The Abysmal Brute by Jack London (each kindness read aloud txt) đź“•
Breakfast consisted of black coffee, sourdough bread, and an immense quantity of bear-meat broiled over the coals. Of this the young fellow ate ravenously, and Stubener divined that both the Glendons were accustomed to an almost straight meat diet. Old Pat did all the talking, though it was not till the meal was ended that he broached the subject he had at heart.
"Pat, boy," he began, "you know who the gentleman is?"
Young Pat nodded, and cast a quick, comprehensive glance at the manager.
"Well, he'll be takin' you away with him and down to San Francisco."
"I'd sooner stay here, dad," was the answer.
Stubener felt a prick of disappointment. It was a wild goose chase after all. This was no fighter, eager and fretting to be at it. His huge brawn counted for nothing. It was nothing new. It was the big fellows that usually had the streak of fat.
But old Pat's Celtic wrath flared up, and his voice was harsh with comm
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“And change it?” she queried, rather breathlessly, convinced somehow that he could do anything he set out to accomplish.
“No; quit it,” was his answer. “If it isn’t straight I won’t have anything more to do with it. And one thing is certain: this coming fight with Nat Powers won’t end in the sixteenth round. If there is any truth in that editor’s tip, they’ll all be fooled. Instead of putting him out in the sixteenth, I’ll let the fight run on into the twenties. You wait and see.”
“And I’m not to tell the editor?”
She was on her feet now, preparing to go.
“Certainly not. If he is only guessing, let him take his chances. And if there’s anything rotten about it he deserves to lose all he bets. This is to be a little secret between you and me. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll name the round to you. I won’t run it into the twenties. I’ll stop Nat Powers in the eighteenth.”
“And I’ll not whisper it,” she assured him.
“I’d like to ask you a favor,” he said tentatively. “Maybe it’s a big favor.”
She showed her acquiescence in her face, as if it were already granted, and he went on:
“Of course, I know you won’t use this faking in the interview. But I want more than that. I don’t want you to publish anything at all.
She gave him a quick look with her searching gray eyes, then surprised herself by her answer.
“Certainly,” she said. “It will not be published. I won’t write a line of it.”
“I knew it,” he said simply.
For the moment she was disappointed by the lack of thanks, and the next moment she was glad that he had not thanked her. She sensed the different foundation he was building under this meeting of an hour with her, and she became daringly explorative.
“How did you know it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it. I knew it as a matter of course. Somehow it seems to me I know a lot about you and me.”
“But why not publish the interview? As your manager says, it is good advertising.”
“I know it,” he answered slowly. “But I don’t want to know you that way. I think it would hurt if you should publish it. I don’t want to think that I knew you professionally. I’d like to remember our talk here as a talk between a man and a woman.”
As he spoke, in his eyes was all the expression with which a man looks at a woman. She felt the force and beat of him, and she felt strangely tongue-tied and awkward before this man who had been reputed tongue-tied and awkward. He could certainly talk straighter to the point and more convincingly than most men, and what struck her most forcibly was her own inborn certainty that it was mere naĂŻve and simple frankness on his part and not a practised artfulness.
He saw her in to her machine, and gave her another thrill when he said good-by. Once again their hands were clasped as he said:
“Some day I’ll see you again. I want to see you again. Somehow I have a feeling that the last word has not been said between us.”
And as the machine rolled away she was aware of a similar feeling. She had not seen the last of this very disquieting Pat Glendon, king of the bruisers and abysmal brute.
Back in the training quarters, Glendon encountered his perturbed manager.
“What did you fire me out for?” Stubener demanded. “We’re finished. A hell of a mess you’ve made. You’ve never stood for meeting a reporter alone before, and now you’ll see when that interview comes out.”
Glendon, who had been regarding him with cool amusement, made as if to turn and pass on, and then changed his mind.
“It won’t come out,” he said.
Stubener looked up sharply.
“I asked her not to,” Glendon explained.
Then Stubener exploded.
“As if she’d kill a juicy thing like that.”
Glendon become very cold and his voice was harsh and grating.
“It won’t be published. She told me so. And to doubt it is to call her a liar.”
The Irish flame was in his eyes, and by that, and by the unconscious clenching of his passion-wrought hands, Stubener, who knew the strength of them, and of the man he faced, no longer dared to doubt.
It did not take Stubener long to find out that Glendon intended extending the distance of the fight, though try as he would he could get no hint of the number of the round. He wasted no time, however, and privily clinched certain arrangements with Nat Powers and Nat Powers’ manager. Powers had a faithful following of bettors, and the betting syndicate was not to be denied its harvest.
On the night of the fight, Maud Sangster was guilty of a more daring unconventionality than any she had yet committed, though no whisper of it leaked out to shock society. Under the protection of the editor, she occupied a ringside seat. Her hair and most of her face were hidden under a slouch hat, while she wore a man’s long overcoat that fell to her heels. Entering in the thick of the crowd, she was not noticed; nor did the newspaper men, in the press seats against the ring directly in front of her, recognize her.
