Before the men went into the ring they made the referee promise not to stop the fight under any circumstances — an unusual proceeding, but easily understood in their case.
The fight was a strange experience to Mike; most of the punishment was on the other side. Van Heeren, six feet two and weighing 210 pounds, was a terrific hitter, but lacked Mike’s dynamic speed and fury. Those sweeping haymakers which had missed so many others, crashed blindingly against the Dutchman’s head or sank agonizingly into his body. At the end of the first round his face was a gory wreck. At the end of the fourth his features had lost all human semblance; his body was a mass of reddened flesh.
Toe to toe they stood, round after round, neither taking a back step. The fifth, sixth and seventh rounds were nightmares, in which Mike was dropped three times, and Van Heeren went down twice that many times. All over the stadium women were fainting or being helped out; fans were shrieking for the fight to be stopped.
In the ninth, Van Heeren, a hideous and inhuman sight, dropped for the last time. Four ribs broken, features permanently ruined, he lay writhing, still trying to rise as the referee tolled off the “Ten!” that marked his finish as a fighting man.
Mike Brennon, clinging to the ropes, dizzy and nearly punched out for the only time in his life, stood above his victim, acknowledged king of all iron men. This fight finished Van Heeren, and nearly finished boxing in the state, but it added to Brennon’s fame, and his real pity for the broken Dutchman was mingled with a fierce exultation of realized power. More money — more packed houses! The world’s greatest iron man! In the three years he fought under my management he met them all, except the champion of his division. He lost about as many as he won, but the only thing that could impair his drawing power was a knockout — and this seemed postponed indefinitely. He won more of his fights against the hard punchers than against the light tappers, as the latter took no chances. Many a slugger, after battering him to a red ruin, blew up and fell before his aimless but merciless attack. He broke the hands and he broke the hearts of the men who tried to stop him.
The light hitters outboxed him, but did not hurt him, and his wild swings were dangerous even to them. Barota outpointed him, and Jackie Finnegan, Frankie Grogan and Flash Sullivan, the lightheavy champion.
The hard hitters made the mistake of trading punches with him. Soldier Handler dropped him five times in four rounds, and then stopped a right-hander that knocked him clear out of the ring and into fistic oblivion. Jose Gonzales, the great South American, punched himself out on the iron tiger and went down to defeat. Gunboat Sloan battered out a red decision over him, but still believing he could achieve the impossible, went in to trade punches in a return bout, and lasted less than a round. Brennon finished Ricardo Diaz, the Spanish Giant, and beat down Snake Calberson after his toughness had broken the Brown Phantom’s heart. Johnny Varella and several lesser lights broke their hands on him and quit. He met Whitey Broad and Kid Allison in no decision bouts; knocked out Young Hansen, and fought a fierce fifteen-round draw with Sailor Steve Costigan, who never rated better than a second-class man, but who gave some first-raters terrific battles.
To those who doubt that flesh and blood can endure the punishment which Brennon endured, I beg you to look at the records of the ring’s iron men. I point to your attention, Tom Sharkey plunging headlong into the terrible blows of Jeffries; that same Sharkey shooting headlong over the ropes onto the concrete floor from the blows of Choynski, yet finishing the fight a winner.
I call to your attention Mike Boden, who had no more defense than had Brennon, staying the limit with Choynski; and Joe Grim taking all Fitzsimmons could hand him — was it fifteen or sixteen times he was floored? Yet he finished that fight standing. No man can understand the iron men of the ring. Theirs is a long, hard, bloody trail, with oftentimes only poverty and a clouded mind at the end, but the red chapter their clan has written across the chronicles of the game will never be effaced.
And so Brennon fought on, taking all his cruel punishment, hoarding his money, saying little — as much a mystery to me as ever. Sports writers discovered his passion for money, and raked him. They accused him of being miserly and refusing aid to his less fortunate fellows — the battered tramps who will occasionally touch a successful fighter for a hand-out. This was only partly true. He did sometimes give money to men who needed it desperately, but the occasions were infrequent.
