IV

As a result of his fight with Kelly, though the general opinion was

that he had won by a fluke, Pat was matched with Rufe Mason. This took

place three weeks later, and the Sierra Club audience at Dreamland

Rink failed to see what happened. Rufe Mason 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 tentative threatening of a possible blow. It was at this

instant that Pat loosed 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 accomplished 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 stupefied 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 to

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 future 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 possession 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, though 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 knock-out 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 all 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.

V

"Where are you going?" Stubener demanded in surprise, looking at

his watch.

Pat, with his hand on the door-knob, paused and turned around.

"To the Academy of Sciences," he said. "There's a professor who's

going to give a lecture there on Browning to-night, and Browning

is the sort of writer you need assistance with. Sometimes I think I

ought to go to night school."

"But great Scott, man!" exclaimed the horrified manager. "You're on

with the Flying Dutchman to-night."

"I know it. But I won't enter the ring a moment before half past nine

or quarter to ten. The lecture will be over at nine fifteen. If you

want to make sure, come around and pick me up in your machine."

Stubener shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"You've got no kick coming," Pat assured him. "Dad used to tell me a

man's worst time was in the hours just before a fight, and that many a

fight was lost by a man's breaking down right there, with nothing to

do but think and be anxious. Well, you'll never need to worry about

me that way. You ought to be glad I can go off to a lecture."

And later that night, in the course of watching fifteen splendid

rounds, Stubener chuckled to himself more than once at the idea

of what that audience of sports would think, did it know that this

magnificent young prize-fighter had come to the ring directly from

a Browning lecture.

The Flying Dutchman was a young Swede who possessed an unwonted

willingness to fight and who was blessed with phenomenal endurance. He

never rested, was always on the offensive, and rushed and fought from

gong to gong. In the out-fighting his arms whirled about like flails,

in the in-fighting he was forever shouldering or half-wrestling and

starting blows whenever he could get a hand free. From start to finish

he was a whirlwind, hence his name. His failing was lack of judgment

in time and distance. Nevertheless he had won many fights by virtue of

landing one in each dozen or so of the unending fusillades of punches

he delivered. Pat, with strong upon him the caution that he must not

put his opponent out, was kept busy. Nor, though he escaped vital

damage, could he avoid entirely those eternal flying gloves. But it

was good training, and in a mild way he enjoyed the contest.

"Could you get him now?" Stubener whispered in his ear during the

minute rest at the end of the fifth round.

"Sure," was Pat's answer.

"You know he's never yet been knocked out by any one," Stubener warned

a couple of rounds later.

"Then I'm afraid I'll have to break my knuckles," Pat smiled. "I know

the punch I've got in me, and when I land it something's got to go. If

he won't, my knuckles will."

"Do you think you could get him now?" Stubener asked at the end of

the thirteenth round.

"Anytime, I tell you."

"Well, then, Pat, let him run to the fifteenth."

In the fourteenth round the Flying Dutchman exceeded himself. At the

stroke of the gong he rushed clear across the ring to the opposite

corner where Pat was leisurely getting to his feet. The house cheered,

for it knew the Flying Dutchman had cut loose. Pat, catching the

fun of it, whimsically decided to meet the terrific onslaught with

a wholly passive defense and not to strike a blow. Nor did he strike

a blow, nor feint a blow, during the three minutes of whirlwind that

followed. He gave a rare exhibition of stalling, sometimes hugging his

bowed face with his left arm, his abdomen with his right; at other

times, changing as the point of attack changed, so that both gloves

were held on either side his face, or both elbows and forearms guarded

his mid-section; and all the time moving about, clumsily shouldering,

or half-falling forward against his opponent and clogging his efforts;

himself never striking nor threatening to strike, the while rocking

with the impacts of the storming blows that beat upon his various

guards the devil's own tattoo.

Those close at the ringside saw and appreciated, but the rest of

the audience, fooled, arose to its feet and roared its applause in

the mistaken notion that Pat, helpless, was receiving a terrible

beating. With the end of the round, the audience, dumbfounded, sank

back into its seats as Pat walked steadily to his corner. It was not

understandable. He should have been beaten to a pulp, and yet nothing

had happened to him.

"Now are you going to get him?" Stubener queried anxiously.

"Inside ten seconds," was Pat's confident assertion. "Watch me."

There was no trick about it. When the gong struck and Pat bounded

to his feet, he advertised it unmistakably that for the first

time in the fight he was starting after his man. Not one onlooker

misunderstood. The Flying Dutchman read the advertisement, too, and for

the first time in his career, as they met in the center of the ring,

visibly hesitated. For the fraction of a second they faced each other

in position. Then the Flying Dutchman leaped forward upon his man,

and Pat, with a timed right-cross, dropped him cold as he leaped.

It was after this battle that Pat Glendon started on his upward rush

to fame. The sports and the sporting writers took him up. For the first

time the Flying Dutchman had been knocked out. His conqueror had proved

a wizard of defense. His previous victories had not been flukes. He had

a kick in both his hands. Giant that he was, he would go far. The time

was already past, the writers asserted, for him to waste himself on the

third-raters and chopping blocks. Where were Ben Menzies, Rege Rede,

Bill Tarwater, and Ernest Lawson? It was time for them to meet this

young cub that had suddenly shown himself a fighter of quality. Where

was his manager anyway, that he was not issuing the challenges?

