“All right,” was the unexpected response, rumbled apathetically from the deep chest.
“And fight like hell,” the old man added.
Again Stubener felt disappointment at the absence of flash and fire in the young man’s eyes as he answered:
“All right. When do we start?”
“Oh, Sam, here, he’ll be wantin’ a little huntin’ and to fish a bit, as well as to try you out with the gloves.” He looked at Sam, who nodded. “Suppose you strip and give’m a taste of your quality.”
An hour later, Sam Stubener had his eyes opened. An ex-fighter himself, a heavyweight at that, he was even a better judge of fighters, and never had he seen one strip to like advantage.
“See the softness of him,” old Pat chanted. “’Tis the true stuff. Look at the slope of the shoulders, an’ the lungs of him. Clean, all clean, to the last drop an’ ounce of him. You’re lookin’ at a man, Sam, the like of which was never seen before. Not a muscle of him bound. No weight-lifter or Sandow exercise artist there. See the fat snakes of muscles a-crawlin’ soft an’ lazy-like. Wait till you see them flashin’ like a strikin’ rattler. He’s good for forty rounds this blessed instant, or a hundred. Go to it! Time!”
They went to it, for three-minute rounds with a minute rests, and Sam Stubener was immediately undeceived. Here was no streak of fat, no apathy, only a lazy, good-natured play of gloves and tricks, with a brusk stiffness and harsh sharpness in the contacts that he knew belonged only to the trained and instinctive fighting man.
“Easy, now, easy,” old Pat warned. “Sam’s not the man he used to be.”
This nettled Sam, as it was intended to do, and he played his most famous trick and favorite punch—a feint for a clinch and a right rip to the stomach. But, quickly as it was delivered, young Pat saw it, and, though it landed, his body was going away. The next time, his body did not go away. As the rip started, he moved forward and twisted his left hip to meet it. It was only a matter of several inches, yet it blocked the blow. And thereafter, try as he would, Stubener’s glove got no farther than that hip.