Then he began to crack. Ganlon, his continual champion, first sensed it. Crouching beside me the night Mike fought Kid Allison, Spike whispered to me out of the corner of his mouth: “He’s slowin’ down. It’s the beginnin’ of the end.”
That night Spike spoke plainly to his friend.
“Mike, you’re about through. You’re slippin’. Punches jar you worse than they used to. You’ve lasted three years of terrible hard goin’. You got to quit.”
“When I’m knocked out,” said Mike stubbornly. “I haven’t taken the count yet.”
“When a bird like you takes the count, it means he’s a punch-drunk wreck,” said Ganlon. “When the blows begin to hurt you, it means the shock of them is reachin’ the brain and hurtin’ it. Remember Van Heeren, that you finished? He’s wanderin’ around, sayin’ he’s trainin’ to fight Fitzsimmons, that’s been dead for years.”
A shadow crossed Mike’s dark face at the mention of the Dutchman’s name. The beatings he had taken had disfigured him and given him a peculiarly sinister look, which however, did not rob his face of its strange dominating quality.
“I’m good for a few more fights,” he answered. “I need money—”
“Always money!” I exclaimed. “You must have half a million dollars at least. I’m beginning to believe you are a miser—”
“Steve,” said Ganlon suddenly, “Van Heeren was around here yesterday.”
“What of it?”
Ganlon continued almost accusingly, “Mike gave him a thousand dollars.”
“What if I did?” cried Brennon in one of his rare inexplicable passions. “The fellow was broke — in no condition to earn any money — I finished him — why shouldn’t I help him a little? Whose business is it?”
“Nobody’s,” I answered. “But it shows you’re not a miser. And it deepens the mystery about you. Won’t you tell me why you need more money?”
He made a quick impatient gesture. “There’s no need. You get the matches — I do the fighting. We split the money, and that’s all there is to it.”
“But, Mike,” I said as kindly as I could, “there is more to it. You’ve made me more money than either of the champions I’ve managed, and if I didn’t sincerely wish for your own good, I’d say for you to stay in the ring.
“But you ought to quit. You can even get your features fixed up — plastic face building is a wonderful art. Fight even one more time, and you may spend your days in a padded cell.”
“I’m tougher than you think,” he answered. “I’m as good as I ever was and I’ll prove it. Get me Sailor Slade.”
“He beat you once before, when you were better than you are now. How do you expect—”
“I didn’t have the incentive to win then, that I have now.”
I nodded. What this incentive was I did not know, but I had seen him rise again and again from what looked like certain defeat — had seen him, writhing on the canvas, turn white, his eyes blue with sudden terror as he dragged himself upright. Terror? Of losing! A terror that kept him going when even his iron body was tottering on the verge of collapse and when the old fighting frenzy had ceased to function in the numbed brain. What prompted this dread? It was a mystery I could not fathom, but that in some way it was connected with his strange money-lust, I knew.
“You’ll sign me for four fights,” Brennon was saying. “With Sailor Slade, Young Hansen, Jack Slattery and Mike Costigan.”
“You’re out of your head!” I exclaimed sharply. “You’ve picked the four most dangerous battlers in the world!”
“Hansen, it’ll be
easy. I beat him once, and I can do it again. I don’t know about Slattery. I want to take him on last. First, I’ve got to hurdle Slade. After him, I’ll fight Costigan. He’s the least scientific of the four, but the hardest hitter. If I’m slipping I want to get him before I’ve gone too far.”
“It’s suicide!” I cried. “If you’ve got to fight, pass up these mankillers and take on some set-ups. If Slade don’t knock you out, he’ll soften you up so Costigan will punch you right into the bughouse. He’s a murderer. They call him Iron Mike, too.”
“I’ll pack them in,” he answered heedlessly. “Slade’s nearly the drawing card I am, and as for Costigan, the fans always turn out to see two iron men meet.”
