Evening Star Newspaper, October 4, 1931, Page 91

TON, D. C., OCTOBER 4, 1931. [ —— - s ) ferent Sort of Story — By Albert Payson Terhune pf gestures he knocked one after the other neatly off his feet, regular pay than his few and precarious fights could win for him. It would be fun to haze this uncouth bocb. Forward Cronan pranced, flicked a smart left punch to Marshall's mouth, and followed .it by a righthander to the heart—a stiff de- livered beneath Jeff's uplifted guard. Back he danced, then came in again. A second time his left ,smacked Marshall's unprotected face, before the mountaineer's guard could come up. At the same time the novice struck. With the speed of a smiting tiger his left fist flew forward and upward. It caught the unexpect- ant Cronan flush c¢n the point of the jaw. There was a sound like the crack of a pistol. oetozon’s History of the Federal Capital, and today the line of demarcation betweem what was once two cor- porate cities is only housed in the mind of the oldest inhabitant. Historically Georgetown has much to be proud of, and its near-colonial buildings are the admiration of all lovers of early architecture. Indeed, no part of the District of Columbia today excels in beauty certain parts of this old town. Wisconsin Farmers Favor Co-operatives ISCONSIN farmers have taken to the co- operative movement with a vengeance and a large part of the agricultural output of the State is handled through various co-operative ‘associations. The activities eover dairy products, tobacco, fruits, potatoes, wool and live stock. So ex- tensive were the operations of ihe associations the Federal Government last year loaned $1,- 690,000 to aid in their work, and of that amount $251,000 has been paid back. Dairying is the most important of the farm Hnes in Wisconsin, for fully 50 per cent of the cash income of the farms is derived from milk and milk products. The cheese producers group, for instance, numbers 40,000 members in Wis- consin and Minnesota. The association oper- ates 400 factories, 260 being devoted to Ameri- can type of cheese and the others to various types, such as Swiss, Limberger and German brick. Their total output last year exceeded 50,000,000 pounds. Work was not started until February, 1930, in organizing the farmers delivering to the milk condenseries, and in a year 14 were organized, 29 were being organized and hopes were high that before long all 105 condenseries in the State might be joined in the association. The tobacco growers took kindly to the co- operative movement and 6,900 have joined in the pool handling this product. The fruit and vegetable growers are also active. This group sold collectively some 1,000 carloads of potatoes last year, while & large quantity of cherries ‘were processed and canned. Fifty per cent of the national production of ginseng is handled through a Wisconsin co-operative, while 1,000 sheep raisers disposed of 650,000 pounds of wool through the co-operative association. Cronan’s knees turned to tallow. He lurched forward on his face. “Humh!” ejaculated Jeff, well pleased. “A body can get a wee peckle of fun out of these pillows, after all, if he handles them right. ‘Won't there be any more boxing till he comes to? Most generally, though, they don't come to for quite a spell when I swat them like that.” Denning and the other hapdler were work- ing skillfully over the senseless Cronan. Con Reardon, from his seat on a packing box, looked with new interest at the novice. Reardon, for two years, had held the middle- weight championship of the West. He was a terrific hitter, and was unusually fast. As this newcomer was a mere welterweight, his prowess roused no jealousy in the champion’s heart. Yet Marshall's frank exultation in what he had just done irked Reardon enough to make him yearn to destroy some of that cockiness. “It will do the hick a lot of good to get a beating up before he grows a swelled head,” Rearcon confided to the manager, as Cronan was helped to a bench by his fellow handler. “Let me put on the gloves with him for a couple of rounds. If we don’'t give him the lesson, right off, he’ll think he can lay out any one with a single punch. How about it?” Denning thought for a moment. Then he nodded. “You're on,” he assented. “Only don't cut him to pieces so bad that it'll scare him for keeps. Just enough to show him up. I want to see if he can stand punishment. He didn't get any from poor Cronan.” In the impromptu ring a few minutes there- after Jeff Marshall and the champion came together. Reardon was the taller by 2 inches and the heavier by 13 pounds. Blithely had Jeff accepted the chance to box again. Smugly confident from his ridiculously easy victory over Cronan, the mountaineer opened proceedings by darting forward and hitting with the same wildcat swiftness for Reardon’s jaw. But Reardon was not there. However, the champion was everywhere else. His left banged sickeningly into Jeff’s face. Instantly thereafter his left and right were beating a murderous tattoo against Marshall’'s body. EFF took advantage of his adversary’s near- ness to slash fiercely at his seemingly un- guarded face. Again Reardon was not there. Again, before Jeff knew what it was all about, Reardon’s right and left had smashed bruis- ingly against Marshall’s jaw. ‘The double punch would have floored the average professional. For Reardon had no in- tention at all of obeying Denning’s commands as to gentleness. Right and left crashed Reardon’s fists to the jaw. Back jumped Marshall, partly of his own volition, but more from the impact of those two punches. But he kept his feet; nor did he seem so much as dazed. Instantly he braced himself to charge in. But Reardon would not have it so. He was after his