Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 19, 1924 — page 126: what you’re looking at

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

596 real fight, I takes up this offer of five hun- dred for our share, It takes me four days and four nights to talk this gentle banana of mine into stepping into the ring. It was a athletic club show and the money was easy for us: but that ain’t what I was after. I has got so sick of trying to develop my gold mine that I thinks I might just as well start..him out and let him get slapped to sleep, thus getting my misery over with. Well, the night that Joe steps into the ring at the club and gazes at Lefty Kard, he looks about the color of a raw barrel of flour under the lights—and as worse a’ lookin’ fighter as has ever staggered round the arena. The crowd, which was made up mostly of fly young club-hounds, starts to razz the life out of Joe, but he don’t do nothing only sit shivering in his corner and look at the floor. Lefty looks over at him and grins from ear to ear. At the gong, Joe gets up the same as if he has lead in his feet. And after the first round I feels almost like putting the sponge in my mouth to stifle the agony. Lefty just mauled Joe round the same as if he was pushin’ a couple of hundred pounds of salt. Joe don’t do no more than just shake his gloves at Lefty and try to keep him off. The crowd is in hysterics and one boy yells it is a good burlesque and we ought to put my boy in a side-show. The second round ain’t no different from the first, aside from the facts that Lefty gets real annoyed and begins to smack Joe harder and harder. Just a second before the gong rings, Lefty lets go with a whale of a hook to Joe’s jaw and I moans; but Joe don’t do nothing only jerk his head back and step away a little. Lefty drops his arms and stares at Joe the same as if he has just seen somebody’s ghost passin’ in the night. Then the gong rings and Lefty goes back to his corner with a worried look on his face. Joe shambles over to our place like a bear that don’t know what it’s walkin’ round about. “Tisten!” I hisses into his ear. “If you don’t knock that comedy valentine out, our whole life is ruined. I’m tryin’ to get a fight for you with Billy Liske. Come on, snap into it and find out you're here.” ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “T don’t want to hurt nobody,” this tin-head of mine says, shaking his head a little. Well, sir, the next round the boys goes into it. The crowd warms up and yells. Joe seems to be tryin’ to give a good ex- hibition of what he can do without hurting nobody, and Lefty starts in to see what he can do to kill my boy. The round is about half over and I sees that Lefty looks kinda scared. He steps back and measures Joe for the cemetery; he lets go with his right, catching the gentle one on the point of the jaw—and then shoots for the same point with his pretty good left. Joe suddenly takes the notion he will shift his head, and does so, with the result that Lefty slams him right in the ear. Joe goes up in the air off his feet; the crowd howls with joy, and when they all looks — again, Lefty is flat on the canvas where he lays so long they has to carry him out. When they gets him together again, they finds his jaw is busted up, the same as One-round Poppy’s was. Later, when I hands Joe his share of the gate receipts, he puts it in his pocket with- out no word and wipes some tears from his eyes. Then he asks me over to his room on Twenty-Third Street; and he proudly shows me a new picture he is working on. V. SLOWLY, inch by inch, I works this crazy potato cf mine up the ladder. He is a joke every time he climbs into the ring; and yet every fight he has all ends the same way. Some of them travels two rounds, some of them ten—but the minute the other sap lands on his sore ear, they is smacked for the count. ; Joe begins to pick up quite a little bit of dough, as I goes fifty-fifty with him—and Tis exhilarated at the showing he is making. Some of the sporting writers starts to take a interest in him, and pretty soon they gets to arguing about him, with the results I starts to make some good matches for Joe for real money. He is a funny puzzle to everybody and as he goes on up the ladder he don’t say nothing to speak of. When he ain’t in training or fighting he Eomicbooks:co