As usual, there was no answer to be made.
* * *
5. — THE ROLL OF THE IRON MEN
IT WAS a few nights before the Brennon-Slade fight. I had wandered into Mike’s room and my eye fell on a partially completed letter on his writing table. Without any intention of spying, I idly noted that it was addressed to a girl named Marjory Walshire, at a very fashionable girls’ school in New York state.
I saw that a letter from this girl lay beside the other one, and though it was an atrocious breach of manners, in my curiosity to know why a girl in a society school like that would be writing a prize-fighter, I picked up the partially completed letter and glanced idly over it. The next moment I was reading it with fierce intensity, all scruples, forgotten. Having finished it, I snatched up the other and ruthlessly tore it open.
I had scarcely finished reading this when Mike entered with Ganlon. His eyes blazed with sudden fury, but before he could say a word I launched an offensive of my own — for one of the few times in my life, wild with rage.
“You born fool!” I snarled. “So this is why you’ve been crucifying yourself!”
“What do you mean by getting into my private correspondence?” his voice was husky with fury.
I sneered. “I’m not going to enter into a discussion of etiquette. You can beat me up afterward, but just now I’m going to have my say.
“You’ve been keeping some girl in a ritzy finishing school back East. Finishing school! It’s nearly finished you! What kind of a girl is she, to let you go through this mill for her? I’d like for her to see your battered map now! While she’s been lolling at ease in the most expensive school she could find, you’ve been flattening out the resin with your shoulders and soaking it down with your blood—”
“Shut up!” roared Brennon, white and shaking.
He leaned back against the table, gripping the edge so hard his knuckles whitened as he fought for control. At last he spoke more calmly.
“Yes, that’s the incentive that’s kept me going. That girl is the only girl I ever loved — the only thing I ever had to love.
“Listen, do you know how lonely a kid is when he has absolutely nobody in the world to love? The folks in the home were kind, but there were so many children — I got the beginnings of a good education. That’s all.
“Out in the world it was worse. I worked, tramped, starved. I fought for everything I ever got. I have a better education than most, you say. I worked my way through high school, and read all the books in my spare time that I could beg, steal or borrow. Many a time I went hungry to buy a book.
“I drifted into the ring from fighting in carnivals and the like. I never got anywhere. After I whipped Mulcahy the night you talked to me, I quit. Drifted. Then in a little town on the Arizona desert I met Marjory Walshire.
“Poverty? She knew poverty! Working her fingers to the bone in a cafe. Good blood in her too, just as there is in me, somewhere. She should have been born to the satins and velvets — instead she was born to the greasy dishes and dirty tables of a second-class cafe. I loved her, and she loved me. She told me her dreams that she never believed would come true — of education — nice clothes — refined companions — every thing that any girl wants.
“Where was I to turn? I could take her out of the cafe — only to introduce her to the drudgery of a laboring man’s wife. So I went back into the ring. As soon as I could, I sent her to school. I’ve been sending her money enough to live as well as any girl there, and I’ve saved too, so when she gets out of school and I have to quit the ring, we can be married and start in business that won’t mean drudgery and poverty.
“Poverty is the cause of more crimes, cruelty and suffering than anything else. Poverty kept me from having a home and people like other kids. You know how it is in the slums — parents toiling for a living and too many children. They can’t support them all. Mine left me on the door-step of the orphanage with a note: ‘He’s honest born. We love him, but we can’t keep him. Call him Michael Brennon.’
“Poverty can be as cruel in a small town as in a city — Marjory, who’d never been out of the town where she was born — with her soul starved and her little white hands reddened and callused —
“It’s the thought of her that’s kept me on my feet when the whole world was blind and red and the fists of my opponent were like hammers on my shattering brain — that’s the thought that dragged me off the canvas when my body was without feeling and my arms hung like lead, to strike down the man I could no longer see. And as long as she’s waiting for me at the end of the long trail, there’s no man on earth can make me take the count!”