And then fame came in a day; for Stubener divulged the secret that

his man was none other than the son of Pat Glendon, Old Pat, the

old-time ring hero. "Young" Pat Glendon, he was promptly christened,

and sports and writers flocked about him to admire him, and back him,

and write him up.

Beginning with Ben Menzies and finishing with Bill Tarwater, he

challenged, fought, and knocked out the four second-raters. To do this,

he was compelled to travel, the battles taking place in Goldfield,

Denver, Texas, and New York. To accomplish it required months, for

the bigger fights were not easily arranged, and the men themselves

demanded more time for training.

The second year saw him running to cover and disposing of the

half-dozen big fighters that clustered just beneath the top of

the heavyweight ladder. On this top, firmly planted, stood "Big"

Jim Hanford, the undefeated world champion. Here, on the top rungs,

progress was slower, though Stubener was indefatigable in issuing

challenges and in promoting sporting opinion to force the man to

fight. Will King was disposed of in England, and Glendon pursued

Tom Harrison half way around the world to defeat him on Boxing Day

in Australia.

But the purses grew larger and larger. In place of a hundred dollars,

such as his first battles had earned him, he was now receiving

from twenty to thirty thousand dollars a fight, as well as equally

large sums from the moving picture men. Stubener took his manager's

percentage of all this, according to the terms of the contract old Pat

had drawn up, and both he and Glendon, despite their heavy expenses,

were waxing rich. This was due, more than anything else, to the clean

lives they lived. They were not wasters.

Stubener was attracted to real estate, and his holdings in San

Francisco, consisting of building flats and apartment houses, were

bigger than Glendon ever dreamed. There was a secret syndicate of

bettors, however, which could have made an accurate guess at the

size of Stubener's holdings, while heavy bonus after heavy bonus,

of which Glendon never heard, was paid over to his manager by the

moving picture men.

Stubener's most serious task was in maintaining the innocence of

his young gladiator. Nor did he find it difficult. Glendon, who had

nothing to do with the business end, was little interested. Besides,

wherever his travels took him, he spent his spare time in hunting

and fishing. He rarely mingled with those of the sporting world,

was notoriously shy and secluded, and preferred art galleries and

books of verse to sporting gossip. Also, his trainers and sparring

partners were rigorously instructed by the manager to keep their

tongues away from the slightest hints of ring rottenness. In every

way Stubener intervened between Glendon and the world. He was never

even interviewed save in Stubener's presence.

Only once was Glendon approached. It was just prior to his battle

with Henderson, and an offer of a hundred thousand was made to him

to throw the fight. It was made hurriedly, in swift whispers, in a

hotel corridor, and it was fortunate for the man that Pat controlled

his temper and shouldered past him without reply. He brought the tale

of it to Stubener, who said:

"It's only con, Pat. They were trying to josh you." He noted the blue

eyes blaze. "And maybe worse than that. If they could have got you

to fall for it, there might have been a big sensation in the papers

that would have finished you. But I doubt it. Such things don't happen

any more. It's a myth, that's what it is, that has come down from the

middle history of the ring. There has been rottenness in the past,

but no fighter or manager of reputation would dare anything of the

sort to-day. Why, Pat, the men in the game are as clean and straight

as those in professional baseball, than which there is nothing cleaner

or straighter."

And all the while he talked, Stubener knew in his heart that the

forthcoming fight with Henderson was not to be shorter than twelve

rounds--this for the moving pictures--and not longer than the

fourteenth round. And he knew, furthermore, so big were the stakes

involved, that Henderson himself was pledged not to last beyond

the fourteenth.

And Glendon, never approached again, dismissed the matter from his mind

and went out to spend the afternoon in taking color photographs. The

camera had become his latest hobby. Loving pictures, yet unable to

paint, he had compromised by taking up photography. In his hand baggage

was one grip packed with books on the subject, and he spent long hours

in the dark room, realizing for himself the various processes. Never

had there been a great fighter who was as aloof from the fighting world

as he. Because he had little to say with those he encountered, he was

called sullen and unsocial, and out of this a newspaper reputation

took form that was not an exaggeration so much as it was an entire

misconception. Boiled down, his character in print was that of an

ox-muscled and dumbly stupid brute, and one callow sporting writer

dubbed him the "abysmal brute." The name stuck. The rest of the

fraternity hailed it with delight, and thereafter Glendon's name never

appeared in print unconnected with it. Often, in a headline or under

a photograph, "The Abysmal Brute," capitalized and without quotation

marks, appeared alone. All the world knew who was this brute. This

made him draw into himself closer than ever, while it developed a

bitter prejudice against newspaper folk.

Regarding fighting itself, his earlier mild interest grew stronger. The

men he now fought were anything but dubs, and victory did not come

so easily. They were picked men, experienced ring generals, and each

battle was a problem. There were occasions when he found it impossible

to put them out in any designated later round of a fight. Thus, with

Sulzberger, the gigantic German, try as he would in the eighteenth

round, he failed to get him, in the nineteenth it was the same story,

and not till the twentieth did he manage to break through the baffling

guard and drop him. Glendon's increasing enjoyment of the game was

accompanied by severer and prolonged training. Never dissipating,

spending much of his time on hunting trips in the hills, he was

practically always in the pink of condition, and, unlike his father,

no unfortunate accidents marred his career. He never broke a bone,

nor injured so much as a knuckle. One thing that Stubener noted with

secret glee was that his young fighter no longer talked of going

permanently back to his mountains when he had won the championship

away from Jim Hanford.