“He’s asleep,” said Mamie.
She picked him up gently and carried him out.
“He’s a champeen at that too,” said Steve. “I had to pull him out of the hay this morning. Well, I guess he’s earned it. He’s had a busy day.”
“What happened then, Steve?”
“Why, after that there wasn’t a thing to it. Whiting, poor simp, couldn’t see it. ‘Betcha ten dollars my kid wins,’ he hollers. ‘He’s got him going.’ ‘Take you,’ I shouts; and at that moment the scrappy kid sees it’s all over, so he does the old business of fouling, same as his pop done when he fought Tommy King. It’s in the blood, I guess. He takes and scratches poor Bill on the cheek.”
“That was enough for me. I jumps in. ‘All over,’ I says. ‘My kid wins on a foul.’ ‘Foul nothing,’ says Whiting. ‘It was an accident, and you lose because you jumped into the fight, same as Connie McVey did when Corbett fought Sharkey. Think you can get away with it, pulling that old-time stuff?’ I didn’t trouble to argue with him. ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘is that it? Say, just take a slant at your man. If you don’t stop him quick he’ll be in Texas.’
“For the scrappy kid was beating it while the going was good and was half a mile away, running hard. Well, that was enough even for the Whiting guy. ‘I guess we’ll call it a draw,’ he says, ‘and all bets off.’ I just looks at him and says, quite civil and polite: ‘You darned half-baked slob of a rough-house scrapper,’ I says, ‘it ain’t a draw or anything like it. My kid wins, and I’ll trouble you now to proceed to cash in with the dough, or else I’m liable to start something.’ So he paid up, and I took the White Hope indoors and give him a wash and brush-up, and we cranks up the bubble and hikes off to the town and spends the money on getting food for the celebration supper. And what’s over I slips into the kid’s pocket and says: ‘That’s your first winner’s end, kid, and you’ve earned it.’”
Steve paused and filled his glass.
“I’m on the waggon as a general thing nowadays,” he said; “but I reckon this an occasion. Right here is where we drink his health.”
And, overcome by his emotion, he burst into discordant song.