Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/56

 The conference was on the subject of dollar-limit stud poker, and was bein' held in the back room of a liquor bazaar, this bein' in the days when it was not a felony to pass the time of day with a bartender. I waited till he win a pot with three aces, two of which he had the presence of mind to slip himself from the bottom of the deck, and then I called him out to the bar, purchased, and made known my modest wants.

"I might be able to let this tramp of yours work Friday night at the regular show," he says fin'ly. "How much sugar are you tryin' to git for him?"

"Well," I says, "solely on the account of you bein' so unusually polite and obligin', we'll take a five-hundred-buck guarantee and battle anybody you throw into the ring!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" he cackles with the greatest of sarcasm. "Try and git it! I wouldn't give five hundred bucks to stage Cain and Abel with a set of strange wildcats for a preliminary! I'll tell you what I'll do, and whether you take it or not may make some difference to the board of aldermen of Bolivia, but it'll make no difference to me. I'll slip you two hundred berries for ten frames with Special Delivery Kelly, provided that big boloney of yours stays the limit. If Kelly stops him before the fifth round, which is no doubt what'll happen, you don't git a nickel! Gimme a argument and the whole thing's off—how 'bout that?"

"We'll gamble!" I says after a minute of decidin' that for me to slam this cuckoo wouldst get me nothin', "But just as a matter of simple curiosity, without tryin' to delve into your private affairs, what's this Special Delivery Kelly gettin' outa this homicide?"