The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (20 page)

“Wow! What a story! The best middleweight in the game fights his way into shape with a carnival!” The reporters scrambled to beat me to the ring.

By that time the arena was wild. So I grabbed my robe and got out of the dressing room with Buck Farley and Pop alongside of me. I could see both of them were packing heaters.

When I crawled through the ropes, I looked across the ring and saw Tony Innes.

“Who is he?” Buck asked.

I told him and his face went white. Tony Innes was tough. A wicked puncher who had fought his way to the top of the game with a string of knockouts.

The announcer walked into the center of the ring and took the microphone, but I pushed him aside. Gasparo, in Innes’s corner, started up. Before he could get over the edge of the ring, Buck Farley tugged him back. The crowd was wild with excitement, but when I spoke, they quieted down.

“Listen, folks! I can’t explain now! It will all be in the papers tomorrow, but some guys that want me out of the fight racket had Pat Daly slugged and brought out a tough boy to stick in here with me. So you’re goin’ to get your money’s worth tonight!

“In that corner, weight one hundred and seventy-five pounds, is Tony Innes, second-ranking light-heavyweight in the world! And my name isn’t Bill Banner! It’s Danny McClure, and tonight you’re going to see the top-ranking light-heavyweight contender take a beating he’ll never forget.”

The crowd just blew the roof off the auditorium, and Tony Innes came on his feet and waved a wildly angry glove at the mike. “Get it out of here!” he snarled. “Let’s fight!”

Somebody rang the bell, and Buck Farley just barely got out of the way as Innes crossed the ring. He stabbed a left that jerked my head back like it was on a hinge, and he could have ended the fight there, but he was crazy mad and threw his right too soon. It missed and I went in close. Never in all my life was I so sore as then.

I ripped a right to his muscle-corded middle and then smashed a left hook to the head that would have loosened the rivets on the biggest battleship ever built, but it never even staggered this guy. He clipped me on the chin with an elbow that made my head ring like an alarm clock. If
that
was the kind of fight it was going to be, I was ready! We slugged it across the ring and then he stepped out of the corner and caught me with a right that made my knees buckle.

I moved into Tony, lancing his cut mouth with a straight left. He sneered at me and bored in, rattling my teeth with a wicked uppercut and clipping me with a short left chop that made my knees bend. I slammed both hands to the body and jerked my shoulder up under his chin. When the bell for the first sounded, we were swapping it out in the middle of the ring.

The minute skipped by and I was off my stool and halfway across the ring before he moved. The guy had weight and height on me and a beautiful left. It caught me in the mouth and I tasted blood and then a right smashed me on the chin and my brain went smoky and I was on the canvas and this guy was standing over me, never intending to let me get up. But I got up, and brought one from the floor with me that caught him on the temple and rolled him into the ropes.

I was on top of him but still a little foggy, and he went inside of my right and clinched, stamping at my arches. I shoved him away with my left, clipped him with a right, and then we started to slug again.

You had to give it to Innes. He was a fighter. There wasn’t a man there that night who wouldn’t agree. He was dirty. He had sold out. He was a crook by seventeen counts, but the guy could dish it out, and, brother, he could take it.

And those people in that tank town? They were seeing the battle of the century, and don’t think they didn’t know it! The leading world contenders for two titles with no holds barred. Yeah, they let it go on that way. The sheriff was there, a red-hot sport and fight fan.

“Let the voters get me!” I heard him say between rounds. “I’m a fightin’ man, an’ by the Lord Harry I wouldn’t miss this no matter what happens. Nobody interrupts this fight but the fighters. Understand!”

If a guy was to judge by that crowd, the sheriff could hold that office for the rest of his life. Me, I was too busy to think about that then. Van Ludlow, Marge Hamlin, Duck Miller, and Lanning were a thousand miles away. In there with me was a great fighting man, and a killer.

Maybe I’d never fight Ludlow, but I was going to get Innes.

D
ON’T ASK ME
what happened to the rounds. Don’t ask me how we fought. Don’t ask me how many times I was down, or how many he was down. We were two jungle beasts fighting on the edge of a cliff, only besides brawn, we had all the deadly skill, trained punching power, and toughness of seasoned fighters. A thousand generations had collected the skill in fighting we used that night.

