ead.

"Well, it's this way," he began haltingly. "They's a youngster come up
from Frisco, Young Sandow they call 'm, an' the Pride of Telegraph Hill.
He's the real goods of a heavyweight, an' he was to fight Montana
Red Saturday night, only Montana Red, just in a little trainin' bout,
snapped his forearm yesterday. The managers has kept it quiet. Now
here's the proposition. Lots of tickets sold, an' they'll be a big crowd
Saturday night. At the last moment, so as not to disappoint 'em, they'll
spring me to take Montana's place. I 'm the dark horse. Nobody knows
me--not even Young Sandow. He's come up since my time. I'll be a rube
fighter. I can fight as Horse Roberts.

"Now, wait a minute. The winner'll pull down three hundred big round
iron dollars. Wait, I 'm tellin' you! It's a lead-pipe cinch. It's
like robbin' a corpse. Sandow's got all the heart in the world--regular
knock-down-an'-drag-out-an'-hang-on fighter. I've followed 'm in the
papers. But he ain't clever. I 'm slow, all right, all right, but I 'm
clever, an' I got a hay-maker in each arm. I got Sandow's number an' I
know it.

"Now, you got the say-so in this. If you say yes, the nags is ourn. If
you say no, then it's all bets off, an' everything all right, an' I'll
take to harness-washin' at the stable so as to buy a couple of plugs.
Remember, they'll only be plugs, though. But don't look at me while
you're makin' up your mind. Keep your lamps on the horses."

It was with painful indecision that she looked at the beautiful animals.

"Their names is Hazel an' Hattie," Billy put in a sly wedge. "If we get
'em we could call it the 'Double H' outfit."

But Saxon forgot the team and could only see Billy's frightfully bruised
body the night he fought the Chicago Terror. She was about to speak,
when Billy, who had been hanging on her lips, broke in:

"Just hitch 'em up to our wagon in your mind an' look at the outfit. You
got to go some to beat it."

"But you're not in training, Billy," she said suddenly and without
having intended to say it.

"Huh!" he snorted. "I've been in half trainin' for the last year. My
legs is like iron. They'll hold me up as long as I've got a punch left
in my arms, and I always have that. Besides, I won't let 'm make a long
fight. He's a man-eater, an' man-eaters is my meat. I eat 'm alive. It's
the clever boys with the stamina an' endurance that I can't put away.
But this young Sandow's my meat. I'll get 'm maybe in the thir