Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/27

 whilst waitin' for somethin' to break, he joined a troupe of professional football players made up of ex-college stars. He played full back and had been gettin' from fifty to a hundred a game, which was enough to keep him both full and back. Full of food and back in the spotlight. The All-Star Team, however, was bustin' up in Cleveland, and it was at this point that Dummy Carney, which could dive into a haystack and emerge with ten dollars' worth of needles, come across him. Dummy had heard some of the kid's history from Tin-Ear Fagan, a ex-pug, which was with the team as a rubber and some from Halliday himself.

"...And so," winds up Dummy, pullin' out one of his favorite brand of cigars, which is called "Last One I Got"—"and so I have worked over this baby for a week. He looks like platinum to me! You know what the demand is for heavies right now, and if this guy has got anything at all I can take him around the sticks, and then bring him into New York and clean up with him. In about a year or two, if he's still steppin' out, we'll go after the Big Guy. Say—can you imagine me pilotin' a world's heavyweight champ?"

"I prob'ly could if you would make me a present of a bite of that opium you musta been chewin'!" I sneers. "A college guy, hey? Well, I'll stake you to him! I'm off them amateur champs."

"Wait till you get a flash at this bird!" interrupts Dummy. "Why, he's got a left hand that—ssh!—here he comes. Play dead, now!"

Halliday was class, they's no gettin' away from it. The boy stood well over six foot and was dressed like