The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (18 page)

When I look back, I almost drop the water bottle, for right behind me is that big dark guy who has been doing duty right outside our door, and behind him is a crowd of the toughest looking cookies you ever saw. They are big, hard-looking guys with swarthy faces, square jaws, and heavy black eyebrows.

While Bambo takes his stool, I see them filing into the empty seats behind Sloppy, and believe me they are the toughest crowd that ever walked. I ain’t seen none of them before. And except for one or two, they ain’t such flashy dressers as most of Dilbecker’s usual gun guys, but they are bigger, tougher, and meaner looking and when Cotton touches me on the arm, I let a yip out of me and come damn near pulling a faint right there. Who wouldn’t, with about fifty of those gun guys watching you?

W
HEN
I
LOOK
around, Emedasco is already in the ring. He is a big mug weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds and standing not over six feet seven inches!

We walk out for instructions, and as the bunch of us come together in the center of the ring, Bambo hauls off and takes a swing at Dead-Shot’s chin that missed by the flicker of an eyelash. Before we can stop them, Emedasco slammed a jarring right to Bambo’s head, and Bambo came back with a stiff left to the midsection! Finally we got them separated, and I tell Bambo to hold it until the fight starts, and when the bell rings we are still arguing.

Emedasco charged out of his corner like a mad bull and takes a swing at Bamoulian that would have torn his head off had it landed, but Bambo ducked and sank a wicked left into the big boy’s stomach. Then, as Emedasco followed with a clubbing right to the head, he clinched, and they wrestled around the ring until the referee broke them. They sparred for a second or two, and then Bambo cut loose with a terrific right swing that missed, but hit the referee on the side of the head and knocked him completely out of the ring and into the press benches.

Then those two big lugs stood flat-footed in the center of the ring and slugged like a couple of maniacs with a delirious crowd on its feet screaming bloody murder. Emedasco was a good sixty pounds heavier, but he was in a spot that night, for if ever a man wanted to fight, it was my Bambo Bamoulian.

I was so excited by the fight that I forgot all about Dilbecker, or what might happen if Bamoulian won, which looked like it could happen now.

When the next bell sounded, Bambo was off his stool and across the ring with a left he started clear from his own corner, and it knocked Emedasco into the ropes. But that big boy was nobody’s palooka, and when he came back, it was with a volley of hooks, swings, and uppercuts that battered Bambo back across the ring, where he was slammed to the floor with a powerful right to the beezer.

The dumbfounded crowd, who had come to see Emedasco knock over another setup, were on their chairs yelling like mad, seeing a regular knock-down-and-drag-out brawl like everybody hopes to see and rarely finds. Bambo was right in his element. He knocked Dead-Shot Emedasco staggering with a hard left to the head, slammed a right to the body, and then dropped his hands and laughed at him. But Emedasco caught himself up and with one jump was back with a punch that would have shook Gilbraltar to its base. The next thing I know, Bambo is stretched on his shoulder blades in my corner, as flat as a busted balloon.

I lean over the ropes and yell for him to get up, and you could have knocked me cold with an ax when he turns around and says, grinning, “I don’t have to get up till he counts nine, do I?”

At nine he’s up, and as Emedasco rushes into him, I yell, “Hit him in the wind! Downstairs! In the stomach!”

Holding the raging Emedasco off with one hand while the big guy punches at him like a crazy man, my prize beauty leans over and says, “What did you say, huh?”

“Hit him in the stomach, you sap!” I bellowed. “Hit him in the stomach!”

“Oooh, I get it!” he says. “You mean hit him in the stomach!” And drawing back his big right fist, he fired it like a torpedo into Emedasco’s heaving midsection.

With a grunt like a barn had fell on him, Emedasco spun halfway around and started to drop. But before he could hit the canvas, Bambo stepped in and slammed both hands to the chin, and Emedasco went flying like a bum out of the Waldorf, and stayed down and stayed out.

