The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (27 page)

“Will you show me how?”

Beano lit his smoke. “You ain’t goin’ to quit? Well, maybe I might show you, but why don’t you go to Mary McFadden? She’s got a trainin’ farm. Inherited it from her daddy. She’s got Dan Faherty out there. Ain’t no better trainer than him.”

“No.” Darby shook his head, digging his hands into, his coat pockets. “I don’t want to go there. I want you to show me.”

“Well,” Beano said. “I guess so.”

D
ARBY
M
C
G
RAW WAS
a lean six feet. His best weight was just over one hundred forty-five, but he was growing heavier. He had a shock of black, curly hair and a hard, brown face. The month before he had turned nineteen years old.

In the three weeks that followed his talk with Beano, he trained, hour after hour, and his training was mostly to stand properly, how to shift his feet, how to move forward and how to retreat.

He eked out a precarious existence with a few labor jobs and occasional workouts for which he was paid.

He saw nothing of Mary, but occasionally heard of her. He heard enough to know that she was considered to be a shrewd judge of fighters. Also, that she had arranged the training schedules of champions, that there was little she didn’t know about the boxing game, and that she was only twenty-two.

“Seems like a funny business for a girl,” he told Beano.

The Negro shrugged. “Maybe. Ain’t no business funny for no girl now. She stuck with what she knowed. Her daddy and her uncle, she heard them talkin’ fight for years, talkin’ it with ever’body big in business. She couldn’t help but know it. When her daddy was killed, she kept the trainin’ farm. It was a good business, and Dan Faherty’s like a father to her.”

Beano looked at him suddenly. “Got you a fight. Over to Justiceville. You go four rounds with Billy Greb.”

J
USTICEVILLE WAS
a tank town. There were about two thousand people in the crowd, however. Benny Seaman, crack middle, was fighting in the main go.

Darby went in at one hundred fifty. He was outweighed seven pounds. Beano leaned on the top rope and looked at him.

“You move around, see?” he instructed. “You jab him. No right hands, see?”

“All right,” Darby said.

The bell sounded and he went out fast. Greb came into him swinging and Darby was tempted. He jabbed. His left impaled Greb, stopping his charge. Darby jabbed again. Then he feinted a right and jabbed again. Billy kept piling in and swinging.

Just before the bell, Greb missed a right and Darby caught him in the chin with a short left hook. Greb hit the canvas with his knees. He was still shaken when he came out for the second. Darby walked in slowly. He feinted a right and made Greb’s knees wobble with another left. He jabbed twice, working cautiously. Then he feinted and hooked the left again. Greb’s feet shot out from under him and he hit flat on his face. He never wiggled during the count.

“With my left!” Darby said, astonished. “I knocked him out with my left!”

“Uh-huh. You got two hands,” Beano said. “But you got lots of work to do. Lots of work.”

“All right,” Darby said.

T
HE NEXT DAY
he met Mary McFadden on the street. They recognized each other at the same moment and she stopped.

“Hello,” he said. He felt himself blushing, and grinned sheepishly.

“Congratulations on your fight. I heard about you knocking out Bill Greb.”

“It wasn’t anything,” he said, “just a four round preliminary.”

“All fighters start at the bottom,” she told him.

“I had to find that out,” he admitted. “It wasn’t easy.”

“They want you back there, at Justiceville,” Mary said. “Mike McDonald was over at the camp yesterday. He said they wanted you to fight Marshall Collins.”

“Do you think I should?” He looked at her. “They tell me you know all about this boxing game.”

“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “I don’t at all.” She looked up at him. “Tell Beano not to take Collins. Tell him to insist on Augie Gordon.”

“But he’s a better fighter than Collins!” Darby exclaimed.

“Yes, he is. Much better. But that isn’t the question. Marshall Collins is very hard to fight. Augie Gordon is good, but he doesn’t take a punch very well. He will outpoint you for a few rounds, but you’ll hit him.”

“All right,” he said.

