The Abysmal Brute - Jack London (e reader comics txt) š
- Author: Jack London
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āSometimes itās wrong Iām thinkinā I am, bringinā him up a natural. Itās given him wind and stamina and the strength oā wild bulls. No city-grown man can have a look-in against him. Iām willinā to grant that Jeffries at his best could āaā worried the young un a bit, but only a bit. The young un could āaā broke him like a straw. Anā he donāt look it. Thatās the everlasting wonder of it. Heās only a fine-seeming young husky; but itās the quality of his muscle thatās different. But wait till ye see him, thatās all.
āA strange liking the boy has for posies, anā little meadows, a bit of pine with the moon beyond, windy sunsets, or the sun oā morns from the top of old Baldy. Anā he has a hankerinā for the drawinā oā pitchers of things, anā of spouting about āLucifer or nightā from the poetry books he got from the red-headed school teacher. But ātis only his youngness. Heāll settle down to the game once we get him started, but watch out for grouches when it first comes to livinā in a city for him.
āA good thing; heās woman-shy. Theyāll not bother him for years. He canāt bring himself to understand the creatures, anā damn few of them has he seen at that. āTwas the school teacher over at Samsonās Flat that put the poetry stuff in his head. She was clean daffy over the young un, anā he never a-knowinā. A warm-haired girl she wasānot a mountain girl, but from down in the flatlandsāanā as time went by she was fair desperate, anā the way she went after him was shameless. Anā what dāye think the boy did when he tumbled to it? He was scared as a jackrabbit. He took blankets anā ammunition anā hiked for tall timber. Not for a month did I lay eyes on him, anā then he sneaked in after dark and was gone in the morn. Nor would he as much as peep at her letters. āBurn āem,ā he said. Anā burn āem I did. Twice she rode over on a cayuse all the way from Samsonās Flat, anā I was sorry for the young creature. She was fair hungry for the boy, and she looked it in her face. Anā at the end of three months she gave up school anā went back to her own country, anā then it was that the boy came home to the shack to live again.
āWomen haā ben the ruination of many a good fighter, but they wonāt 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. Anā they all look at him. But when he fights, when he fights!āGod! itās the old savage Irish that flares in him, anā drives the fists of him. Not that he goes off his base. Donāt walk away with that. At my best I was never as cool as he. I misdoubt ātwas the wrath of me that brought the accidents. But heās an iceberg. Heās hot anā cold at the one time, a live wire in an ice-chest.ā
Stubener was dozing, when the old manās mumble aroused him. He listened drowsily.
āI made a man oā him, by God! I made a man oā him, with the two fists of him, anā the upstanding legs of him, anā the straight-seeinā eyes. And I know the game in my head, anā Iāve kept up with the times and the modern changes. The crouch? Sure, he knows all the styles anā 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. Infightinā? Wait till you see. Better than his out-fightinā, and he could sure āaā sparred with Peter Jackson anā outfooted Corbett in his best, I tell you, Iāve taught ām it all, to the last trick, and heās improved on the teachinā. Heās a fair genius at the game. Anā heās had plenty of husky mountain men to try out on. I gave him the fancy work and they gave him the slogginā. Nothing shy or delicate about them. Roarinā bulls anā big grizzly bears, thatās what they are, when it comes to hugginā in a clinch or swinginā rough-like in the rushes. Anā he plays with āem. Man, dāye hear me?āhe plays with them, like you anā me would play with little puppy-dogs.ā
Another time Stubener awoke, to hear the old man mumbling:
āāTis the funny think he donāt take fightinā seriously. Itās that easy to him he thinks it play. But wait till heās tapped a swift one. Thatās all, wait. Anā youāll seeām throw on the juice in that cold storage plant of his anā turn loose the prettiest scientific wallopinā that ever you laid eyes on.ā
In the shivery gray of mountain dawn, Stubener was routed from his blankets by old Pat.
