The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (24 page)

Soon the fans were beginning to talk him up and the sportswriters were hearing stories of Tandy Moore.

“How soon do I get a chance at Reiser?” Tandy demanded, one night in their room.

Gus looked at him thoughtfully. “You shouldn’t fight Reiser for a year,” he said, and then added, “You’ve got something against him? What is it?”

“I just want to get in there with him. I owe him something, and I want to make sure he gets it!”

“Well,” Gus said, looking at his cigar, “we’ll see.”

A little later, Gus asked, “Have you seen that girl lately, the one who used to work in the restaurant?”

Tandy, trying not to show interest, shrugged and shook his head.

“No. Why should I see her?”

“She was a pretty girl,” Gus said. “Seemed to sort of like you, too.”

“She went to the fights with Reiser.”

“So what? That doesn’t make her his girl, does it?” Gus demanded. “Did you ask her to go? I could have snagged a couple of ducats to bring her and a friend.”

Tandy didn’t answer.

Gus took the cigar from his teeth, changed the subject abruptly.

“The trouble is,” he said, “you got Reiser on your mind, and I don’t know just how good you are. Sometimes when a man wants something awful bad, he improves pretty fast. In the short time we’ve been together, you’ve learned more than any scrapper I ever knew. But it’s mighty important right now that I know how good you are.”

Tandy looked up from the magazine he was thumbing. “Why now?”

“We’ve got an offer. Flat price of five grand, win, lose, or draw, for ten rounds with Buster Crane.”

“Crane?” Tandy dropped the magazine he was holding to the tabletop. “That guy held Reiser to a draw. He had him on the floor!”

“That’s the one. He’s good, too. He can box and he can hit, and he’s fast. The only thing is, I’m kind of suspicious.”

Briggs, who had been listening, looked up thoughtfully. “You mean you think it’s a frame?”

“I think Bernie Satneck, Reiser’s manager, would frame his own mother,” Gus answered. “I think he’s gettin’ scared of the kid here. Tandy wants Reiser, an’ Satneck knows it. He’s no fool, an’ the kid has been bowling them over ever since he started, so what’s more simple than to get him a scrap with Crane when the kid is green? If Crane beats him bad, he is finished off and no trouble for Satneck.”

Conscious of Tandy Moore’s intent gaze, he turned toward him. “What is it, kid?”

“Satneck, I want to take him down, too! Him and his brother.”

“I didn’t know he had a brother,” Briggs said.

“He may have a dozen for all I know,” Gus said.

“Go ahead,” Tandy said, “take that fight. I’ll be ready.” He grinned suddenly. “Five thousand? That’s more than we’ve made in all of them, so far.”

He walked out and closed the door. Briggs sat still for a while, then he got up and started out himself.

“Where you goin’?” Gus asked suspiciously.

“Why,” Briggs said gently, “I’m getting very curious. I thought I’d go find out if Satneck has a brother and what they have to do with our boy here.”

“Yeah,” Gus said softly, “I see what you mean.”

T
HE MONTH THAT FOLLOWED
found Tandy Moore in Wiley Spivey’s gym six days a week. They were in Portland now, across the river from downtown and back in Tandy’s home territory, although he mentioned this to no one. He worked with fighters of every size and style, with sluggers and boxers, with skilled counterpunchers. He listened to Gus pick flaws in their styles, and he studied slow-motion pictures of Crane’s fights with Reiser.

He knew Buster Crane was good. He was at least a hundred percent better than any fighter Tandy had yet tackled. Above all, he could hit.

Briggs wasn’t around. Tandy commented on that and Gus said, “Briggs? He’s away on business, but will be back before the fight.”

“He’s quiet, isn’t he? Known him long?”

“Twelve years, about. He’s a dangerous man, kid. He was bodyguard for a politician with enemies, then he was a private dick. He was with the O.S.S. during the war, and he was a partner of mine when we had that trouble with Satneck and Reiser.”

IV

Tandy Moore stopped on the corner and looked down the street toward the river, but he was thinking of Buster Crane. That was the only thing that was important now. He must, at all costs, beat Crane.