Mary smiled and held out her hand. “Why don’t you come out and work with us? We’d like to have you.”

“Can’t afford it,” he said. “Your camp is too expensive.”

“It wouldn’t be if you were fighting for us,” she said. “And Beano thinks you should be out there. He told me so. He’s worried. You’re causing him to work, and Beano likes to take his time about things.”

He grinned. “Well, maybe. Just to make it easy on Beano.” He started to turn away. “Say…” He hesitated and felt his face getting red. “Would you go to a show with me sometime?”

“You’re an attractive man, Darby…but right now this is business. Maybe later, if you’re still around.”

“I will be,” he stated.

“Then we both have something to look forward to.”

Darby walked off feeling light-headed, although he realized that he didn’t know what that “something” was.

A
UGIE
G
ORDON WAS FAST
. His left hand was faster than Mink Delano’s. He was shifty, too. Darby pulled his chin in and began to weave and bob as Beano had been teaching him. He lost the first round, but there was a red spot on Gordon’s side where Darby had landed four left hands.

Darby lost the second round, too, but the red spot on Augie’s ribs was bigger and redder, and Gordon was watching that left. Augie didn’t like them downstairs. Darby started working on Augie’s ribs in the third, and noticed that the other fighter was slower getting away. The body punches were taking it out of him.

Darby kept it up. He kept it up with drumming punches through the fourth. In the fifth he walked out and threw a left at the body, pulled it, and hooked high and hard for the chin. Augie had jerked his stomach back and his chin came down to meet Darby’s left. Augie Gordon turned halfway around before he hit the canvas.

He got up at nine, but he could barely continue. Remembering how Delano had stepped inside of his wild right-hand punches when he tried to finish him, Darby was cautious. He jabbed twice, then let Gordon see a chance to clinch. Augie moved in, and Darby met him halfway with a right uppercut that nearly tore his head off.

Mary was waiting for him when he climbed out of the ring. “Your left is getting better all the time,” she said.

Dan Faherty smiled at him. “Mary says you may be coming out to the farm. We’ve got some good boys to work with out there.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll come.” He grinned. “You two and Beano have made a believer out of me.”

He started for his dressing room feeling better than he ever had in his life. He had stopped Augie Gordon. He had stopped Billy Greb. It looked like he was on his way. But next he wanted Mink Delano. That was a black mark on his record and he wanted it wiped clear. He pushed open the door of his dressing room and stepped inside.

Fats Lakey was sitting in a chair across the room. He was smiling, but his little eyes were mean. With him were two husky, hard-faced men.

“Hello, kid,” Fats said softly. “Doin’ all right, I see.”

III

Beano’s face was a shade paler and he kept his eyes down. “Yeah,” Darby said, “I’m doing all right. What do you want?”

“Nothin’.” Fats laughed. “Nothin’ at all, right now. Of course, there’s a little matter of some money you owe me, but we can take that up later.”

“I owe you nothing!” Darby said angrily. He didn’t even start to take off his bandages. “You never did a thing for me but try to steal my end of the gate and run away without paying Beano. The less I see of you, the better. Now beat it!”

Fats smiled, but his lips were thin. “I’m not in any hurry, Darby,” he said. “When I get ready to go, I’ll go. And don’t get tough about it. I owe you a little something for that punch in the face you gave me, and if you don’t talk mighty quiet, I’ll let the boys here work you over.”

Darby pulled his belt tight and slid into his sweater. He looked from one to the other of Fat’s hard-faced companions, and suddenly he grinned.

“Those mugs?” he said, and laughed. “I could bounce ’em both without working up a sweat, and then stack you on top of them.”

One of the men straightened up and his face hardened. “Punk,” he said, “I don’t think I like you.”

“What do I do?” Darby snapped. “Shudder with sobs or something?”

“Take it easy, kid!” Fats said harshly. “Right now I want to talk business. I happen to know you’re going in there next with Mink Delano.”

“So what?”