As was the growing custom, there were no preliminary bouts, and she had barely gained her seat when roars of applause announced the arrival of Nat Powers. He came down the aisle in the midst of his seconds, and she was almost frightened by the formidable bulk of him. Yet he leaped the ropes as lightly as a man half his weight, and grinned acknowledgement to the tumultuous greeting that arose from all the house. He was not pretty. Two cauliflower ears attested his profession and its attendant brutality, while his broken nose had been so often spread over his face as to defy the surgeon’s art to reconstruct it.
Another uproar heralded the arrival of Glendon, and she watched him eagerly as he went through the ropes to his corner. But it was not until the tedious time of announcements, introductions, and challenges was over, that the two men threw off their wraps and faced each other in ring costume. Concentrated upon them from overhead was the white glare of many electric lights—this for the benefit of the moving picture cameras; and she felt, as she looked at the two sharply contrasted men, that it was in Glendon that she saw the thoroughbred and in Powers the abysmal brute. Both looked their parts—Glendon, clean cut in face and form, softly and massively beautiful, Powers almost asymmetrically rugged and heavily matted with hair.
As they made their preliminary pose for the cameras, confronting each other in fighting attitudes, it chanced that Glendon’s gaze dropped down through the ropes and rested on her face. Though he gave no sign, she knew, with a swift leap of the heart, that he had recognized her. The next moment the gong sounded, the announcer cried “Let her go!” and the battle was on.
It was a good fight. There was no blood, no marring, and both were clever. Half of the first round was spent in feeling each other out, but Maud Sangster found the play and feint and tap of the gloves sufficiently exciting. During some of the fiercer rallies in later stages of the fight, the editor was compelled to touch her arm to remind her who she was and where she was.
Powers fought easily and cleanly, as became the hero of half a hundred ring battles, and an admiring claque applauded his every cleverness. Yet he did not unduly exert himself save in occasional strenous rallies that brought the audience yelling to its feet in the mistaken notion that he was getting his man.
It was at such a moment, when her unpractised eye could not inform her that Glendon was escaping serious damage, that the editor leaned to her and said:
“Young Pat will win all right. He’s a comer, and they can’t stop him. But he’ll win in the sixteenth and not before.”
“Or after?” she asked.
She almost laughed at the certitude of her companion’s negative. She knew better.
Powers was noted for hunting his man from moment to moment and round to round, and Glendon was content to accede to this program. His defense was admirable, and he threw in just enough of offense to whet the edge of the audience’s interest. Though he knew he was scheduled to lose, Powers had had too long a ring experience to hesitate from knocking his man out if the opportunity offered. He had had the double cross worked too often on him to be chary in working it on others. If he got his chance he was prepared to knock his man out and let the syndicate go hang. Thanks to clever press publicity, the idea was prevalent that at last Young Glendon had met his master. In his heart, Powers, however, knew that it was himself who had encountered the better man. More than once, in the faster infighting, he received the weight of punches that he knew had been deliberately made no heavier. On Glendon’s part, there were times and times when a slip or error of judgement could have exposed him to one of his antagonist’s sledge-hammer blows and lost the fight. Yet his was that almost miraculous power of accurate timing and distancing, and confidence was not shaken by several close shaves he experienced. He had never lost a fight, never been knocked down, and he had always been thoroughly the master of the man he faced, that such a possibility was unthinkable.
At the end of the fifteenth round, both men were in good condition, though Powers was breathing a trifle heavily and there were men in the ringside seats offering odds that he would “blow up.”
It was just before the gong for the sixteenth round struck that Stubener, leaning over Glendon from behind in his corner, whispered:
“Are you going to get him now?”
Glendon, with a back toss of his head, shook it and laughed mockingly up into his manager’s anxious face.
With the stroke of the gong for the sixteenth round, Glendon was surprised to see Powers cut loose. From the first second it was a tornado of fighting, and Glendon was hard put to escape serious damage. He blocked, clinched, ducked, sidestepped, was rushed backward against the ropes and was met by fresh rushes when he surged out to center. Several times Powers left inviting openings, but Glendon refused to loose the lighting-bolt of a blow that would drop his man. He was reserving that blow for two rounds later. Not in the whole fight had he ever exerted his full strength, nor struck with the force that was in him.
For two minutes, without the slightest let-up, Powers went at him hammer and tongs. In another minute the round would be over and the betting snydicate hard hit. But that minute was not to be. They had just come together in the center of the ring. It was as ordinary a clinch as any in the fight, save that Powers was struggling and roughing it every instant. Glendon whipped his left over in a crisp but easy jolt to the side of the face. It was like any of a score of similar jolts he had already delivered in the course of the fight.
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