The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (19 page)

Buck was big. I could get down to one sixty, but Buck would be lucky to make one ninety, and he was rawboned and tough. Buck Farley had always been a hand with the gloves, so I knew I had one good, tough sparring partner.

That night was my first sideshow fight in a long time. Old Man Farley was out front for the ballyhoo and he made it good. Then, I don’t have any tin ears. My nose has been broken, but was fixed up and it doesn’t show too much. A fighter would always pick me for a scrapper, but the average guy rarely does, so there wasn’t any trouble getting someone to come up.

The first guy was a copper miner. A regular hard-rock boy who was about my age and weighed about two hundred and twenty. The guy’s name was Mantry.

When we got in the ring, the place was full.

“Maybe you better let me take it,” Buck suggested, “you might bust a hand on this guy.”

“This is what I came for,” I said. “I’ve got to take them as they come.”

T
HEY SOUNDED THE BELL
and this gorilla came out with a rush. He was rawboned and rugged as the shoulder of a mountain. He swung a wicked left, and I slid inside and clipped him with two good ones in the wind. I might as well have slugged the side of a battleship.

He bulled on in, letting them go with both hands. I caught one on the ear that shook me to my heels and the crowd roared. Mantry piled on in, dug a left into my body and slammed another right to the head. I couldn’t seem to get working and circled away from him. Then I stabbed a left to his mouth three times and he stopped in his tracks and looked surprised.

He dropped into a half crouch, this guy had boxed some, and he bored in, bulling me into the ropes. He clipped me there and my knees sagged and then I came up, mad as a hornet with a busted nest. I stabbed a left to his mouth that made those others seem like brushing him with a feather duster and hooked a right to his ear that jarred him for three generations. I walked in, slamming them with both hands, and the crowd began to whoop it up.

His knees wilted and he started to sag. This was too good to end, so I grabbed him and shoved him into the ropes, holding him up and fighting with an appearance of hard punching until the bell rang.

Mantry looked surprised, but walked to his corner, only a little shaky. He knew I’d held him up, and he was wondering why. He figured me for a good guy who was taking him along for the ride.

When we came out he took it easy, whether from caution or because I’d gone easy on him, I couldn’t tell. I stabbed a left to his mouth that left him undecided about that, then stepped in close. I wanted a workout, and had to get this guy back in line.

“What’s a matter, chump?” I whispered. “You yella?”

He went hog wild and threw one from his heels that missed my chin by the flicker of an eyelash. Then he clipped me with a roundhouse right and I went back into the ropes and rebounded with both hands going. He was big and half smart and he bored in, slugging like crazy.

Mister, you should have heard the tent! You could hear their yells for a half mile, and people began crowding around the outside to see what was going on. Naturally, that didn’t hurt the old man’s feelings.

Me, I like a fight, and so did this Mantry. We walked out there and slugged it toe-to-toe. What I had on him in experience and savvy, he had in weight, strength, and height. Of course, I’d never let old Mary Ann down the groove yet.

The crowd was screaming like a bunch of madmen. I whipped a right uppercut to Mantry’s chin and he slumped, and then I drove a couple of stiff ones into his wind. The bell rang again and I trotted back to my corner.

The third was a regular brannigan. I dropped about half my science into the discard because this was the most fun I’d had in months. We walked out there and went into it and it would have taken a smarter guy than any in that crowd to have seen that I was slipping and riding most of Mantry’s hardest punches. He teed off my chin with a good one that sent up a shower of sparks, and when the round ended, I caught him with two in the wind.

Coming up for the fourth, I figured here is where I let him have it. After all, Farley was paying one hundred bucks if this guy went the distance. I sharpened up in this one. I didn’t want to cut the guy. He was a right sort, and I liked him. So I walked out and busted him a couple in the wind that brought a worried expression to his face. Then I went under his left and whammed a right to the heart that made him back up a couple of steps. He shot two fast lefts to the head and one to the chin, then tried a right.

