The Abysmal Brute by Jack London (best books to read for teens .txt) 📖

was a heavyweight, noted locally for his cleverness. When the gong for the first round sounded, both men met in the center of the ring. Neither rushed. Nor did they strike a blow. They felt around each other, their arms bent, their gloves so close together that they almost touched. This lasted for perhaps five seconds. Then it happened, and so quickly that not one in a hundred of the audience saw. Rufe Mason made a feint with his right. It was obviously not a real feint, but a feeler, a mere tenative threatening of a possible blow. It was at this instant that Pat losed his punch. So close together were they that the distance the blow traveled was a scant eight inches. It was a short-arm left jolt, and it was acccomplished by a twist of the left forearm and a thrust of the shoulder. It landed flush on the point of the chin and the astounded audience saw Rufe Mason’s legs crumple under him as his body sank to the floor. But the referee had seen, and he promptly proceeded to count him out. Again Pat carried his opponent to his corner, and it was ten minutes before Rufe Mason, supported by his seconds, with sagging knees and rolling, glassy eyes, was able to move down the aisle through the stupified and incredulous audience on the way to his dressing room.

“No wonder,” he told a reporter, “that Rough-House Kelly thought the roof hit him.”

After Chub Collins had been put out in the twelfth second of the first round of a fifteen-round contest, Stubener felt compelled to speak to Pat.

“Do you know what they’re calling you now?” he asked.

Pat shook his head.

“One punch Glendon.”

Pat smiled politely. He was little interested in what he was called. He had certain work cut out which he must do ere he could win back his mountains, and he was phlegmatically doing it, that was all.

“It won’t do,” his manager continued, with an ominous shake of the head. “You can’t go on putting your men out so quickly. You must give them more time.”

“I’m here to fight, ain’t I?” Pat demanded in surprise.

Again Stubener shook his head.

“It’s this way, Pat. You’ve got to be big and generous in the fighting game. Don’t get all the other fighters sore. And it’s not fair to the audience. They want a run for their money. Besides, no one will fight you. They’ll all be scared out. And you can’t draw crowds with ten-second fights. I leave it to you. Would you pay a dollar, or five, to see a ten-second fight?”

Pat was convinced, and he promised to give the audiences the requisite run for their money, though he stated that, personally, he preferred going fishing to witnessing a hundred rounds of fighting.

And still, Pat had got practically nowhere in the game. The local sports laughed when his name was mentioned. It called to mind funny fights and Rough-House Kelly’s remark about the roof. Nobody knew how Pat could fight. They had never seen him. Where was his wind, his stamina, his ability to mix it with rough customers through long grueling contests? He had demonstrated nothing but the posession of a lucky punch and a depressing proclivity for flukes.

So it was that his fourth match was arranged with Pete Sosso, a Portuguese fighter from Butchertown, known only for the amazing tricks he played in the ring. Pat did not train for the fight. Instead he made a flying and sorrowful trip to the mountains to bury his father. Old Pat had known well the condition of his heart, and it had stopped suddenly on him.

Young Pat arrived back in San Francisco with so close a margin of time that he changed into his fighting togs directly from his traveling suit, and even then the audience was kept waiting ten minutes.

“Remember, give him a chance,” Stubener cautioned him as he climbed through the ropes. “Play with him, but do it seriously. Let him go ten or twelve rounds, then get him,”

Pat obeyed instructions, and , thought it would have been easy enough to put Sosso out, so tricky was he that to stand up to him and not put him out kept his hands full. It was a pretty exhibition, and the audience was delighted. Sosso’s whirlwind attacks, wild feints, retreats, and rushes, required all Pat’s science to protect himself, and even then he did not escape unscathed.

Stubener praised him in the minute-rests, and all would have been well, had not Sosso, in the fourth round, played one of his most spectacular tricks. Pat, in a mix-up, had landed a hook to Sosso’s jaw, when to his amazement, the latter dropped his hands and reeled backward, eyes rolling, legs bending and giving, in a high state of grogginess. Pat could not understand. It had not been a knockout blow, and yet there was his man all ready to fall to the mat. Pat dropped his own hands and wonderingly watched his reeling opponent. Sosso staggered away, almost fell, recovered, and staggered obliquely and blindly forward again.

For the first and the last time in his fighting career, Pat was caught off his guard. He actually stepped aside to let the reeling man go by. Still reeling, Sosso suddenly loosed his right. Pat received it full on his jaw with an impact that rattled his teeth. A great roar of delight went up from the audience. But Pat did not hear. He saw only Sosso before him, grinning and defiant, and not the least bit groggy. Pat was hurt by the blow, but vastly more outraged by the trick. All the wrath that his father ever had surged up in him. He shook his head as if to get rid of the shock of the blow and steadied himself before his man. It all occurred in the next second. With a feint that drew his opponent, Pat fetched his left to the solar plexus, almost at the same instant whipping his right across to the jaw. The latter blow landed on Sosso’s mouth ere his falling body struck the floor. The club doctors worked half an hour to bring him to. After that they put eleven stitches in his mouth and packed him off in an ambulance.

“I’m sorry,” Pat told his manager, “I’m afraid I lost my temper. I’ll never do it again in the ring. Dad always cautioned me about it. He said it had made him lose more than one battle. I didn’t know I could lose my temper that way, but now that I know I’ll keep it in control.”

And Stubener believed him. He was coming to the stage where he could believe anything about his young charge.

“You don’t need to get angry,” he said, “you’re so thoroughly the master of your man at any stage.”

“At any inch or second of the fight,” Pat affirmed.

“And you can put them out any time you want.”

“Sure I can. I don’t want to boast. But I just seem to possess the ability. My eyes show me the opening that my skill knows how to make, and time and distance are second nature to me. Dad called it a gift, but I thought he was blarneying me. Now that I’ve been up against these men, I guess he was right. He said I had the mind and muscle correlation.”

“At any inch or second of the fight,” Stubener repeated musingly.

Pat nodded, and Stubener, absolutely believing him, caught a vision of a golden future that should have fetched old Pat out of his grave.

“Well, don’t forget, we’ve got to give the crowd a run for its money,” he said. “We’ll fix it up between us how many rounds a fight should go. Now your next bout will be with the Flying Dutchman. Suppose you let it run the full fifteen and put him out in the last round. That will give you a chance to make a showing as well.”

“All right, Sam,” was the answer.

“It will be a test for you,” Stubener warned. “You may fail to put him out in that last round.”

“Watch me.” Pat paused to put weight to his promise, and picked up a volume of Longfellow. “If I don’t I’ll never read poetry again, and that’s going some.”

“You bet it is,” his manager proclaimed jubilantly, “though what you see in such stuff is beyond me.”

Pat sighed, but did not reply. In all his life he had found but one person who cared for poetry, and that had been the red-haired school teacher who scared him off into the woods.