The Abysmal Brute | Page 4

An' burn 'em I did. Twice she rode over on a cayuse all
the way from Samson's Flat, an' I was sorry for the young creature. She
was fair hungry for the boy, and she looked it in her face. An' at the end
of three months she gave up school an' went back to her own country,
an' then it was that the boy came home to the shack to live again.
"Women ha' ben the ruination of many a good fighter, but they won't be
of him. He blushes like a girl if anything young in skirts looks at him a
second time or too long the first one. An' they all look at him. But when
he fights, when he fights!--God! it's the old savage Irish that flares in
him, an' drives the fists of him. Not that he goes off his base. Don't
walk away with that. At my best I was never as cool as he. I misdoubt
'twas the wrath of me that brought the accidents. But he's an iceberg.
He's hot an' cold at the one time, a live wire in an ice-chest."
Stubener was dozing, when the old man's mumble aroused him. He
listened drowsily.
"I made a man o' him, by God! I made a man o' him, with the two fists
of him, an' the upstanding legs of him, an' the straight-seein' eyes. And
I know the game in my head, an' I've kept up with the times and the
modern changes. The crouch? Sure, he knows all the styles an'
economies. He never moves two inches when an inch and a half will do
the turn. And when he wants he can spring like a buck kangaroo.
In-fightin'? Wait till you see. Better than his out-fightin', and he could
sure 'a' sparred with Peter Jackson an' outfooted Corbett in his best, I
tell you, I've taught 'm it all, to the last trick, and he's improved on the
teachin'. He's a fair genius at the game. An' he's had plenty of husky
mountain men to try out on. I gave him the fancy work and they gave
him the sloggin'. Nothing shy or delicate about them. Roarin' bulls an'
big grizzly bears, that's what they are, when it comes to huggin' in a
clinch or swingin' rough-like in the rushes. An' he plays with 'em. Man,

d'ye hear me?--he plays with them, like you an' me would play with
little puppy-dogs."
Another time Stubener awoke, to hear the old man mumbling:
"'Tis the funny think he don't take fightin' seriously. It's that easy to him
he thinks it play. But wait till he's tapped a swift one. That's all, wait.
An' you'll see'm throw on the juice in that cold storage plant of his an'
turn loose the prettiest scientific wallopin' that ever you laid eyes on."
In the shivery gray of mountain dawn, Stubener was routed from his
blankets by old Pat.
"He's comin' up the trail now," was the hoarse whisper. "Out with ye
an' take your first peep at the biggest fightin' man the ring has ever seen,
or will ever see in a thousand years again."
The manager peered through the open door, rubbing the sleep from his
heavy eyes, and saw a young giant walk into the clearing. In one hand
was a rifle, across his shoulders a heavy deer under which he moved as
if it were weightless. He was dressed roughly in blue overalls and
woolen shirt open at the throat. Coat he had none, and on his feet,
instead of brogans, were moccasins. Stubener noted that his walk was
smooth and catlike, without suggestion of his two hundred and twenty
pounds of weight to which that of the deer was added. The fight
manager was impressed from the first glimpse. Formidable the young
fellow certainly was, but the manager sensed the strangeness and
unusualness of him. He was a new type, something different from the
run fighters. He seemed a creature of the wild, more a night-roaming
figure from some old fairy story or folk tale than a twentieth-century
youth.
A thing Stubener quickly discovered was that young Pat was not much
of a talker. He acknowledged old Pat's introduction with a grip of the
hand but without speech, and silently set to work at building the fire
and getting breakfast. To his father's direct questions he answered in
monosyllables, as, for instance, when asked where he had picked up the
deer.

"South Fork," was all he vouchsafed.
"Eleven miles across the mountains," the old man exposited pridefully
to Stubener, "an' a trail that'd break your heart."
Breakfast consisted of black coffee, sourdough bread, and an immense
quantity of bear-meat broiled over the coals. Of this the young fellow
ate ravenously, and Stubener