He turned to follow in the direction which Hogarty had taken, and then paused once more.

"Beg pardon for the omission, Mr. Bolton," he added, and he smiled boyishly. "My name's Ogden--Bobby Ogden. Glad to become acquainted with you, I'm sure. And now, if you will follow on, I'll do my best for you. Would you mind walking on your toes? You see, there are just two things most calculated to get Flash's goat. One of 'em's marring up his floor with heavy boots, and the other is b.u.t.ting in when he's playing dominoes. You couldn't have known it, of course, but he can't stand for either of them. And together I am afraid they have got you in pretty bad. You're sure you can't swallow your pride, and just beat it quietly while the chance is nice and handy? Maybe you ought to think of your family--no?"

Denny's smile widened. He shook his head in refusal. He knew he was going to like Ogden--like him for the same reason that he had liked the fat, brown-clad newspaper man in Boltonwood--because of the charming equality of his att.i.tude and the frankness in his eyes.

"No," he decided, "I--I'm afraid I can't. I didn't mean to stir him up so, either, only--only I thought, just for a minute or two, that he was laughing at me. I think I'd rather stay and see it out. But you mustn't worry about me--I wouldn't if I were you."

Again Ogden shrugged resignedly. On tiptoe Denny followed him to the locker-rooms in the rear, and at a word of direction began to remove his clothes. While he plunged head-foremost into a bin in search for a pair of white trunks, Ogden kept up a steady stream of advice calculated to save the other at least a small percentage of punishment.

"Sutton's big," he exclaimed jerkily, head out of sight, "but he isn't fast on his feet. That's why they call him Boots. He steps around as though he had on waders--hip-high ones. But he's lightning hitting from close in--in-fighting they call it--where most big fighters don't shine. That's because he's had Flash's coaching. You want to keep away from him--keep him at arm's length, and maybe he won't do too much harm. I--I'd let him do all the leading, if I were you, and--and kind of run ahead of him." The voice came half-smothered from the cluttered bin of equipment. "That isn't running away from him because you're afraid, you understand. It's just playing him to tire him out, you know!"

It was silent for a moment while Bobby Ogden burrowed for the necessary canvas shoes. Then a hushed laugh broke that quiet and brought the latter bolt upright. With the trunks in one hand and the rubber-soled slippers in the other, Ogden stood and stared, only half understanding that the big boy before him was laughing at him for his solicitude and trying to rea.s.sure him with that same mirth.

"Funny, is it?" he snorted aggrievedly. "So very--very--funny? Well, I only hope you'll be able to laugh that way again--say even in a month or two!"

"I wasn't laughing at you," Young Denny told him soberly. "I--I was just thinking how strange it seemed to have somebody worried over me--worried because they were afraid I might get hurt. Most little mix-ups I've gone into have worried folks--lest I wouldn't."

CHAPTER XIII

When he had first looked up from the green-topped table and seen him standing there in the entrance of the gymnasium Ogden had only sensed the bigness of Denny Bolton's body--only vaguely felt the promise which his smooth black suit concealed. It was the face that had interested him most at that moment, and yet he had not even noticed the half healed cut that ran almost to the point of the chin. Young Denny's grave explanation of his quiet mirth caused him to look closer--made him really wonder now what had been its cause. There was a frankly inquisitive question half-formed behind his lips, but when he turned to find Denny sitting stripped to the waist, waiting for the garments which he held in his hands, he merely stood and stared. Bobby Ogden had seen many men stripped for the ring. It took more than an ordinary man to make him look even once--but he could not take his eyes off this boy before him. Once he whistled softly between his teeth in unconcealed amazement; once he walked entirely around him, exclaiming softly to himself. Then he remembered.

"Here, get into these," he ordered abruptly, and thrust the things into Denny's waiting hands.

While Denny was obeying he continued to circle and to admire critically.

"Man--man!" he murmured. "But you're sure put together right!" He was silent for a moment while he punched back and shoulders with a searching thumb. "Silk and steel," he went on to himself. "And not a lump--not a single knot! Oh, if you only knew how to use it; if you only knew the moves, wouldn't we give Flash the heart-break of his life! Now wouldn't we?"