He cut my eye…he cut both my eyes. But his were, too, and his mouth was dribbling with blood and he was wheezing through a broken nose. The crowd had gone crazy, then hoarse, and now it sat staring in a kind of shocked horror at what two men could do in a ring.

Referee? He got out of the way and stood beside the sheriff. We broke, but rarely clean. We hit on the breaks, we used thumbs, elbows, and heads, we swapped blows until neither of us could throw another punch. The fight had been scheduled for ten rounds. I think it was the fourteenth when I began to get him.

I caught him coming in and sank my right into his solar plexus. He was tired, I could feel it. He staggered and his mouth fell open and I walked in throwing punches to head and body. He staggered, went down, rolled over.

Stand over him? Not on your life! I stepped back and let the guy take his own time getting up! It wasn’t because I was fighting fair. I wanted him to see I didn’t need that kind of stuff. I could do it without that.

He got up and came in and got me with a right to the wind, and I took it going away and then I slipped on some blood and I hit the canvas and rolled over. Innes backed off like I had done, and waved at me with a bloody glove to get up and come on!

The crowd broke into a cheer then, the first he’d had, and I could see he liked it.

I got up and we walked in and I touched his gloves. That got them. Until then it had been a dirty, ugly fight. But when I got up, I held out both gloves and with only a split second of hesitation, he touched my gloves with his, a boxer’s handshake!

The crowd broke into another cheer. From then on there wasn’t a low blow or a heeled glove. We fought it clean. Two big, confident fighting men who understood each other.

But it couldn’t last. No human could do what we were doing and last. He came for me and I rolled my head and let the glove go by and then smashed a right for his body. He took it, and then I set myself. He was weaving and I took aim at his body and let go.

The ropes caught him and he rolled along them. He knew he was going to get it then, but he was asking no favors, and he wasn’t going to make it easy for me.

Again I feinted, and when he tried to laugh, a thin trickle of blood started from a split lip. He wouldn’t bite on that.

“Quit it!” I heard him growl. “Come an’ get me!”

I went. Then I uncorked the payoff. I let Mary Ann go down the groove!

The sound was like the butt end of an axe hitting a frozen log, and Tony Innes stood like a dummy in a doze, and then he went over on his feet, so cold an iceberg would have felt like a heat wave. And then I started backing up and fell into the ropes and stood there, weaving a little, my hands working, so full of battle I couldn’t realize it was over.

T
HE NEWS REPORT
of the fight hit the sport pages like an atomic bomb. Overnight everybody in the country was talking about it and promoters from all over the country were offering prices on a return battle. Above all, it had started a fire I didn’t think Mark Lanning could put out. But he could still pull plenty behind the smoke.

Most people will stand for a lot, but once a sore spot gets in front of their eyes, they want to get rid of it. The rotten setup at Zenith, which permeated the fight game, was an example. The trouble was, it was a long time to election and Lanning still had the situation sewed up in Zenith, and most of the officials.

More than ever, he’d be out to get me. The season was near closing for Greater American so Pop turned the show over to his assistant and came east with me. Buck came, too, and he brought that .45 Colt along with him.

Maybe I had spoiled Lanning’s game. Time would tell about that, but on the eve of the Ludlow fight, I had two poorly healed eyes, and the ring setup back home was no better than it had been. Despite all the smoke, I was still behind the eight ball.

The publicity would crab the chance of Lanning pulling any really fast stuff. But with my eyes the way they were, there was a good chance he wouldn’t have to. I was going into a fight with a cold, utterly merciless competitor with two strikes against me. And with every possible outside phase of the fight in question.

You think the timekeeper can do nothing? Suppose I got a guy on the ropes, ready to cool him, or suppose I get Ludlow on the deck and the referee says nine and there are ten seconds or twenty seconds to go, and then the bell rings early and Ludlow is saved?

Or suppose I’m taking a sweet socking and they let the round go a few seconds. Many a fight has been lost or won in a matter of seconds, and many a fighter has been saved by the bell to come on to win in later rounds.

Duck Miller was lounging on the station platform when I got off of the train. He glanced at my eyes and there was no grin on his lips.

“Well, Duck,” I said, “looks like your boss got me fixed up.”

“Uh-huh. He’s the kind of guy usually gets what he wants.”