I stepped around, feinted with a left, and he stepped in and I let Mary Ann down the groove. Now you can box or you can slug but there’s none out there that can do both at once. A fighter’s style is usually one or the other. Boxing will win you points and it’ll keep you from getting hit too much, but slugging puts them on the canvas. The only problem is you have to stop boxing for an instant and plant your feet to do it. It’s in that instant that you can get hit badly, if your opponent is on the ball. Mantry took the feint, however, and that was the end of him.

It clipped him right on the button and he stood there for a split second and then dropped like he’d been shot through the heart.

I walked back to my corner and Buck looked at me. “Man,” his eyes were wide, “what did you hit him with?”

When the count was over, I went over and picked the guy up.

“Lucky punch!” one of the townies was saying. “The big guy had it made until he clipped him!”

When Mantry came around, I slapped him on the shoulder. “Nice fight, guy! Let’s go back an’ dress.

“Pop,” I said when we were dressing, “slip the guy ten bucks a round. He made a fight.”

Pop Farley knew a good thing when he saw it. “Sure enough.” He paid the big guy forty dollars, who looked from me to Pop like we were Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. “Why don’t you come back an’ try it again?” Pop suggested.

“I might,” Mantry said, “I might at that!”

T
HAT WAS THE BEGINNING
. In the following sixty days, I boxed from four to twelve rounds a night, fighting miners, lumberjacks, cowpunchers, former Golden Glove boys, Army fighters, anything that came along. Mantry came back twice, and I cooled him twice more, each one a brawl.

Those sixty days had put me in wonderful condition. I was taking care of myself, not catching many, and tackling the varied styles was sharpening me up. Above all, every contest was a real fight, not practice. Even an easy fight keeps a man on his toes, and a fighter of strength can often be awkwardly dangerous if he knows a little. And every one of these men was trying.

Buck knew all about my troubles. He was working with me every day, and we had uncovered a good fast welter on the show who had quit fighting because of a bad hand. The light, fast work was good for me.

“It won’t go this easy,” Buck told me. “I heard about Mark Lanning. He’s dangerous. If he intends to clear the way to the title, he’ll not rest until he knows where you are, and just what you’re doin’.”

L
ATER
, I
HEARD
about it. I didn’t know then. Buck Farley had voiced my own thoughts, and in a different way, they were the thoughts of Mark Lanning and Duck Miller.

“Well,” Lanning had said, “if he’s taken a powder he’s through. Might be the best way at that, but I hate to think of him gettin’ away without a beatin’, and I hate to think of blowin’ the money we’d win on the fight.”

“He ain’t run out,” Duck said positively. “I know that guy. He’s smart. He’s got something up his sleeve. What happened to him?”

“We traced him to Cartersville,” Gasparo said. Gasparo was Lanning’s pet muscle man. “He bought a ticket there for Butte. Then he vanished into thin air.”

It was Marge Hamlin who tipped them off. I found that out later, too. I hadn’t written her, but she was no dumb Dora, not that babe. She was in a dentist’s office, waiting to get a tooth filled, when she saw the paper. It was a daily from a jerkwater town in Wyoming.

CARNIVAL FIGHTER TO MEET PAT DALY

Bill Banner, middleweight sharpie who has been a sensation in the Greater American Shows these past two months, has signed to meet Pat Daly, a local light-heavyweight, in the ten-round main event on Friday’s card.

Banner, a welcome relief from the typical carnie stumblebum, has been creating a lot of talk throughout the Far West with his series of thrilling knockouts over local fighters. Pop Farley, manager and owner of Greater American, admits the opposition has been inexperienced, but points to seventy-six knockouts as some evidence. One of these was over Tom Bronson, former AAU champ, another over Ace Donaldson, heavyweight champion of Montana.

She grabbed up that paper and legged it down to Mark Lanning. “Get a load of this,” she tells him. He studies it and shrugs. “You don’t get it?” she inquired, lifting an eyebrow. “Ask Duck. He knows that Danny used to fight with a carnival.”

“Yeah,” Duck looked up, “got his start that way. Greater American Shows, it was.”