Denny finished lacing his flat shoes and stood erect, and even Ogden's chattering tongue was silent. It was very easy now to see why that big body had seemed shoulder-heavy. From the shoulder points the lines ran unbroken, almost wedgelike, to his ankles. He was flat and slim in the waist as any stripling might have been. All hint of bulkiness was gone. He seemed almost slender, until one started to a.n.a.lyze each dimension singly, such as the breadth of his back, or the depth of his chest. Then one realized that it was only the slimness of fine-drawn ankles, the swelling smoothness of hidden sinews which created that impression. And Ogden's quick eye caught that instantly.

"I'd have said one-ninety," he stated judicially. "At least as much as that, or a shade better, before you undressed. Now I'd put it under--what do you weigh, anyhow?"

He slid the weight over the bar after Young Denny had stepped upon the white scales.

"One sixty-five--sixty-eight--seventy, and a trifle over," he finished. "Man, but you're built for speed! You ought to be lightning fast."

At that instant the boy called Legs opened the door and thrust in his head.

"The chief says if you're coming at all," he droned apathetically, "you might just as well come now."

Ogden threw a long bathrobe over his charge's shoulders as the latter started forward. He wanted to note the effect which the sudden display of that pair of shoulders and set of back muscles would have upon Flash Hogarty's temper. As they crossed the long room Denny's grave lack of concern was made to seem almost stolid in contrast with the heliotrope silk-shirted boy's excessive nervousness.

"Now remember what I told you," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Keep away from him--keep away and let him do the rushing--for he's got a punch that's sudden death! You can tire him out. He's old and his wind is gone."

The bra.s.s rods had been set up in their sockets in the floor and the s.p.a.ce which they outlined in the middle of the room roped off and carpeted with a square of hard, brown canvas. The man called Boots Sutton was already in his corner, waiting, and his att.i.tude toward the whole affair was very patently that of sheer boredom. He barely lifted his eyes as Young Denny crawled through the ropes at the opposite corner, behind the officiously fluttering Ogden. This was merely part of his every day's work; he spent hours each week either instructing frankly confessed amateurs or discouraging too-confident, would-be professionals. It was only because of the strangely venomous harshness with which Hogarty had given him his orders while he was himself dressing that he vouchsafed Denny even that one glance.

"I want you to get him," Hogarty snarled. "I want you to get him right from the jump--and get him!--and keep on getting him! Either make him squeal--make him quit--or beat him to death!"

But if Sutton failed to note the play of those muscles that bunched and quivered and ran like live things beneath the skin of the boy's back, when Bobby Ogden threw off the enveloping wrap with an ostentatious flourish and knelt to lace on his gloves, that disclosure was not entirely lost upon Hogarty. Watching from the corners of his eyes, Bobby saw him scowl and chew his lip as his head came forward a little. And immediately he turned to speak again in a whisper to Boots, squatting nonchalantly in his corner.

"There's no need, mind, of being careless," he cautioned. "He--he might have a punch, you know, at that. Some of 'em do--a lucky one once in a while. Just watch him a trifle--and hand it to him good!"

Sutton nodded and rose to his feet. Watch in hand, Hogarty vaulted the ropes, and Ogden, with a last whispered admonition, bundled up the bathrobe and scuttled from the ring.

At that moment Young Denny's bulkily slender body was even more deceptive. Sutton, even when trained to his finest, would have outweighed him twenty pounds. Now that margin was nearer thirty, and added to that, he was inches less in height. He was shorter of neck, blocky, built close to the ground. And the span of his ankle was nearly as great as that of Denny's knee.

Comparing them with detail-hungry eyes, Bobby Ogden saw, however, that from the waist up the boy's clean, swelling body totally shadowed the other's knotted bulk; he noted that, with arm outstretched, heel of glove against Sutton's chin, Denny's reach was more than great enough to hold the other away from him. Hard on the heels of that thought came the realization that that was a fine point of the game utterly outside of the boy's knowledge.