We hustled back to the dressing room with the crowd cheering so loud you could have heard them in Sarawak, wherever that is, and believe me, I am in a sweat to get out of there.

As we rush by, I hear a wild yell from the big ugly guy who has had his eye on me all evening, and when I glance back that whole crowd is coming for me like a lot of madmen, so I dive into the dressing room and slam the door.

“Hey, what’s the idea?” Bambo demands. “Somebody might want to come in!”

“That’s just what I’m afraid of!” I cry. “The hallway is full of guys that want to come in!”

“But my brother’s out there!” Bambo insists, and jerks the door open, and before you could spell Dnepropetrovak, the room is full of those big, tough-looking guys.

I make a break for the door, but my toe hooked in the corner of Bambo’s bathrobe, which has fallen across a chair, and I do a nosedive to the floor. The gun goes sliding. Then something smacks me on the dome, and I go out like a light.

When I came to, Bambo is standing over me, and the guy with the black eyes is holding my head.

“Awright, you got me! I give up!” I said. “You got me, now make the most of it.”

“Say, you gone nuts?” Bambo squints at me. “What’s eatin’ you, anyway? Snap out of it, I want you t’ meet my brother!”

“Your who?” I yelps. “You don’t mean to tell me this guy is your brother?”

“Sure, he came to see me fight. All these guys, they my people. We come from the Balkans together, so they come to see me fight. They work on the docks with me.”

I
AM STILL LAUGHING
when we drop in at the Green Fan for some midnight lunch, and it isn’t until we are all set down that I remember it is one of Sloppy Dilbecker’s places. Just when I find I am not laughing anymore from thinking of that, who should come up but Swivel-Neck Hogan. Only he is different now, and he walks plenty careful, and edges up to my table like he is scared to death.

“Mr. McGuire?” he says.

“Well, what is it?” I bark at him. I don’t know why he should be scared, but bluff is always best. And if he is scared, he must be scared of something, and if a gun guy like Swivel-Neck is calling me mister, he must be scared of me, so I act real tough.

“Sloppy—I mean Diamond-Back—said to tell youse he was just ribbing this afternoon. He ain’t wantin’ no trouble, and how would youse like to cut in on the laundry an’ protection racket with him? He says youse got a nice bunch of gun guys, but there is room enough for all of youse.”

For a minute I stare at him like he’s nuts, and then it dawns on me. I look around at those big, hard-boiled dock workers, guys who look like they could have started the Great War, because, when it comes right down to it…they did. I look back at Swivel-Neck.

“Nothing doing, you bum. Go an’ tell Sloppy I ain’t wanting none of his rackets. I got bigger an’ better things to do. But tell him to lay off me, see? And that goes for you, too! One wrong crack an’ I’ll have the Montenegran Mafia down on you, get me?”

He starts away, but suddenly I get an inspiration. Nothing like pushing your luck when the game is going your way.

“Hey!” I yells. “You tell Sloppy Dilbecker that my boys say they want the treats on the house t’night, an’ tell him to break out the best champagne and cigars he’s got, or else! Understand!”

I lean back in my chair and slip my thumbs into the armholes of my vest. I wink at Bambo Bamoulian, and grin.

“All it takes is brains, my boy, brains.”

“Yeah? How did you find that out?” he asks.

Sideshow Champion

W
hen Mark Lanning looked at me and asked if I would take the Ludlow fight, I knew what he was thinking, and just what he had in mind. He also knew that there was only one answer I could give.

“Sure, I’ll take it,” I said. “I’ll fight Van Ludlow any place, for money, marbles, or chalk.”

But it was going to be for money. Lanning knew that, for that’s what the game is about. Also, it had to be money because I was right behind the eight ball for lack of it.

Telling the truth: if I hadn’t needed the cash as bad as I did, I would never have taken the fight. Not me, Danny McClure.

I’d been ducking Ludlow for two years. Not because I didn’t want a shot at the title, but because of Lanning and some of the crowd behind him.

