Chapter VI A Cinch to Win!

THE GIRL STOPPED short on the threshold. Mike muttered restlessly in his sleep and turned his blind eyes toward the door, but did not waken. As the girl's eyes fell on that frightfully disfigured face, she swayed drunkenly; her hands went to her temples and a low whimper like an animal in pain escaped her. Then, her face corpse-white and her eyes set in a deathly stare, she stole to the bedside and with a heart-rending sob, sank to her knees, cradling that battered head in her arms.

Mike muttered, but still he did not waken. At last I drew her gently away and led her into the next room, closing the door behind us. There she burst into a torrent of weeping. “I didn't know!” she kept sobbing over and over. “I didn't know fighting was like that! He told me never to go to a fight, or listen to one over the radio, and I obeyed him. Why, how could I know--here's one of the few letters in which he even mentioned his fights. I've kept them all.”

The date was over three years old. I read: “Last night I stopped Jack Maloney, a foremost contender. He scarcely laid a glove on me. Don't worry about me, darling, this game is a cinch.”

I laughed bitterly, remembering the gory wreck Maloney had made of Mike before he went out.

“I've been doing you an injustice,” I said. “I didn't think a man could keep a girl in such ignorance as to the real state of things, but it's true. You're O.K. Maybe you can persuade Mike to give up the game--we can't.”

“Surely he can't be thinking of fighting again if he lives?” she cried.

I laughed. “He won't die. He'll be laid up a while, that's all. Now I'll take you to a hotel-- ”

“I'm going to stay here close to Mike,” she answered passionately. “I could kill myself when I think how he's suffered for me. Tomorrow I'm going to marry him and take him away.”

After she was settled in a spare room, I turned to Spike: “I guess you're responsible for this. You might have waited till Mike was out of bed. That was a terrible shock for her.”

“I intended it should be,” he snarled. “I wrote and told her did she know her boy Mike Flynn was really Mike Brennon which was swiftly bein' punched into the booby-hatch? And I gave her some graphic accounts of his battles. I wrote her in time for her to get here to see the fight, but she says she missed a train.”

“Let him fight,” Spike spat. “Costigan will kill him, if they fight. I've seen these iron men crack before. I was in Tom Berg's corner the night Jose Gonzales knocked him out, and he died while the referee was countin' over him. Some men you got to kill to stop. Mike Brennon's one of 'em. If the girl's got a spark of real womanhood in her, she'll persuade him to quit.”

Morning found the battered iron man clear of mind, his super-human recuperative powers already asserting themselves. I brought Marjory to his bedside and before he could say anything, I left them alone. Later she came to me, her eyes red with weeping.

“I've argued and begged,” she cried desperately, “but he won't give in!”

All of us surrounded Mike's bedside. “Mike,” I said, “you're a fool. The punches have gone to your head. You can't mean you'll fight again!”

“I'm good for some more big purses,” he replied with a grin.

Marjory cried out as if he had stabbed her. “Mike--oh, Mike! We have more money now than we'll ever use. You haven't been fair to me. I'd have rather gone in rags, and worked my fingers to the bone in the lowest kind of drudgery than to have you suffer!”

His face lighted with a rare smile. He reached out a hand, amazingly gentle, and took one of the girl's soft hands in his own.

“White little hands,” he murmured. “Soft, as they were meant to be, now. Why, just looking at you repays me a thousand times for all I've gone through. And what have I gone through? A few beatings. The old-timers took worse, and got little or nothing.”

“But there's no reason for your crucifying yourself--and me--any longer.”

He shook his head with that strange abnormal stubbornness which was the worst defect in his character.

“As long as I can draw down a hundred thousand dollars a fight, I'd be a fool to quit. I'm tougher than any of you think. A hundred thousand dollars!” His eyes gleamed with the old light. “The crowd roaring! And Iron Mike Brennon taking everything that's handed out, and finishing on his feet! No! No! I'll quit when I'm counted out--not before!”

“Mike!” the girl cried piercingly. “If you fight again, I'll swear I'll go away and never see you again!”

His gaze beat her eyes down, and her head sank on her breast. I never saw the human being--except one--who could stand the stare of Mike Brennon's magnetic eyes.

“Marjory,” his deep voice vibrated with confidence, “you're just trying to bluff me into doing what you want me to do. But you're mine, and you always will be. You won't leave me, now. You can't!”

She hid her tear-blinded face in her hands and sobbed weakly. He stroked her bowed head tenderly. A failure in the ring perhaps, but outside of it Brennon had a power over those with whom he came in contact that none could overcome. The way he had beaten down the girl's weak pretense was almost brutal.

“Mike!” snarled Ganlon, speaking harshly and bitterly to hide his emotions; for a moment the hard-faced middleweight with his two hundred savage ring battles behind him, dominated the scene: "Mike, you're crazy! You got everything a man could want-- things that most men work their lives out for and never get. You're on the borderline. You couldn't whip a second-rater.

“Costigan's as tough as you ever were. If I thought he'd flatten you with a punch or two, I'd say, go to it. But he won't. He'll knock you out, but it'll be after a smashin' that'll ruin you for life. You'll die, or you'll go to the bughouse. What good will your money, or Marjory's love do you then?”

Mike took his time about replying, and again his strange influence was felt like a cloud over the group.

“Costigan's over-rated. I'll show him up. He never saw the day he could take as much as I can, or hit as hard.”

Spike made a despairing gesture, and turned away. Later he said to the girl and me: “No use arguin'. He thinks it's the money, but it ain't. The game's in his blood. And he's jealous of Mike Costigan. These iron men is terrible proud of their toughness. Remember how Van Heeren fought?”

"Win or lose, ten rounds with Costigan means Mike's finish. Each is too tough to be

knocked out quick. It'll be a long, bloody grind, and it _may_ finish Costigan, but it'll _sure_ finish Mike. He'll end that fight dead, or punched nutty. At his best, Brennon would likely have wore Costigan down like he did Van Heeren. But Mike's gone away back, and Costigan is young--in his prime--which in a iron man is the same as sayin' you couldn't hurt him with a pile-driver."

MIKE BRENNON TRAINED conscientiously, as always. I discharged his sparring partners and had him punch the light bag for speed, and do a great deal of road work in a vain effort to recover some of the former steel spring quality of his weakening legs. But I knew it was useless. It was not a matter of conditioning--his trouble lay behind him in the thousands of cruel blows he had absorbed. A clever boxer may get out of condition, lose fights and come back; but when an iron man slips there is no comeback.

In the four months which preceded the Costigan fight, an air of gloom surrounded the camp which affected all but Mike himself. Marjory, after days of passionate pleading, sank into a sort of apathy. That he was being bitterly cruel to the girl never occurred to Mike, and we could not make him see it. He laughed at our fears as foolish, and insisted that he was practically in his prime. He swore that his fight with Slade, far from showing that he had slipped, proved that he was better than ever! For had he not beaten Slade, the most dangerous man in the ring? As for Costigan--a few rounds of savage slugging would send him down and out.

Mike was aware of his fistic faults; he frankly admitted that any second-rater who could avoid his swings could outpoint him; but he sincerely believed that he was still superior in ruggedness to any man that ever lived. And deep in his heart, I doubt if Mike really believed he would ever be knocked out.

One thing he insisted on; that Marjory should not see the fight. And she made one last plea for him to give it up.

“No use to start all that,” he answered calmly. “Think, Marjory! My fourth hundred- thousand-dollar purse! That's a record few champions have set! One hundred thousand with Flash Sullivan--Gonzales--Slade--and now Costigan! Thousands of tickets sold in advance! I've got to go on now, anyhow. And I'm a cinch to win!”