'all demands, I been settin' heah doin' a piece of readin', and they ain't been as much as a strange breeze come through 'at doah!"

The "piece of readin Dynamite meant was a account of his seven-round battle with Kid Roberts, clipped from a New York paper. He'd haul that clippin' out and grin over it fifty times a day.

Well, Dynamite convinced me that the Kid's old man hadn't paid his party call yet and once again I was able to resume breathin'. I never let the Kid know they was a thing out of the way, though he laughed his head off when I posted a guard at every entrance to the camp and even barred the newspaper bunch till we entered the ring that night.

The ring was pitched in a ball park, but it was summer, and the air was just right. When we crawled through the ropes and looked out over that roarin' ocean of bobbin' faces, it seemed to me like everybody in the world had turned out to see this scrap. Given a guess, I'd of said they was twenty-eight million guys there, but the official attendance was a scant 45,000. The movie lights overhead made the ring stand out in the surroundin' gloom as bright as a sunny day and blinded us till we got used to it. The Kid was cool and unsmilin', showin' nerves only by the shufflin' back and forth of his feet as he sat on his stool after bowin' to a two-minute ovation from the mob. He sat with