you, and him ten pounds heavier than Bill, and tough, too.'
The White Hope confirmed this.
'Bad boy,' he remarked, and with a deep breath resumed excavating work
on a grapefruit.
'Well, I was just making a jump to separate them when this Whiting gook
says, 'Betcha a dollar my kid wins!' and before I knew what I was doing
I'd taken him. It wasn't that that stopped me, though. It was his
saying that his kid took after his dad and could eat up anything of his
own age in America. Well, darn it, could I take that from a slob of a
mixed-ale scrapper when it was handed out at the finest kid that ever
came from New York?'
'Of course not,' said Kirk indignantly, and even Mamie forbore to
criticize. She bent over the White Hope and gave his grapefruit-stained
cheek a kiss.
'Well, I should say not!' cried Steve. 'I just hollered to his
nibs, 'Soak it to him, kid! for the honour of No. 99'; and, believe me,
the young bear-cat sort of gathered himself together, winked at me, and
began to hammer the stuffing out of the scrappy kid. Say, there wasn't
no sterilized stuff about his work. You were a regular germ, all right,
weren't you squire?'
'Germ,' agreed the White Hope. He spoke drowsily.
'Gee!' Steve resumed his saga in a whirl of enthusiasm. 'Gee! if
they're right to start with, if they're born right, if they've got the
grit in them, you can't sterilize it out of 'em if you use up half the
germ-killer in the country. From the way that kid acted you'd have
thought he'd been spending the last year in a training-camp. The other
kid rolled him over, but he come up again as if that was just the sort
of stuff he liked, and pretty soon I see that he's uncovered a yellow
streak in the Whiting kid as big as a barn door. You were on it,
weren't you, colonel?'
But the White Hope had no remarks to offer this time. His head had
fallen forward and was resting peacefully in his grapefruit.
'He's asleep,' said Mamie.
She picked him up gently and carried him out.
'He's a champeen at that too,' said Steve. 'I had to pull him out of
the hay this morning. Well, I guess he's earned it. He's had a busy
day.'
'What happened then, Steve?'
'Why, after that there wasn't a thing to it. Whiting, poor simp,
couldn't see it. 'Betcha ten dollars my kid wins,' he hollers. 'He's
got him going.' 'Take you,' I shouts; and at that moment the scrappy
kid sees it's all over, so he does the old business of fouling, same as
his pop done when he fought Tommy King. It's in the blood, I guess. He
takes and scratches poor Bill on the cheek.'
'That was enough for me. I jumps in. 'All over,' I says. 'My kid wins
on a foul.' 'Foul nothing,' says Whiting. 'It was an accident, and you
lose because you jumped into the fight, same as Connie McVey did when
Corbett fought Sharkey. Think you can get away with it, pulling that
old-time stuff?' I didn't trouble to argue with him. 'Oh,' I says, 'is
that it? Say, just take a slant at your man. If you don't stop him