Mark Lanning had moved in on the fight game in Zenith by way of the slot machine racket. He was a short, fat man who wore a gold-plated coin on his watch chain. That coin fascinated me. It was so much like the guy himself, all front and polish, and underneath about as cheap as they come.

However, Mark Lanning was
the
promoter in Zenith. And Duck Miller, who was manager for Van Ludlow, was merely an errand boy for Mark. About the only thing Lanning didn’t control in the fight game by that time was me. I was the uncrowned middleweight champ and everybody said I was the best boy in the division. Without taking any bows, I can say yes to that one.

The champ, Gordie Carrasco, was strictly from cheese. He won the title on a foul, skipped a couple of tough ones, and beat three boys on decisions. Not that he couldn’t go. Nobody ever gets within shouting distance of any kind of title unless he’s good. But Gordie wasn’t as good as Ludlow by a long ways. He wasn’t as good as Tommy Spalla, either. And he wasn’t as good as me.

Ludlow was a different kinda deal. I give the guy that. He had everything and maybe a little more. Now no real boxer ever believes anybody is really better than he is. Naturally, I considered myself to be the better fighter. But he was good, just plenty good, and anybody who beat him would have to go the distance and give it all he had. Van Ludlow was fast. He was smart, and he could punch. Added to it, he was one of the dirtiest fighters in the business.

That wasn’t so bad. A lot of good fighters have been rough. It isn’t always malicious. It’s just they want to win. It’s just the high degree of competitive instinct, and because among top grade fighting men the fight’s the thing, and a rule here or there doesn’t matter so much. Jack Dempsey never failed to use every advantage in the book, so did Harry Greb, and for my money they were two of the best who ever lived.

If it had just been Ludlow, I’d have fought him long ago. It was Lanning I was ducking. Odd as it may seem, I’m an honest guy. Now I’ve carried a losing fighter or two when it really didn’t matter much, but I never gypped a bettor, and my fights weren’t for sale. Nor did I ever buy any myself. I won them in the ring and liked it that way.

The crowd around Lanning was getting a stranglehold on the fight game. I didn’t like to see that bunch of crooks, gunmen, and chiselers edging in everywhere. I had ducked the fights with Ludlow because I knew that when I went in there with him, I was the last chance honest fighting had in Zenith or anywhere nearby. I was going to be fighting every dirty trick Lanning and his crowd could figure out. The referee and the judges would be against me. The timekeeper would be for Ludlow. If there was any way Lanning could get me into the ring without a chance, he’d try it.

Yet, I was taking the fight.

The reason was simple enough. My ranch, the only thing in the world I cared about, was mortgaged to the hilt. I’d blown my savings on that ranch, then put a mortgage on it to stock it and build a house and some barns. If it hadn’t been for Korea, it would have been paid off. But I was in the army, and Mark Lanning located that note and bought it.

The mortgage was due, and I didn’t have even part of a payment. Without that ranch, I was through. My days in the ring weren’t numbered, but from where I stood I could see the numbers. I’d been fighting fourteen years, and Lanning had the game sewed up around there, so nobody fought unless they would do business. I cared more about that ranch than I did the title, so I could take a pass on Gordie Carrasco. But Van Ludlow couldn’t. Lanning had him aimed at Gordie but he wouldn’t look so good wearing the belt if the man all the sportswriters called “the uncrowned champ” wasn’t taken down, too. Lanning now had it all lined up. I had to fight or give up on my future.

And then, there was Marge Hamlin.

Marge was my girl. We met right after I mustered out, when I first returned to Zenith. She was singing at the Rococo, and a honey if there ever was one. We started going together, became engaged, and were going to marry in the summer.

I
had
to take the fight. That was more the truth of it.

I went over to Lanning’s. Duck Miller was there. We talked.

“Then,” Lanning said, smiling his greasy smile, “there’s the matter of an appearance forfeit.”

“What d’you mean?” I asked. “Ever know of me running out on a fight?”

