Johnny's entrance a few minutes later was still more effective and his reception warmer. Fight fans are courtiers, always with the king.
When the two boys stripped, Johnny showed short and stocky, the Kid lank and lithe. Johnny depended on his punch, the Kid on his reach.
They fought ten rounds and it was called a draw, probably a just decision inasmuch as the adherents of each contestant proclaimed that the referee had been corrupted against their man.
Besides, a draw meant another fight between them with plenty of money in the house.
This evening in fistiana was perhaps the most powerful single experience which influenced Al at this period of his life. For a long time he sat silent beside Moxey on the return trip, pondering the physical beauty of Johnny and the Kid and ruefully comparing their bodies with his own.
He sighed, "And now I s'pose your cousin'll go out and kill it to-night!"
"Not him," Moxey reassured; "he never touches it in any form or shape, understand."
"He's training all the time?" continued Al, bent on deciphering the secret ways of greatness.
"Yep. So you might say."
"Oh," then Al relapsed into silence to wrestle with the angel of training all the time.