A little w’ile after this great battle Jim and Larry get hungry again and they accept an offer of a hundred thousand to meet a big horse named Joe Barnes. Dugan has knocked him before and can do it again and they ain’t much danger in taking him on, though some of the wise birds thinks different. They think Larry is risking the title because Barnes is a guy that fights five nights a week and he’s always in shape and he’s so tough that nobody ever did stop him except Jim himself. As a matter of fact, Larry ain’t running no more risk than getting in a bath tub. Because w’ile all the wise guys know that Jim can punch, what they don’t seem to realize is that he can take it.
Anyway, this bout with Barnes was in the Big Town and Jim trained for it on a ship and when he clumb in the ring he was still at sea. In the second round Barnes clipped him on the chin with all he had. And all he had wasn’t half what he needed. After a w’ile Dugan got his land legs and begin to improve and he stopped Barnes in the twelfth with a funny-looking punch to the waistline. But they wasn’t no time during the scrap when he looked like himself and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was under wraps as well as in bad shape. However it happened, it made people think Jim wasn’t the fighter his friends claimed; it made him look like he could be licked, and that was a boost for the Goulet match.
V
They’s a big steamship man, Robert Crawley, that had kind a contract with La Chance and Goulet. The agreement was that if Goulet seen a chance for a big match Crawley was to be the backer. If he wanted to. If he didn’t, he was to step out.
Well, Crawley’s got a partner, Bill Guthrie, who Moon had met. So Moon phones them that he has been in communication with La Chance and La Chance says his man is ready to fight Dugan if a suitable purse is guaranteed.
“I thought maybe you’d like to talk it over,” says Larry.
So Crawley and Guthrie said they would and Moon asks them to come up and see him in a couple of days.
“Now,” said Larry to me, “I’m going way downtown for lunch and you can come along if you want to. But if you don’t like Spanish cooking you better stay home.”
So I went with him to a joint off lower Broadway. They was a flock of Spanish dishes on the bill of fare, but what Moon ordered for him and I was plain ham and eggs.
W’ile the one waiter was out getting it, Moon left me and went over to the guy that had showed us to our table. They talked together for pretty near a half hour and I was through eating when Larry come back. He took a look at his food and passed it up.
“I’ve made a date with the head waiter for half past two,” he says. “That’s the soonest he can get off. If you haven’t nothing to do you can go along with us.”
“Where to?” I asked him.
“Shopping,” he said.
“Well,” I says, “I guess I better stick with you. When a man goes nuts he ought to have a friend along.”
So the two of us walked down to the Battery and fooled round till it was time to keep the date. We dropped in at the restaurant again and come out with the head waiter and the greasy bird that had waited on us. We went over to Broadway and got a taxi. Moon give the driver his orders and we started uptown. We stopped at Livington’s.
“Men’s clothing,” said Moon, and the man showed us where to go.
Well, to cut it short, we was in there an hour and when we come away our two waiter friends had bundles containing a complete new makeup—two silk hats, Prince Albert coats, gray pants, fancy shirts, ties that would knock you dead, and collars like Senator Smoot’s.
“That’s all today, boys,” said Larry. “Here’s twenty-five bucks apiece and you’ll each get seventy-five more tomorrow. Don’t forget nothing,” he says to the head waiter, “and especially that envelope I give you.”
So we left them with their packages.
I was amongst those present the next afternoon when Crawley and Guthrie showed up. Moon had sent Dugan away.
“Now,” says Larry to our visitors, “we may as well get down to business. As I told you over the phone, I been corresponding with La Chance and he’s willing to fight us if he can get his price. But he said I would have to let Mr. Crawley handle the promotion. So I said that suited me.”
“It don’t look like a match,” said Crawley. “Goulet’s a great boy, but look at the difference in size!”
Moon laughed.
“They’s nowheres near as much difference as they was between Jim and Big Wheeler,” he says. “And you know what Jim done to him!”
“That’s all right,” said Guthrie, “but your man weighs pretty near two hundred and when a man’s that big he’s big enough for anybody. But take a man that weighs two hundred and put him against a man that weighs round 165, and the difference counts. Look at Johnson and Ketchel!”
“Now listen,” says Larry. “In the first place, my man won’t weigh 190 stripped; he may tip the beam at ten or twelve pounds more than that, but only in secret. In