He moved one pudgy hand over to the ashtray and knocked off the gray ashes from his expensive cigar. “It ain’t that, Danny,” he said smoothly, “it’s just business. Van’s already got his up to five thousand dollars.”

“Five thousand?” I couldn’t believe what I heard. “Where would I get five thousand dollars? If I had five thousand you would never get me within a city block of any of your fights.”

“That’s what it has to be,” he replied, and his eyes got small and ugly. He liked putting the squeeze on. “You can put up your car an’ your stock from the ranch.”

For a minute I stared at him. He knew what that meant as well as I did. It would mean that come snakes or high water, I would have to be in that ring to fight Ludlow. If I wasn’t, I’d be flat broke, not a thing in the world but the clothes on my back.

Not that I’d duck a fight. But there are such things as cut eyes and sickness.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll put ’em up. But I’m warnin’ you. Better rig this one good. Because I’m going to get you!”

I wasn’t the bragging kind, and I saw Duck Miller looked a little worried. Duck was smart enough, just weak. He liked the easy dough, and the easy money in Zenith all came through Mark Lanning. Lanning was shrewd and confident. He had been winning a long time. Duck Miller had never won, so Miller could worry.

The thing was, Miller knew me. There had been a time when Duck and I had been broke together. We ran into some trouble out West when a tough mob tried to arrange one of my fights to make a cleanup. I refused to go along, and they said it was take the money or else.

Me, I’m a funny guy. I don’t like getting pushed around, and I don’t like threats. In that one, everybody had figured the fight would go the distance. This guy was plenty tough. Everybody figured me for the nod, but nobody figured he would stop me or I’d stop him. The wise boys had it figured for me to go in the tank in the sixth round.

I came to that fight all rodded up. They figure a fighter does it with his hands or no way. But these hombres forgot I’m a western man myself, and didn’t figure on me packing some iron.

Coming out of the Arizona Strip, the way I do, I grew up with a gun. So I came down to that fight, and when this Rock Spenter walked out of his corner I feinted a left and Rock threw a right. My right fist caught him coming in, and my left hook caught him falling. And at the ten count, he hadn’t even wiggled a toe.

I went down the aisle to the dressing room on the run, and when the door busted open, I was sitting on the rubbing table with a six-shooter in my mitt. Those three would-be hard guys turned greener than a new field of alfalfa, and then I tied two of them up, put the gun down, and went to work on the boss.

When I got through with him, I turned the others loose one at a time. Two of them were hospital cases. By that time the sheriff was busting down the door.

That old man had been betting on me, and when I explained, he saw the light very quickly. The sure-thing boys got stuck for packing concealed weapons, and one of them turned out to be wanted for armed robbery and wound up with ten years.

I’m not really bragging. I’m not proud of some of the circles I’ve traveled in or some of the things I’ve done. But I just wanted you to know what Duck Miller knew. And Duck may have been a loser, but he never lost anything but money. So far, he was still a stand-up guy.

When I had closed the door I heard Duck speak. “You shouldn’t have done it, Mark,” he said. “He won’t take a pushing around.”

“Him?” Contempt was thick in Lanning’s voice. “He’ll take it, and he’ll like it!”

Would I? I walked out of there and I was sore. But that day, for the first time in months, I was in the gym.

The trouble was, I’d been in the service, spent my time staring through a barbed-wire fence in a part of Korea that was like Nevada with the heat turned off, and during that time I’d done no boxing. Actually, it was over three years since I’d had a legitimate scrap.

Van Ludlow had a busted eardrum or something and he had been fighting all the time. It takes fights to sharpen a man up, and they knew that. Don’t think they didn’t. They wanted me in the tank or out of the picture, but bad. Not that Van cared. Ludlow, like I said, was a fighter. He didn’t care where his opponent came from or what he looked like.

M
ARGE WAS WAITING
for me, sitting in her car in front of the Primrose Cafe. We locked the car and went inside and when we were sitting in the booth, she smiled at me.