His voice crashed through the room like a clarion call of victory, but my old doubts returned.
“But how can she love you so much,” I exclaimed, “when she’s willing for you to go through all this for her?”
“What does she know of fighting? I made her believe boxing was more or less of a dancing and tapping affair. She’d heard of Corbett and Tunney, clever fellows who could step twenty rounds without a mark, and she supposed I was like them. She hasn’t seen me in nearly four years — not since I left the town where she worked. I’ve put her off when she’s wanted to come and see me, or for me to come to her. When she does see my battered face it’ll be a terrible shock to her, but I was never very handsome anyway—”
“Do you mean to tell me,” I broke in, “that she never tunes in on one of your fights, never reads an account of them, when the papers are full of your doings?”
“She don’t know my real name. After I quit the game the first time, I went under the name of Mike Flynn to duck the two-by-four promoters I’d fought for, and who were always pestering me to fight for them again. The first time I saw Marjory I began to think of fighting again, and I never told her differently. The money I’ve sent has been in cashier’s checks. To her, I’m simply Mike Flynn, a fighter she never hears of. She wouldn’t recognize my picture in the papers.”
“But her letters are addressed to Mike Brennon.”
“You didn’t look closely. They’re addressed to Michael Flynn, care of Mike Brennon, this camp. She thinks Brennon is merely a friend of her Mike. Well, now you know why I’ve fought on and stinted myself. With Van Heeren, it was different. I’m responsible for his condition. I had to help him.
“These four fights now; one of them may be my last. I’ve got money, but I want more. I intend that Marjory shall never want again for anything. I’m to get a hundred grand for this fight. My third purse of that size. With good management, thanks to you, I’ve made more money than many champions. If I whip these four men, I’ll fight on. If I’m knocked out, I’ll have to quit. Let’s drop the matter.”
I haven’t the heart to tell of the Brennon-Slade fight in detail. Even today the thought of the punishment Mike took that night takes the stiffening out of my knees. He had slipped even more than we had thought. The steel-spring legs, which had carried him through so many whirlwind battles, had slowed down. His sweeping haymakers crashed over with their old power, but they did not continually wing through the air as of old. Blows that should not have jarred him, staggered him. The squat sailor, wild with the thought of a knockout, threw caution to the winds. How many times he floored Mike I never dared try to remember, but Brennon was sti
ll Iron Mike. Again and again the gong saved him; in the fourteenth round Slade went to pieces, and the iron tiger he had punched into a red smear, found him in the crimson mist and blindly blasted him into unconsciousness.
Brennon collapsed in his corner after Slade was counted out, and both men were carried senseless from the ring. I sat by Mike’s side that night while he lay in a semi-conscious state, occasionally muttering brokenly as his bruised brain conjured up red visions. He lay, both eyes closed, his oft-broken nose a crushed ruin, cut and gashed all about the head and face, now and then stirring uneasily as the pain of three broken ribs stabbed him.
For the first time he spoke the name of the girl he loved, groping out his hands like a lost child. Again he fought over his fearful battles and his mighty fists clenched until the knuckles showed white and low bestial snarls tore through his battered lips.
In his delirium he raised himself painfully on one elbow, his burning, unseeing eyes gleaming like slits of flame between the battered lids; he spoke in a low voice as if answering and listening to the murmur of ghosts: “Joe Grim! Battling Nelson! Mike Boden! Joe Goddard! Iron Mike Brennon!”
My flesh crawled. I cannot impart to you the uncanniness of hearing the roll call of those iron men of days gone by, muttered in the stillness of night through the pulped and delirious lips of the grimmest of them all.
At last he fell silent, and went into a natural slumber. As I went softly into the other room, Ganlon entered, his savage eyes blazing with fierce triumph. With him was a girl — a darling of high society she seemed, with her costly garments and air of culture, but she exhibited an elemental anxiety such as no pampered and sophisticated debutante would, or could have done.
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 170