“So you’ll beat him. With that left you’ve worked up, you’ll beat him. Then they’ll have something else for you. When the right time comes, we can do business, and when you’re ready, you’ll do it my way. If you don’t, bad things will happen to you and yours…. Get me?”

Fats got up, his face smug. “Wise punks don’t get tough with me, see? You’re just a country punk in a big town. If you want to play our way, you can make some dough. If you don’t act nice, we’ll see that you do.”

He turned to go. “And that McFadden floozy won’t help you none, either.”

Darby dropped one hand on the rubbing table and vaulted it, starting for Fats. The gambler’s face turned white and he jumped back.

“Take him, boys!” he yelled, his voice thin with fear. “Get him,
quick
!”

The bigger of the two men lunged to stop Darby, and McGraw uncorked a right hand that clipped him on the chin and knocked him against the wall with a thud. Then he leaped for Fats. But he had taken scarcely a step before something smashed down on his skull from behind. Great lights exploded in his brain and his knees turned to rubber.

He started to fall, but blind instinct forced stiffness into his legs, and he turned. Another blow hit him. He lashed out with his left, then his right, but suddenly Fats had sprung on his back, pinioning his arms. What happened after that, he never knew.

H
IS FACE FELT
wet and he struggled to get up, but somebody was holding him. “Just relax, son. Everything will be all right.” The voice was gentle, and he opened his eyes to see Dan Faherty on his knees beside him. “Lie still, kid. You’ve taken quite a beating,” Faherty said. “Who was it?”

“Fats Lakey and two other guys. Big guys. They had blackjacks. I hit one of ’em, but then Fats jumped on me and held my arms. I’ll kill him for that!”

“No you won’t. Forget it,” Faherty said quietly. “We’ll take care of them later.”

A week later he was in Mary McFadden’s gym, taking light exercise. Fats had been right in one thing. McDonald the promoter wanted him against Mink Delano in a semifinal. A warrant had been sworn out against Fats, but he seemed to be nowhere around. Beano, with a knot on his skull from where he, too, had been sapped, was working with Darby.

The gym at the McFadden Training Farm was a vastly different place from the dingy interior of the gym in the city. Higherman’s was old, the equipment worn, and fighters crowded the floors. This place was bright, the air was clean, and there were new bags, jump ropes, and strange exercise equipment that had come all the way from Germany.

In the week of light work before he moved on to heavier boxing, Dan Faherty worked with him every day, showing him new tricks and polishing his punching, his blocking, and his footwork.

“Balance is the main thing, Darby,” the older man advised. “Keep your weight balanced so you can move in any direction, and always be in position to punch. Footwork doesn’t mean a lot of dancing around. A good fighter never makes an unnecessary movement. He saves himself. There’s nothing fancy about scientific boxing. It’s simply a hard, cold-blooded system, moving the fastest and easiest way, punching to get the maximum force with minimum effort.

“There’s no such thing as a fighter born with know-how. He has to be a born fighter in that he has to have the heart and the innate love of the game. Then there is always a long process of schooling and training. Dempsey was just a big, husky kid with a right hand until Kearns got him and taught him how to use a left hook, and DeForest helped sharpen him up. Joe Louis would still be working in an automobile plant in Detroit if Jack Blackburn hadn’t spent long months of work with him.”

Darby McGraw skipped rope, shadowboxed, punched the light and heavy bags, and worked in the gym with big men and small men. He learned how to slip and ride punches, learned how to feint properly, how to make openings, and how to time his punches correctly.

“That Fats,” Beano told him one night, “he’s a bad one. A boy I know told me Fats is tied in with Art Renke.”

“Renke?” Faherty had overheard the remark. “That’s bad. Renke is one of the biggest and crookedest gamblers around, and he has a hand in several rackets.”

T
HE ARENA WAS FULL
when Darby crawled through the ropes for his fight with Mink Delano. Since beating him, Mink had gone on to win five straight fights, two of them by knockouts. He had beaten Marshall Collins and Sandy Crocker, two tough middleweights who were ranked among the best in the area.