Marge was a blonde, and a pretty one. She was shaped to please and had a pair of eyes you could lose yourself in. Except for one small thing, she was perfect. There was just a tiny bit of hardness around her mouth. It vanished when she smiled, and that was often.

“How was it?” she asked me.

“Rough,” I said. “I’m fighting Van in ninety days. Also,” I added, “he made me post an appearance forfeit. I had to put it up, and it meant mortgaging my car and my stock on the ranch.”

“He’s got you, hasn’t he?” Marge asked.

I smiled then. It’s always easy to fight when you’re backed in a corner and there’s only one way out.

“No,” I said, “he hasn’t got me. The trouble with these smart guys, they get too sure of themselves. Duck Miller is a smarter guy than Lanning.”

“Duck?” Marge was amazed. “Why, he’s just a stooge!”

“Yeah, I know. But I’ll lay you five to one he’s got a little dough in the bank, and well, he’ll never wind up in stir. Lanning will.”

“Why do you say that?” Marge asked quickly. “Have you got something on him?”

“Uh-uh. But I’ve seen his kind before.”

L
IKE
I
SAY
, I went to the gym that day. The next, too. I did about eight rounds of light work each of those two days. When I wanted to box, on the third day, there wasn’t anybody to work with. There were a dozen guys of the right size around, but they were through working, didn’t want to box that day, or weren’t feeling good. It was a runaround.

If I’d had money, I could have imported some sparring partners and worked at the ranch, but I didn’t. However, there were a couple of big boys out there who had fooled with the mitts some, and I began to work with them. Several times Duck Miller dropped by, and I knew he was keeping an eye on me for Lanning. This work wasn’t doing me any good. I knew it, and he knew it.

Marge drove out on the tenth day in a new canary-colored coupe. One of those sleek convertible jobs. She had never looked more lovely. She watched me work, and when I went over to lean on the door, she looked at me.

“This won’t get it, Danny,” she said. “These hicks aren’t good enough for you.”

“I know,” I said honestly, “but I got a plan.”

“What is it?” she asked curiously.

“Maybe a secret,” I told her.

“From me?” she pouted. “I like to know everything about you, Danny.”

She did all right. Maybe it was that hardness around her mouth. Or put it down that I’m a cautious guy. I brushed it off, and although she came back to the subject twice, I slipped every question like they were left-hand leads. And that night, I had Joe, my hand from the ranch, drive me down to Cartersville, and there I caught a freight.

T
HE
G
REATER
A
MERICAN
S
HOWS
were playing county fairs through the Rocky Mountain and prairie states. I caught up with them three days after leaving the ranch. Old Man Farley was standing in front of the cook tent when I walked up. He took one look and let out a yelp.

“No names, Pop,” I warned. “I’m Bill Banner, a ham an’ egg pug, looking for work. I want a job in your athletic show, taking on all comers.”

“Are you crazy?” he demanded, low voiced. “Danny McClure, you’re the greatest middleweight since Ketchell, an’ you want to work with a carnival sideshow?”

Briefly, I explained the pitch. “Well,” he said, “you won’t find much competition, but like you say, you’ll be fightin’ every night, tryin’ all the time. Buck’s on the show, too. He’d like to work with you.”

Almost fifteen years before, a husky kid, just off a cow ranch in the Strip, I’d joined the Greater American in Las Vegas. Buck Farley, the old man’s kid, soon became my best pal.

An ex-prizefighter on the show taught us to box, and in a few weeks they started me taking on all corners. I stayed with the show two years and nine months, and in that time must have been in the ring with eight or nine hundred men.

Two, three, sometimes four a night wanted to try to pick up twenty-five bucks by staying four rounds. When I got better, the show raised it to a hundred. Once in a while we let them stay, but that was rare, and only when the crowd was hot and we could pack them in for the rest of the week by doing it.

When I moved on, I went pro and had gone to the top. After three years, I was ranking with the first ten. A couple of years later I was called the uncrowned champ.

“Hi, Bill!” Buck Farley had been tipped off before he saw me. “How’s it going?”