Lanning’s eyes lit up triumphantly. “You get a bonus for that, Chick,” he tells Marge. Then he turned his head. “Gasparo, take three men. Get Tony Innes. I’ll contact him by phone. Then get a plane west. I want Tony Innes to fight in this Daly’s place.”

“Innes?” Miller sat bolt upright. “Man! He’s the second best light-heavy in the business!”

Lanning leered. “Sure! An’ he belongs to me. He’ll go out there, substitute for Daly. He’ll give McClure a pasting. One thing, I want him to cut Danny McClure’s eye! Win or lose, I want McClure’s eye cut! Then when he goes in there with Ludlow, we’ll see what happens!”

Outside in the street, Duck Miller lit a cigarette and looked at Marge Hamlin.

“So he’s got you on the payroll, too,” he said. “What a sweet four-flusher you turned out to be!”

Marge’s face flushed and her lips thinned. “What about
you
?” she sneered.

Duck shrugged. “I’m not takin’ any bows, kid,” he said grimly, “but at least he knows which side I’m on. He’s a square guy. You like blood? Be there at the ringside when he gets that eye opened. You’ll see it. I hope it gets on you so bad it’ll never wash off!”

“He chose this game,” Marge said angrily. “If he doesn’t know how it’s played, that’s his problem.”

“And you chose him.” Duck snapped his match into the street. “I guess the blood’s there and won’t wash off already.”

A
LL THAT
I heard later. The Greater American was playing over in Laramie, but Pop and Buck Farley were with me, ready to go in there with Pat Daly. All three of us were in the dressing room, waiting for the call, when the door busted open.

Pat Daly was standing there in his street clothes. He had blood all over and he could hardly stand.

“Who in blazes are you?” he snarled. “Y’ yella bum! Scared of me an’ have your sluggers beat me up so’s you can put in a setup!”

Buck took him by the arm and jerked him inside. “Give,” he said, “what happened?”

“What happened?” Daly was swaying and punch-drunk, but anger blazed in his eyes. “Your sluggers jumped me. Ran my car off the road, then before I was on my feet, they started slugging me with blackjacks. When I was out cold they rolled me into the ditch and poured whiskey on me!”

“What about this substitute business?” Pop demanded.

Suddenly, I knew what happened. Mark Lanning had got me located. From here on in, it would be every man for himself.

“You knew all about it!” Daly swore. “When I got in, Sam tells me he heard I was drunk and hurt in an accident, and that they have a substitute. You tell me how you knew that!”

The door opens then, and Sam Slake is standing there. He looks at Daly, then he looks at me. His face is hard.

“Daly can’t fight,” he says, “which is your fault. Your handpicked substitute is out there, so you can go in with him. But I’m tellin’ you, don’t bring your crooked game around here again. I’m callin’ the D.A., so if you want to play games you can play them with him.”

I got to my feet then, and I was sore. “Listen!” I snapped. “I’ll tell you what this is all about! Get the newspaper boys in!”

It was time for the main go, and the crowd was buzzing. They had had a look at Pat Daly, some of them, and the arena was filled with crazy stories. The newspaper boys, three of them, came down into my dressing room.

“All right,” I said, “this is the story. My name isn’t Bill Banner. It’s Danny McClure.”

“What?” one of these reporters yelped. “The uncrowned middleweight champ? But you’re signed to meet Van Ludlow!”

“Right!”

Briefly, quickly as I could, I told them about how I was pushed into the fight with Ludlow, all about the methods Lanning used. How I couldn’t get sparring partners, and how I came west and joined the show I’d been with as a kid. And how Lanning had sent his sluggers to the show. That I didn’t know who the substitute was, but before the fight was over, they’d know it was no frame. Some of it was guesswork, but they were good guesses.

“Maybe I’ll know him. I’ll bet money,” I told them, “he’s good. I’ll bet plenty of dough he was sent out here to see that I go into the ring with Ludlow hurt. I got to go, or the commission in Zenith belongs to Lanning and I lose my ranch.”