Free Collection 1999 - Beyond The Great Snow Mountains (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

put a mortgage on it to stock it and build a house and some barns. If it hadn’t been for Korea, it would have been paid off. But I was in the army, and Mark Lanning located that note and bought it.
    The mortgage was due, and I didn’t have even part of a payment. Without that ranch, I was through. My days in the ring weren’t numbered, but from where I stood I could see the numbers. I’d been fighting fourteen years, and Lanning had the game sewed up around there, so nobody fought unless they would do business. I cared more about that ranch than I did the title, so I could take a pass on Gordie Carrasco. But Van Ludlow couldn’t. Lanning had him aimed at Gordie but he wouldn’t look so good wearing the belt if the man all the sportswriters called “the uncrowned champ” wasn’t taken down, too. Lanning now had it all lined up. I had to fight or give up on my future.
    And then, there was Marge Hamlin.
    Marge was my girl. We met right after I mustered out, when I first returned to Zenith. She was singing at the Rococo, and a honey if there ever was one. We started going together, became engaged, and were going to marry in the summer.
    I
had
to take the fight. That was more the truth of it.
    I went over to Lanning’s. Duck Miller was there. We talked.
    “Then,” Lanning said, smiling his greasy smile, “there’s the matter of an appearance forfeit.”
    “What d’you mean?” I asked. “Ever know of me running out on a fight?”
    He moved one pudgy hand over to the ashtray and knocked off the gray ashes from his expensive cigar. “It ain’t that, Danny,” he said smoothly, “it’s just business. Van’s already got his up to five thousand dollars.”
    “Five thousand?” I couldn’t believe what I heard. “Where would I get five thousand dollars? If I had five thousand you would never get me within a city block of any of your fights.”
    “That’s what it has to be,” he replied, and his eyes got small and ugly. He liked putting the squeeze on. “You can put up your car an’ your stock from the ranch.”
    For a minute I stared at him. He knew what that meant as well as I did. It would mean that come snakes or high water, I would have to be in that ring to fight Ludlow. If I wasn’t, I’d be flat broke, not a thing in the world but the clothes on my back.
    Not that I’d duck a fight. But there are such things as cut eyes and sickness.
    “Okay,” I said, “I’ll put ’em up. But I’m warnin’ you. Better rig this one good. Because I’m going to get you!”
    I wasn’t the bragging kind, and I saw Duck Miller looked a little worried. Duck was smart enough, just weak. He liked the easy dough, and the easy money in Zenith all came through Mark Lanning. Lanning was shrewd and confident. He had been winning a long time. Duck Miller had never won, so Miller could worry.
    The thing was, Miller knew me. There had been a time when Duck and I had been broke together. We ran into some trouble out West when a tough mob tried to arrange one of my fights to make a cleanup. I refused to go along, and they said it was take the money or else.
    Me, I’m a funny guy. I don’t like getting pushed around, and I don’t like threats. In that one, everybody had figured the fight would go the distance. This guy was plenty tough. Everybody figured me for the nod, but nobody figured he would stop me or I’d stop him. The wise boys had it figured for me to go in the tank in the sixth round.
    I came to that fight all rodded up. They figure a fighter does it with his hands or no way. But these hombres forgot I’m a western man myself, and didn’t figure on me packing some iron.
    Coming out of the Arizona Strip, the way I do, I grew up with a gun. So I came down to that fight, and when this Rock Spenter walked out of his corner I feinted a left and Rock threw a right. My right fist caught him coming in, and my left hook caught him falling. And at the ten count, he hadn’t even wiggled a toe.
    I went down the aisle