Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 126: what you’re looking at

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

756 Not only that, but Old Bob had an in- tuitive feeling that that darned rooster was beginning to look down on him and consider himself a whole lot better than cats in gen- eral and Old Bob especially! Solemn watched the maturing of rooster-antipathy in Old Bob’s soul and chuckled with glee. Solemn and Dirty Shirt naturally mani- fested strong partisanship for their respec- tive protégés. “When this thing’s over,” Solemn boasted with confident fervor, “‘ Angel will come up minus any more anxiety to ever fight again! After Saturday pP.M., the champion fightin’ rooster of the Western hemisphere is goin’ to answer to the name ot Old Bob—even if he is a cat!” To which Dirty Shirt with equal feeling replied: “You are teetotally crazy! When my client, designated Angel, gets through with the imitation pugilist you think you're trainin’ he’ll not only continue to wear the fightin’ rooster laurels of the ultimate world but he’ll also have the additional glory of bein’ known as the best cat exterminator ever invented!” Each was entirely sincere in his con- victions. Dirty Shirt had seen Angel respond re- markably to the line of treatment he had been administering and which consisted merely in unlimited raw eggs mixed with cayenne pepper and cracker crumbs. At the first taste of eggs and cayenne, Angel instantly recognized the time-honored form- ula preceding a battle. His eyes lighted with new-found hope and eagerness and the look of drooping despondency left him. He crowed.with refreshed vigor and won- dered where in thunder the rooster he was going to fight was keeping himself. No answering crow echoed to his repeated challenges. True, there was something in the coop below him, but Angel heard its meouws instead of crows and knew it was cat. The odor of cat also came up through the floor and Angel resented it. He never did like cat much anyhow and this one seemed to consider the lower apartment his permanent address. In addition to that, Angel could frequent- -rooster matadors for the ring. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ly hear him spitting, and a cat spitting had always been an abomination and outrage to the sensibilities of Angel. Therefore, Angel took malicious delight in cussing that unpleasant cat, who lived below him, in the most classical rooster profanity he - could devise. Also, Angel concluded that after he had licked whoever he was going to fight, he’d work some scheme to get in contact with the cat in question and show him up for just what he was—give him a good dose of real scientific rooster-cat rough and tumble. Angel’s vivacity filled Dirty Shirt with pride and pleasurable anticipation as to the outcome of the approaching engagement. And Dirty Shirt was leaving no stone un- turned or it might be said, egg unbroken— to have his principal in the pink of con- dition when he entered the arena. Jose Gabica Pasadena San Diego Garcia, affectionately known about Red Bluff as ‘““ Chico,” not only operated the guitar de- partment of the orchestra in the dance hall attachment of Saloon Number Two, but in days of yore, in far away Mexico, had been a famous professional preparer of To Chico Dirty Shirt appealed on Saturday morning for the last word in topping-off Angel for the sanguinary affair of the afternoon. ‘Just what would you do, Chico,” Dirty Shirt queried in a whisper when he met the distinguished Mexican, “if you wanted a rooster to be totally sure of winning the createst battle of his life? What would you give him for the final supreme stimu- lation, something to make him willing to fight, well, for instance, a tiger or a cata- mount or a buzz-saw, or anything like that?” “ Ah, amigo mio,’ Chico replied, his eyes glittering with memories of other more splendid days when all Mexico acclaimed him the greatest engineer of fighting roosters between Tia Juana and Calabasca, ‘there is one thing, senor, which will give to a rooster the ‘ finish "—the ambition to fight anything, even as you say, the cata- mount, the tiger, or the buzz-saw itself!” ‘‘ What is it?” Dirty Shirt asked eagerly. Chico leaned closer and whispered a single magic word: oO COMIGIOOKS (S@)