Walking along, he glimpsed his reflection in a window and stopped abruptly. He saw a tall, clean-shaven, well-built young man with broad shoulders and a well-groomed look. He looked far better, he decided, than the rough young man who had eaten the steak that day in the restaurant and looked up into the eyes of Dorinda Lane.

Even as his thoughts repeated the name, he shied violently from it, yet he had never forgotten her. She was always there, haunting his thoughts. Remembering her comments, he never shaved but that he thought of her.

He had not seen her since that night when she came to the fight with Stan Reiser. And she hadn’t worked at the restaurant in Astoria anymore after he returned from Klamath Falls.

Restlessly, Tandy Moore paced the streets, thinking first of Dorinda and then of Stan Reiser and all that lay behind it.

It was his driving urge to meet Reiser in the ring that made him so eager to learn from Gus. But it was more than that, too, for he had in him a deep love of combat, of striving, of fighting for something. But what?

G
US
C
OE WAS SITTING
in the hotel lobby when Tandy walked in. Gus seemed bigger than ever, well, he was fatter, and looked prosperous now. He grinned at Tandy and said something out of the corner of his mouth to Briggs, who was sitting, and the Irishman got up; his square face warm with a smile.

“How are you, Tandy?” he said quietly.

“Hey, Briggsie, welcome back.” He glanced at Gus. “Say, let’s go to a nightclub tonight. I want to get out and look around.”

“The kid’s got an idea,” Briggs said. “We’ll go to Nevada Johnson’s place. He’s putting on the fight and it’ll be good for the kid to be seen there. We can break it up early enough so he can get his rest. It would do us all good to relax a little.”

Gus shrugged. “Okay.”

The place was fairly crowded, but they got a table down front, and they were hardly seated before the orchestra started to play, and then the spotlight swung onto a girl who was singing.

Gus looked up sharply, and Tandy’s face was shocked and still, for the girl outlined by the spotlight was Dorinda Lane.

Tandy stared, and then he swallowed a sudden lump in his throat. Her voice was low and very beautiful, and he had never dreamed she could look so lovely. He sat entranced until her song ended, and then he looked over at Gus.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“Wait—” Gus caught his wrist, for the spotlight had swung to their table and the master of ceremonies gestured toward him.

“We have a guest with us tonight, ladies and gentlemen! A guest we are very proud to welcome! Tandy Moore, that rising young heavyweight who meets Buster Crane tomorrow night!”

Tandy looked trapped but took an uneasy bow. The spotlight swung away from him, and Gus leaned over.

“Nice going, kid,” he said. “You looked good. Do you still want to go?”

They started for the door, and then Tandy looked over and saw Bernie Satneck sitting at a table on the edge of the floor. Reiser was with him, and another man who was a younger tougher version of the manager! Tandy locked his eyes forward and walked toward the lobby.

At the door he was waiting for Gus and Briggs to get their hats, when he heard a rustle of silk and looked around into Dorinda’s face.

“Were you going to leave without seeing me?” she asked, holding out her hand.

He hesitated, his face flushing. Why did she have to be so beautiful and so desirable? He jerked his head toward the dining room.

“Stan Reiser’s in there,” he said. “Isn’t he your boyfriend?”

Her eyes flashed her resentment. “No, he’s not! And he never was! If you weren’t so infernally stubborn, Tandy Moore, I’d have…”

“So, how did you get this job?”

Her face went white, and the next thing, her palm cracked across his mouth. The cigarette girl turned, her eyes wide, and the headwaiter started to hurry over, but Gus Coe arrived just in time. Catching Tandy’s arm, he rushed him out the door.

Tandy was seething with anger, but anger more at himself than her. After all, it was a rotten thing for him to say. Maybe that hadn’t been the way of it. And if it had, well, he’d been hungry himself. He was still hungry, no longer for food now, but for other things. And then the thought came to him that he was still hungry for her, Dorinda Lane.

T
HE CROWD WAS JAMMED
to the edge of the ring when he climbed through the ropes the next night. His face was a somber mask. He heard the dull roar of thousands of people, and ducked his head to them and hurried to his corner.

