This was to stall him along so’s he’d forget the skirts for a w’ile and tend to business.
Nate made him work out every day and box with some of the boys. But he was just as shy of a punch as when Howard had him.
“Cut loose and slug!” Nate told him.
“What for?” he says.
“To show me if you’ve got a haymaker,” says Nate.
“Ask Porter if I have,” said the kid.
Finally Nate got him matched with Red Harris in a semi-windup at Milwaukee. Harris can wallop, but he’s slow. Well, Burkey made him look like he was handcuffed. Red never laid a glove on him the whole bout, w’ile Nate’s boy played him like a piano. But it was soft music and when it was over neither of them had a mark. The crowd liked Burke at first on account of his speed. But they razzed him the last few rounds because it looked like he wasn’t trying. The papers couldn’t do nothing but give him the best of it, but said he wouldn’t never get nowheres till he learned to punch. Nate had begged him all through to tear in and end it, but he might as well of tried to argue with Central.
Well, Fitzsimmons was putting on a show over to Benton Harbor and he wired Nate and ast him if he’d bring Burke there for a windup with a Grand Rapids boy named Hap Stein. This kid had met some of the best boys round Michigan and beat them all, and, of course, Burke’d draw good in his hometown, especially after what he done to Porter.
So Nate took Burkey over there and Fitz ast Nate how the kid was coming and Nate told him:
“One of the sweetest boxers I ever seen, but he ain’t showed enough of a wallop to annoy a soap bubble.”
“It’s a funny thing,” said Fitz, “because he hit Porter just once and broke his jaw. And Charley’s jaw ain’t glass, neither. I know a punch when I see one and I doubt if Dempsey could hit harder than this bird plugged this baby.”
“Well,” says Nate, “I wished we had the prescription. He made a monkey out of Harris at Milwaukee, but he wouldn’t even slap him hard. And the boys he works out with, I’ve had them rough him so’s he’d get mad, but it didn’t do no good.”
“I don’t suppose so,” says Fitz, “because he wasn’t sore at Porter. Charley didn’t even know him.”
“But he had a reason to show Porter up,” said Nate, and he told Fitz about the rube gal.
“That’s news to me,” said Fitz. “Maybe he’ll only fight when they’s a dame for a prize. Why don’t you hire some chorus doll to vamp him and have her tell him she’s his as soon as he’s knocked all the other welters for a corpse?”
“You don’t know this bird!” said Nate. “Chorus gals would be beneath his notice. He wants a millionaire society belle and I’d have a fat chance of getting one of them to play the part.”
Well, the bout with Stein was a farce. Burkey was so fast that Hap thought they’d ganged on him, but nothing Nate could say or do had any effect. He couldn’t make the kid cut loose and punch.
IV
When they’d been back in Chi a couple of months and Burke had had one more fight in Milwaukee—he made a monkey out of Jimmy Mason—well, he begin fretting and wanted to know how soon Nate was going to take him east.
“As soon as I can get you matched,” said Nate. “But if I do date you up down there, you’ll have to cut out the cuddling and really fight or they won’t want you a second time.”
“Maybe I’ll be different down there,” said Burkey.
So along late in the fall Nate got him matched with Battling Igoe, in Boston.
“Now here’s your chance,” Nate told him. “I got Rickard’s promise that if you trim Igoe he’ll put you on in New York with Willie Kemp. And the man that beats Willie Kemp will get a whack at Britton and the big money.”
All Burke said was:
“How’s Boston for gals? Any class to them?”
“Not enough for you,” says Nate. “You’d be throwing yourself away! They’s no doubt but that you could go down to Scollay Square or Revere Beach and take your pick, but you’d be a sucker to do it. New York’s the place. And suppose you get tied up to some Boston countess and then went to New York and win a couple of big bouts and got invited round to some of them big mansions on Mott Street or the Tenderloin, and next thing you know, you’d probably meet a dozen gals that never even heard of Boston. Then you’d wished you’d of been more careful and not financed yourself to no bean shooter.”
You read about the Igoe bout? I seen it. When they was all in the ring beforehand, Nate said to Igoe, he says: “Well, Bat, we’ve decided to let you stay three rounds. That’ll be enough to give you a boxing lesson. But in the fourth round, you’re going to hear music that’ll rock you to sleep.” Nate had heard that the Battler wasn’t no lion heart and this kind of gab fretted him.
“I’ll rock him to sleep himself,” he said, but his teeth was shimmying.
Burke was just the same like
