Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/303

 as many guys killed playin' football each year as they is in the box-fight game. What that proves I don't know. Anyways, in a week we sign to fight twenty frames with Enright for the world's heavyweight championship, and when we're comin' down in the elevator from the newspaper office, Red Samuels, Enright's pilot, says to me: "That was a tough break we got with McCabe—him dyin', eh?"

"Terrible tough," I says. "And if that burn of yours tries to rabbit-punch the champion, you'll get a tougher one. They'll all be watchin' him this time!"

He gets as white as cream, and I whispers somethin' to a newspaper guy. As I'm leavin' the elevator, the sport writer turns to Enright and says: "What's this I hear about you not enterin' a ring without a rabbit for a mascot?"

Sweet Mamma—you should of seen Enright's face!

They is nothin' like givin' the other guy somethin' to worry about. It all helps.

We are due to go in trainin' for Enright within a few weeks, and durin' that time the Kid got no peace from his father and the beautiful Dolores Brewster. Both of 'em seemed to have the idea that Kid Roberts was goin' to his grave if he climbed into a ring with the man-killin' Enright, and they begged him to call it a day and retire a undefeated and still livin' champion. The newspapers helped their arguments a whole lot. They was daily pictures of Enright, now the "sensational young challenger for the world's heavyweight championship." Kid Roberts would be lucky to go three rounds with this baby. He'd been away