efuse, but there's
nothin' doin'. The Kid has took to bein' an actor like they did to
gunpowder in Europe, and not only he won't fight, I can't even get him
mad!

"I'm off that roughneck stuff!" he tells me. "Nobody ever got nothin'
by fightin'. Look what it did to Willard! Besides," he goes on, "what
would John Drew and them guys think of me, if it should leak out that I
had give in to box fightin' again? Why they'd be off me for life!
Nope, let 'em battle in Russia, I'm through!"

Fine for a champion, eh?

Now here's a guy that went to the top in the one game where you can't
luck your way over. Because he was a fightin' fool, the 'Kid had
right-crossed his way to the title and now that he was up there, the
big stiff wouldn't look at a glove! No! he was a actor now! I'd tell
him that Kid Whosthis had flattened Battlin' McGluke the night before
and we could get ten thousand to go six rounds with the winner. He'd
flick the ash off a gold-tipped cigarette and say,

"Yeh?" Then he'd grab me by the shoulder and pour this in my ear.
"Did you get me in that Shakespeare picture last week? I hear the guy
that writes up shows for the Peoria _Gazette_ claims Mansfield had
nothin' on me!"

A few months before he would have said somethin' like this,

"All right! Wire the club we'll fight him, and if I don't bounce that
tramp in two rounds, I'll give my end to them starvin' Armenians!"

Now I didn't kick when the Kid falls for Miss Vincent, because I had
seen Miss Vincent, and the Kid was only human. I didn't say nothin'
when he staked himself to that second-hand auto that like to wrecked
California, but when he pulls this actor thing on me and says pugilism,
_pugilism_, mind you, ought to be discouraged--I figured it was about
time for yours in the faith to step in.

The Kid had two ambitions in life, both of which he picked up at Film
City. One was to be the greatest movie hero that ever flattened a
villain, and the other was to ease himself into the Golden West Club.

The Golden West Club was over in Frisco, and as far as the average guy
was concerned it could have been in Iceland. It was about as easy to
get into that joint as it is to get into Heaven, and it was also the
only other place where you couldn't buy your way in. Your name had to
be Fortescue-Smith or Van Whosthis, and you had to look it. You had to
be partial to tea, wrist watches, dancin', opera, tennis and the like,
and to top it all off