It was quiet--oddly, peacefully quiet for a second--in that long room.

Then in obedience to a nod from Hogarty the lanky boy called Legs languidly touched a bell, and all that peaceful silence was shattered to bits. Ogden shouted aloud, without knowing it, a shrill, dismayed cry of warning, as Sutton catapulted from his corner; he shouted and shut his eyes and winced as if that rushing attack had been launched at himself. But he opened them again--opened them at the sound of a sickening smash of glove against flesh--to see Denny blink both eyes as his whole body rebounded from that blow.

Ogden waited, forgetting to breathe, for the boy to go down; he waited to see his knees weaken and his shoulders slump forward. But instead of shriveling before that pile-driver swing, he realized that Denny somehow was weathering the storm of blows that followed it; that somehow he had managed to keep his feet and was backing away, trying to follow faithfully his instructions.

Just as Ogden had pictured it would be, it all happened. Foot by foot Sutton drove him around the ring. There was no opening for Denny to return a blow--nothing but a maze of battering fists to be blocked and ducked and covered. Even the speed, the natural speed of lithe muscles for which Bobby had hoped, and hopelessly expected, was entirely lacking in every motion. Heavy-footed, ponderous, Young Denny gave way before that attack. Sutton, always reputed slow, was terribly, brutally swift of movement in comparison with the boy's faltering uncertainty.

Twice and a third time in the first minute of fighting Boots feinted aside his guard with what seemed childish ease and then drove his glove against the other's unprotected face. Time after time he repeated the blow, and at each sickening smack that answered the crash of leather against flesh Bobby Ogden gasped aloud and marveled. For at each jolt Denny merely blinked his eyes as he recoiled--blinked, and retreated a little more slowly than before.

At the bell Ogden was through the ropes and dragging him to his corner. A little trickle of blood was gathering on the point of Denny's chin where the glove had opened afresh the half-healed cut on his cheek; he was shaking his head as he waved aside the wet towel in Ogden's hands.

"Man, but you're some bear for punishment!" Ogden chattered, strangely weak himself beneath his belt. "If you only had a little speed--just a little! Why, he sent over a dozen to your chin that ought to have laid you away. But you're playing him right! You're working him, and if you can manage to hang on you'll get him in the end. Just keep away--keep away and let him wear himself out. But--oh, if you did have it. Just one real punch!"

Young Denny continued to shake his head--continued to shake it doggedly.

"Do--do you mean that that is as hard as he is likely to hit?" he queried slowly. "Do you mean--he was really trying--hard?"

Ogden stopped urging the wet towel upon him and stood and gazed at him with something close akin to awe in his eyes.

"Hard!" he echoed in a small voice. "Hard! How hard do you expect a man to hit?"

"Then your plan was wrong," Young Denny told him. "Of course," he hastened to soften that abrupt statement, "of course it would work all right, only--only I'm not much good at that kind of fancy work. I--I just have to wade right in, when I want to do any damage, because I'm slow getting away from a man. I can't punch--not hard--when I'm backing off. But now I aim to show you how hard I expect a man to hit, just as soon as they ring that bell!"

Hogarty was leaning over Sutton in the opposite corner, frowning and talking rapidly.

"What's the matter, Boots?" he demanded anxiously. "Haven't lost your kick, have you?"

Sutton gazed contemplatively down at his gloved hands and up again into his employer's face.

"Who'd you say that guy was?" he countered. "Where's he blowed in from--again?"

"A rube--down from the hills he called it. Just some come-on,"

Hogarty repeated his former information, "who thinks because he's cleaned up main street and licked the village blacksmith that he's a world-beater. Why, Boots? You aren't worried, are you?"

The contemplative gleam in Sutton's eyes deepened.

"Because," he stated thoughtfully, "just because there's some mistake--or--or he's made of bra.s.s. I--I hit him pretty hard, Flash--and do you know what he done? Well, he blinked. He--blinked--at--me. I never hit any man harder."