Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TWENTY-STICK ISLAND. He squared off. He was going to box, and Jimmy did not know much about that game. He was going to batter through Carter’s guard, taking punishment as he had to, looking out only for his own jaw. Carter’s face carried a good share of pun- ishment. If Jimmy could wear him out with his better wind, he meant to add a finishing touch or two to that gory decora- tion. Meantime he would play for Car- ter’s wind, His own face was swollen and his cheeks smarted. He could not see as well as he wished out of one eye where a penthouse swelled on his eyebrow. But he caught a glimpse of Peggy before he crouched in front of Carter’s fiddling lead, and it did him more good than the minis; tering of expert seconds. The first round, if it could be called that, had been long and fierce. The next would settle the thing. One of them would go down and out. Carter would accord him no generous mercy, and Jimmy was not asking for it. He was up against science now. Car- ter’s rest had helped him recover his wind, he had found himself and he was prepared to make the vindictive best of his weight and cleverness. After the first feint he came with a rush that Jimmy only partly side-stepped, re= ceiving a hard smash below his heart that jarred him so that he barely set aside a vicious uppercut, while his passing lash barely landed. He tucked his chin well in and set himself to withstand the slogging drives. It was plain that Carter was trying to herd him into a corner, but Thorpe was willing to meet the encounters for the privilege of getting home to the stomach. A. feint followed by a piston uppercut that spent its force against his crossed arms but almost straightened him up by the sheer. strength behind it. Carter’s right sang by his ear as he dodged, at the same mstant sinking left and right, and left again, deep into the superfluous fats of Carter’s midriff. The muscles that had once made a buckler there had lost their resilience, like old rub- ber. -Thorpe heard him grunt with pain and lost wind. Carter clinched, leaning all his weight on Jimmy, striving to back him to the wall, and Jimmy freed an arm and walloped at Carter’s kidneys until the latter tore clear and, with wide open mouth and a face that was pasty behind the blood that crimsoned — it, stalled and sparred for time. His arms were getting heavy, or they seemed to be, but Jimmy was cautious, not to be led into a fatal opening by any false show of weak- ness. He knew he had hurt his man. Car; ter’s diaphragm was quivering—there was no faking there. He followed up, ducked a lead, stopped the following shoulder drive with an easy counter, and stepped in to plant a short arm jolt on the plexus mark. Suddenly Carter kicked him inside the left leg, just above ‘the ankle. The pain was sharp as a stab, the attack absolutely unexpected. Involun- tarily Jimmy bowed to the quick agony, defense forgotten, and met the smashing blow launched by Carter, timed to complete the rough-house trick. It landed on Jimmy’s mouth and rocked his head backward with blood spurting from nose and split lip, the room reeling about him as he staggered backward, knocking over the stand with the lamp that crashed with breaking chimney and the reek of Kerosene as Thorpe careened against the angle of the wall. Dimly he saw Carter charging like a bull to finish him and, half blind, he summoned up the last reserves of energy that had served him well across seas when the issue was death. It was not brute courage, but the marshaling and exercising - of his will. : He fought like a man gone berserk, but his brain was in command, rallying, shaking off dizziness as the recharged muscles flexed. He fought Carter back a foot, another, and another, and they stood toe to toe with jJimmy’s head against Carter’s chest. Carter flailed and jabbed, pounding at the back of Jimmy’s head and neck while Jimmy’s forearms worked like twin pistons, battering at the other’s quivering belly, sapping his strength so that Carter’s blows lost force as his energy died down. Jimmy did not need to see, he bored in with punch after punch... He felt the weight of Car- ter sagging down on him, felt his lax arms drooping as at last Thorpe found the plexus — with a right driven in and up, with all his Eomichboo Sj 515 (E©)