novice opponent with all the strength and skill and hiiting power he possessed. His fists tattooed on Jeff’s ill-guarded ribs and heart and wind. He hammered and pounded Marshall's jaw and nose and mouth. Easily the champion avoided Jeff’s wild efforts at stemming and returning the murderous assault. It was not a bout. It was a massacre. At first Denning had stepped forward to stop the slaughter. Then he halted and backed over to his bench again. On his fat. features incredulous wonder and joy were stamped. This raw mountaineer had something beyond superhuman strength. He had the still rarer quality of standing frightful punishment with- out il effects. The fusillade of knockout blows did not knock him out. They did nothing more than batter him. Twice he was slugged to the floor. Both times he was up again with the resilience of a new rubber ball. Back and forth the awful cataract of blows sent him. But ever he was in the fray again with that same amazing Du;mng'a grin waxed broader. Reardon, vexed by this failure of his effort to demolish the novice, threw more and more zest into his . whirlwind assault. Meantime, Jeffl Marshall was thinking as calmly and as shrewdly as if he were working out a problem in crop rotation. He did not enjoy being bashed about like this, with no chance to get back at his elusive antagonist. It was something outside his experience, and he planned method after method for changing the course of the bout. Presently his idea was formed. He noted that Reardon “set himself” when he delivered a brace of those thudding jaw- blows. When Reardon was “set” he could not dance at once out of reach. An instant afterward Reardon got his op- ponent where he wanted him. Bracing him- self on both feet, he drove left and right, in lightning succession, to Marshall’s chin. As he did so, Jeff struck. It was a laching out of his right fist, with all fts confusing speed and un- believable force. It caught Reardon fully extended and with his jaw momentarily open fo an attack he had no reason to expect. Immediately Con covered up and made as though to dance away. But before he could bring in his outflung arms or hustle his braced legs into motion, the wildcat- swift punch had done its work. - Marshall’s right landed on the champion’s chin. Face forward—surest sign of a complete knockout—Con Reardon slumped to the floor, even as had Cronan. There for nearly half a minute he lay. It was the first complete knockout of the champion's long stellar career. “He's there!” mouthed Denning rapturously as he helped the dizzy and raging champion to his feet. “Marshall’'s there! He's got a punch that no man of his weight ever packed since the world began. He.can stand more punishment than old Grimm himself. And he knows how to use his brains. Teach him to box and get him a little ring experience, and there's not a man living, up to 160 pounds, that can last five rounds with him. He's the world onder we're always dreaming about and never finding. And he’ll be sewed up with a 10-year contract with me as quick as I can phone a lawyer.” HAT was the beginning. No Derby winner’s trainers ever wrought one-half as hard over their horse as did Heber Denning and his staft over the glum-faced mountaineer paragon. En- sued days and weeks of such grueling work and tutoring that Jeff Marshall sickened of it at fiust and then began to feel a fierce delight in it. At Jefl's own sourly ironic request, Denning gave him the ring name of “Kid Kwasind.” A minor fight was arranged for him with a mod- erately good second-rate welterweight. Con- trary to public belief, almost no fighter travels far on the reputation of winning in the first round. The crowd wants its money’s worth, in time as well as in action. Wherefore, Den- ning commanded Jeff to toy with his adver- sary for the first four rounds. “Kid Kwasind” obeyed. In the fifth round, acting on orders, Kwasind planted the right punch in the right place. And the other man’s seconds had to drag their beaten contender to his corner. Fight followed fight; Denning wisely pitting his protege each time with an antagonist only a little better than the predecessor. The bouts ranged from four to six rounds in length be- fore Jeff landed the lethal punch which could as well have been delivered at the outset. There was an odd quality to “Kid Kwasind” which caught the public’s fickle taste. He be- came a drawing card. Never had he been de- feated. Never had he been in a moment’s dis- tress during any of his bouts. Always there was a fatal element to the knockout punch; a deadliness which thrilled the spectators. The sporting editors began to take up the mountain- eer nonpareil, finding him picturesque copy. Denning played fair. Already Jeff had more money in a month than ever before he had seen in a year. Vistas of fortune were opening up before him. Glumly, in no way elated by his sudden notoriety, Marshall did his work. His heart was like cold lead; except for that one tiny smoulder of morbid resolve to let Avis Kent know one day what she had lost. At last, by sheer fnatchmaking genius and by statecraft and by a heavy cash outlay in the right places, Heber Denning landed a longed-for bout with “Spike” Toccato. “This is the whole thing, Kid,” he raved blissfully to Marshall. “This is what we’ve been after. Lick Toccato, and the doors of Madison Square Garden are wide open to you. Two Garden fights, if you win them (and there’s not a human fighter who can stop you) and you challenge the champion for the welterweight title of the world. Yes, and the welterweight champ can’t stop you any more than old Cronan could. Then we clean up on that title; and when we milk it dry we’ll go after the middle- weight title, and we’ll get that. Boy, we’ll