“Of course I want it, Big Man. I want my Big Man for himself, and to be himself he must be himself. If you want this, I want it for you, and for myself, too. Suppose I said I wanted to go on the stage, or to the South Seas or the North Pole?”
He answered slowly, almost solemnly.
“Then I’d say go ahead. Because you are you and must be yourself and do whatever you want. I love you because you are you.”
“And we’re both a silly pair of lovers,” she said, when his embrace had relaxed.
“Isn’t it great!” he cried.
He stood up, measured the sun with his eye, and extended his hand out over the big woods that covered the serried, purple ranges.
“We’ve got to sleep out there somewhere. It’s thirty miles to the nearest camp.”
X
Who, of all the sports present, will ever forget the memorable night at the Golden Gate Arena, when Young Glendon put Tom Cannam to sleep and an even greater one than Tom Cannam, kept the great audience on the ragged edge of riot for an hour, caused the subsequent graft investigation of the supervisors and the indictments of the contractors and the building commissioners, and pretty generally disrupted the whole fight game. It was a complete surprise. Not even Stubener had the slightest apprehension of what was coming. It was true that his man had been insubordinate after the Nat Powers affair, and had run off and got married; but all that was over. Young Pat had done the expected, swallowed the inevitable crookedness of the ring, and come back into it again.