“Someday he’s going to get more than he asks for,” I said quietly.

Duck nodded. “Uh-huh. You got some bad eyes there.”

“It was a rough fight.”

Duck’s eyes sparked. “I’d of give a mint,” he said sincerely, “to have seen it! You and Tony Innes, and no holds barred! Yeah, that would be one for the book.” He looked at me again. “You’re a great fighter, kid.”

“So’s Ludlow.” I looked at Duck. “Miller, at heart you’re a right guy. Why do you stick with a louse like Lanning?”

Duck rubbed his cigarette out against his heel. “I like money. I been hungry too much. I eat now, I got my own car, I got a warm apartment, I have a drink when I want. I even got a little dough in the bank.”

I looked at him. Duck was down in the mouth. His wide face and hard eyes didn’t look right.

“Is it worth it, Duck?”

He looked at me. “No,” he said flatly. “But I’m in.”

“Seen Marge?” I asked.

That time he didn’t look at me. “Uh-huh. I have. Often.”

Often? That made me wonder. I looked at him again. “How’s she been getting along?”

Duck looked up, shaking out a smoke. “Marge gets along, don’t ever forget that. Marge gets along. Like me,” he hesitated, “she’s been hungry too much.”

He turned on his heel and walked away. He was there to look at me, to report to Lanning how I looked so they could figure on Ludlow’s fight. Well, I knew how I looked. I’d been through the mill. And what he’d said about Marge I didn’t like.

She was waiting for me at the ranch, sitting in the canary-yellow convertible. She looked like a million, and her smile was wide and beautiful. Yet somehow, the change made her look different. I mean, my own change. I’d been away. I’d been through a rough deal, I was back, and seeing her now I saw her with new eyes. Yes, she was hard around the eyes and mouth.

When I kissed her something inside me said, “Kid, this is it. This babe is wrong for you.”

“How’s it, honey?” I said. “Everything all right?”

“Yes, Danny, but your eyes!” she exclaimed. “Your poor eyes are cut!”

“Yeah. Me an’ Tony Innes had a little brawl out West. Maybe,” I said, “you read about it?”

“Everybody did,” she said frankly. “Do you think it was wise, Dan? Telling that stuff about Mark Lanning?”

“Sure, baby. I fight in the open, cards on the table. Guys like Lanning don’t like that.” I looked down at her. “Honey, he’s through.”

“Through? Mark Lanning?” She shook her head. “You’re whistling in the dark, Dan. He’s big, he’s too strong. He’s got this town sewed up.”

“It’s only one town,” I said.

Right then I didn’t know she was working with Lanning. I didn’t know she was selling me out. Maybe, down inside, I had a hunch, but I didn’t know. That was why I didn’t see that I’d slipped the first seed of doubt into her thoughts.

That evening two black sedans pulled up the drive and stopped in front of the porch where I was sitting, feet up, reading the newspaper. Something about the men that got out, maybe it was their identical haircuts or the drab suits that they wore, said “government” in square, block lettering.

“Evening,” the first one said. “I’m special agent Crowley, FBI.” He flipped open his wallet to show me his ID. “This,” he indicated a taller man from the second car, “is Bill Karp, with the State Attorney General’s office. We’d like to talk to you about a story we read in the newspaper…”

Before they were done we’d talked for four hours, and a court reporter took it all down.

T
HREE DAYS
I
RESTED
, just working about six rounds a day with the skipping rope and shadowboxing. Then I started in training again, and in earnest. We had a ring under the trees, and I liked it there. Joe Moran was with me, and Buck Farley.

It went along like that until two days before the fight. Then Pop came in, he had a long look at me, and he pushed his wide hat back on his head and took the cigar from his lips.

“Kid,” he said, “I got a tip today. Your dame’s bettin’ on Ludlow.”

If anybody had sprung that on me, even Pop Farley, before I went west, I’d have said he was a liar. Now I just looked at him. Pop was my friend. Maybe the best one I had. I was like a son to him, and Pop wouldn’t lie to me.

“Give it to me, Pop,” I said. “What do you know?”

“Saw her coming from Mark Lanning’s office. I got curious and I had her followed. I found out she’s hocked her jewelry to bet on Ludlow. I traced the sale of that yellow car. Lanning paid for it.”