Scott decided that the time had come to take the one chance he had of a clean decision. He rushed his man furiously, and tried for an opening to the face, but was driven out again without getting it. He noticed that the sophomore’s breath was coming in labored gasps and rushed him again. With a terrific hook to the stomach he lowered the big fellow’s head and landed heavily on his jaw, but the man was indeed a very moose and withstood the blow though it dazed him a little. Relying on this Scott took his chance. He offered a beautiful opening which his opponent took eagerly, throwing all his waning strength into one mighty full-arm swing for Scott’s unprotected chin.
Few in the audience realized what a risk Scott had really taken in trying to side-step a man like that, but he himself realized it to the full and planned it with the greatest care. He side-stepped with the agility of a cat, felt the glove just brush his cheek, and threw all the weight of his splendid shoulders into a hook to the jaw. The blow went true, and the big man wilted in his tracks. Scott caught him in his arms and was letting him gently to the ground, when he wriggled loose, staggered to his feet and struck at Scott blindly but savagely. Before he could fully recover, however, the whistle blew.
Scott stood patiently in the ring waiting for the decision, but not so the crowd. Yelling wildly the freshmen descended with a rush on the one champion the day had brought forth for them, heaved him on their shoulders, half clothed as he was, and swept across the campus through the crowd of spectators. He remonstrated and fought as hard as he had in the ring, but to no purpose. They carried him clear across the campus and out into the street. Scott would have given anything for even his undershirt. He had objected to stripping to the waist even there in the ring, but now that the match was over to be exhibited in this way to all those girls was intolerable. At last it ended. A hundred and eighty-five pounds is not a light weight to carry even if it is a hero and Scott managed at last to fight his way to the ground. He was wondering how he would ever get back to his clothes, even if they had not been carried off by the crowd, when the faithful Johnson pushed his way forward with them.
“Now get out of the way,” Johnson commanded the throng of admirers, “and let me take him home for a little rest.”
“Scott,” he continued as he hustled him to the car, “now you can go home and sit up all night for the rest of the winter. Yes, and hanged if you can’t eat my desserts for the next six years.”
“Humph,” Scott grunted good-naturedly, “and all just because I won.”
CHAPTER V
As the boys sat in their room that evening in their pajamas talking over the events of the day Scott was impressed more than ever with Johnson’s strange philosophies, apparently gathered from almost unlimited experience. Johnson was in a very good humor over the results of the boxing match and Scott thought it a good opportunity to get him to tell his story.
“Johnson,” he asked curiously, “where haven’t you been? You don’t look very old but there does not seem to be any place that you have not worked in all the United States.”
“Well,” Johnson answered, “I have never been to the South or East, but there are not many sections of the West that I have not seen.”