In the center of the ring during the referee’s briefing, he got his first look at Buster Crane, a heavyweight with twenty more pounds than his own one-ninety, but almost an inch shorter, and with arms even longer.

When the bell rang, he shut his jaws on his mouthpiece and turned swiftly. Crane was moving toward him, his eyes watchful slits under knitted brows. Crane had a shock of white blond hair and a wide face, but the skin was tight over the bones.

Crane moved in fast, feinted, then hooked high and hard. The punch was incredibly fast and Tandy caught it on the temple, but he was going away from it. Even so, it shook him to his heels, and with a queer kind of thrill, he realized that no man he had ever met had punched like Buster Crane. He was in for a battle.

Tandy jabbed, then jabbed again. He missed a right cross and Crane was inside slamming both hands into his body. He backed up, giving ground. He landed a left to the head, drilled a right down the center that missed, then shook Buster up with a short left hook to the head.

From there on, the battle was a surging struggle of two hard-hitting young men filled with a zest for combat. The second round opened with a slashing attack from Crane that drove Tandy into the ropes, but his long weeks of schooling had done their job and he covered up, clinched, and saved himself. He played it easy on the defensive for the remainder of the round.

The third, fourth, and fifth rounds were alike, with vicious toe-to-toe scrapping every bit of the way. Coming out for the sixth, Tandy Moore could feel the lump over his eye, and he was aware that Crane’s left hook was landing too often. Thus far, Crane was leading by a margin, and it was that hook that was doing it.

A moment later the same left hook dropped out of nowhere and Tandy’s heels flew up and he sat down hard.

Outside the ring, the crowd was a dull roar and he rolled over on his hands and knees, unable to hear the count. He glanced toward his corner and saw Gus holding up four, then five fingers. He waited until the ninth finger came up, and then he got to his feet and backed away.

Crane moved in fast and sure. He had his man hurt and he knew it. He didn’t look so good or feel so good himself, and was conscious that he wanted only one thing, to get this guy out of action before he had his head ripped off.

Crane feinted a left, then measured Moore with it, but Tandy rolled inside the punch and threw a left to the head, which missed. Crane stepped around carefully and then tried again. This time he threw his left hook, but Tandy Moore was ready. He remembered what he had been taught, and when he saw that hook start, he threw his own right inside of it.

With the right forearm partially blocking, his fist crashed down on Crane’s chin with a shock that jarred Tandy to the shoulder!

Buster Crane hit the canvas on his face, rolled over, and then climbed slowly to his knees. At nine he made it, but just barely.

Tandy walked toward him looking him over carefully. Crane was a puncher and he was hurt, which made him doubly dangerous. Tandy tried a tentative left, and Crane brushed it aside and threw his own left hook from the inside. Tandy had seen him use the punch in the newsreel pictures he had studied, and the instant it started, he pulled the trigger on his own right, a short, wicked hook at close range.

Crane hit the canvas and this time he didn’t get up.

When he was dressed, Tandy walked with Gus Coe to the promoter’s office to get the money. Briggs strolled along, his hands in his pockets, just behind them.

When they opened the door, Tandy’s skin tightened, for Stan Reiser and Bernie Satneck were sitting at a table with a tall, gray-haired man whom Tandy instantly recognized as “Nevada” Johnson, the biggest fight promoter in the Northwest.

The rest of the room was crowded with sportswriters.

“Nice fight, tonight, Moore,” Johnson said. “We’ve been waiting for you. How would you like to fight for the title?”

“The championship?” Tandy was incredulous. “Sure, I’d like to fight for it! But don’t I get to fight him first?”

He gestured at Reiser and saw the big heavyweight’s eyes turn ugly.

“See?” Nevada Johnson said to Satneck. “He’s not only ready, but anxious to fight your boy. You say that Reiser deserves a title bout. Six months ago, I would have said the same thing, but now the situation has changed. Moore has made a sensational rise from nothing, although knowing Coe was his manager, I’m not surprised.”