wade so in money that we’ll have French fried thousand-dollar bills for breakfast.” “Yes,” agreed the uninterested Jeff. “It all hung on our landing this Toccate go. And we've landed it. Lick him, next month, and the rest of the way is greased.” Calmly, without the remotest excitement, Kid Kwasind listened to the threnody. With as little excitement, but with his eternal con- scientiousness, he began to train for the fight with the redoubtable “Spike” Toccato. The i g Louisville Cestus Club won the bid bout. Back to his first training qua Louisville the mountaineer was taken to ready for the battle. One day, just before the date set for the ville evening paper, whose sporting editor had spent the preeeeding aftcrnoon at the gym. Half of the sporting page was taken up with an interview with Kid Kwasind and with vare ijous carefully posed snapshots of him. The story itself was bristling with superlatives. EFF MARSHALL studied the pictures. Them with painful slowness and care he read and re-read the sporting editor’s exuberant story about himself and his prowess and hig undoubted future of world supremacy and fore tune. For the first time in six months %8 laughed aloud. Then, as soon as he was alone, he cut oul from the page two pi-tures which limned him stripped to the waist. These he tore up. He folded the rest of the glowing eulogy and stuck it into an envelope and addressed and stamped and mailed it. “Maybe she thought I was fourflushing when 1 told her I might some day be rich and big,” he muttered, under his breath. “But print can‘t lie. Neither can piciures. I'l show her * » + And I'd give it all for just one nice word from her.” he ended miscrably. ~ The Kwasind-Toccato fight was scheduled for 10 o'clock on the evening of March 24. Before 9 o'clock Jefl was in his dressing room. Obsequiously, the handlers-helbed him undress and to get into his tights and his fighting shoes, Then Marshall stzctched himself out at full length on the rubbing table; the most uncone cerned man in the stuffy little room. “I'll get me a snooze for half an hour,” he told Denning. “I always have more snap o me if I can sleep just before a fight. Chase on, if you want to, and see the lightweight prelim you was telling me about. So long.” He shut his eyes—no more excited over th§ coming battle than if it were a gymnasium training bout. Denning and the handlers shut the door behind them and went up to the ring- side. They were accustomed to this habit of Jefl's to precede a fight with a refreshing half-hour doze. As peacefully as a drowsy child Jeff Mir< shall slipped into dreamless sleep. But almost instantly he was aroused by some one coming into the dressing room. It was the boy who did odd jobs around the training quarters. “Telegram for Mr. Denning,” announced the boy. “I thought he’d want to have it quick, so I brought it over. I brought along the eve~ ning mail, too.” “He's up in a ringside box,” said Jeff. “Take it to him. You can leave the mail here.” The boy set down the small sheaf of letters on a corner of the rubbing table and departed with the telegram. Jefl rolled lazily on his face to continue his nap. His elbow touched the little pile of letters. They slithered to the floor. Grumbling, he leaned over and scooped them up, glancing unconcernedly at the ad» dresses. Half an hour later Denning and the handlers hustled back to the dressing room. Not %0 wake Marshall too suddenly from his nap, Den~ ning pushed open the door softly and peered in. ‘The dressing room was empty. Nor could a hysterically frenzied search and a barrage of telephone calls discover the wher@e abouts of the man who that evening was to have fought the deciding bout of his goldem career. Jeff Marshall, alias Kid Kwasind, had vanished. HE papers were full of the mystery. The police were set to work. Denning was of the verge of a nervous smash. The city was combed. There were wild tales of kidnapels who had crept into the unguarded dressing room and had stolen the peerless- fighter in order to cash in on bets on the bout. Every one had a theory. Nobody knew anything. This until, a week after, the soul-crushed Heber Denning received a letter at the traine ing quarters. With wabbling fingers he gripped the single sheet of foolscap and read: Friend Denning: Maybe you have been wondering what be- came of me that night. Danny Warren brough® the mail and there was a letter jor me and #t was from the lady named Avis Kent I left Wal- bridge on account of and she had been trying Jor pretty mear a year to find where I was ang she never knew till she got a newspaper piece.§ sent her. Then she wrote to me right off. Her letter said how she had been terribly sorry jor the things she said-to me that day and she said she really was my girl all the time only she did not know she was my girl till § went away and she saw how unhappy it made her to have me go away. And the letter saif still my girl if I wanted to come bach marry her and that she had not eves, y boy but only me and I could go ng a fighter if I wanted to but sheé million (1,000 000) times happier i a gentleman again and if I and shé t live together on my farm instead of a fighter. have but only barely time enough to hop the 10:02 train for Wabs or I would of left word for you about - would of written to you- sooner only we our wedding tour in Cite ti till this p.m. I did not know any joiR§ as I and she ate. Hoping find you the same. Yours very respectjully, MR. JEFFERSON MARSHALL. ruled page slipped from Denning's sh:ky Half aloud the manager addressed an e . 335 s § 8-! it ¢ t ever!” he gurgled. “Nothing om lick him. Nothing but a half-si of & girl. The—very strong man, Kwas Apd—and—and the very stronger woman, Avist” » ¢ (Gopyrigh{, 1931.) B¢ afgg