āHeās cominā up the trail now,ā was the hoarse whisper. āOut with ye anā take your first peep at the biggest fightinā man the ring has ever seen, or will ever see in a thousand years again.ā
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 Patās introduction with a grip of the hand but without speech, and silently set to work at building the fire and getting breakfast. To his fatherās direct questions he answered in monosyllables, as, for instance, when asked where he had picked up the deer.
āSouth Fork,ā was all he vouchsafed.
āEleven miles across the mountains,ā the old man exposited pridefully to Stubener, āanā a trail thatād break your heart.ā
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 divined that both the Glendons were accustomed to an almost straight meat diet. Old Pat did all the talking, though it was not till the meal was ended that he broached the subject he had at heart.
āPat, boy,ā he began, āyou know who the gentleman is?ā
Young Pat nodded, and cast a quick, comprehensive glance at the manager.
āWell, heāll be takinā you away with him and down to San Francisco.ā
āIād sooner stay here, dad,ā was the answer.
Stubener felt a prick of disappointment. It was a wild goose chase after all. This was no fighter, eager and fretting to be at it. His huge brawn counted for nothing. It was nothing new. It was the big fellows that usually had the streak of fat.
But old Patās Celtic wrath flared up, and his voice was harsh with command.
āYouāll go down to the cities anā fight, me boy. Thatās what Iāve trained you for, anā youāll do it.ā
āAll right,ā was the unexpected response, rumbled apathetically from the deep chest.
āAnd fight like hell,ā the old man added.
Again Stubener felt disappointment at the absence of flash and fire in the young manās eyes as he answered:
āAll right. When do we start?ā
āOh, Sam, here, heāll be wantinā a little huntinā and to fish a bit, as well as to try you out with the gloves.ā He looked at Sam, who nodded. āSuppose you strip and giveām a taste of your quality.ā
An hour later, Sam Stubener had his eyes opened. An ex-fighter himself, a heavyweight at that, he was even a better judge of fighters, and never had he seen one strip to like advantage.
āSee the softness of him,ā old Pat chanted. āāTis the true stuff. Look at the slope of the shoulders, anā the lungs of him. Clean, all clean, to the last drop anā ounce of him. Youāre lookinā at a man, Sam, the like of which was never seen before. Not a muscle of him bound. No weight-lifter or Sandow exercise artist there. See the fat snakes of muscle a-crawlinā soft anā lazy-like. Wait till you see them flashinā like a strikinā rattler. Heās good for forty rounds this blessed instant, or a hundred. Go to it! Time!
They went to it, for three-minute rounds with a minute rests, and Sam Stubener was immediately undeceived. Here was no streak of fat, no apathy, only a lazy, good-natured play of gloves and tricks, with a brusk stiffness and harsh sharpness in the contacts that he knew belonged only to the trained and instinctive fighting man.
āEasy, now, easy,ā old Pat warned. āSamās not the man he used to be.ā
This nettled Sam, as it was intended to do, and he played his most famous trick and favorite punchāa feint for a clinch and a right rip to the stomach. But, quickly as it was delivered, Young Pat saw it, and, though it landed, his body was going away. The next time, his body did not go away. As the rip started, he moved forward and twisted his left hip to meet it. It was only a matter of several inches, yet it blocked the blow. And thereafter, try as he would, Stubenerās glove got no farther than that hip.
Stubener had roughed it with big men in his time, and, in exhibition bouts, had creditably held his own. But there was no holding his own here. Young Pat played with him, and in the clinches made him feel as powerful as a baby, landing on him seemingly at will, locking and blocking masterful accuracy, and scarcely noticing or acknowledging his existence. Half the time young Pat seemed to spend in gazing off and out at the landscape in a dreamy sort of way. And right here Stubener made another mistake. He took it for a trick of old Patās training, tried to sneak in a short-arm jolt, found his arm in a lightning lock, and had both his ears cuffed for his pains.
āThe instinct for a blow,ā the old man chortled. āāTis not put on, Iām tellinā you. He is a wiz. He knows a blow without the lookinā, when it starts anā where, the speed, anā space, anā niceness of it. Anā ātis nothing I ever showed him. āTis inspiration. He
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