Kid Scanlan

“ In these days when the world is just a great big baby yellin' for a new toy every second, any simp can beat his way to the top. The real stunt is stayin' there after you arrive!
Kid Scanlan was a good sample of that. When the Kid was fightin' for bean money and the exercise, he never spent nothin' but the evenin' and very little of that. He didn't know whether booze was a drink or a liniment and the only ladies he was bothered about was his mother. ”

“ That bird is just gettin' ready to pull a new punch from somewheres and he's the baby you want to watch! The guy that can't see nothin' funny in life, whether he's eight or eighty, is through!
Me and Kid Scanlan saved one of them guys. His name was Jason Van Ness.
I was sittin' in Genaro's office one afternoon about seven or eight months after me and the Kid had decided to give the movies a boost, when the door opens and in comes a guy which at first glance I figured must at least be the governor of the state. ”

“ But he runs around the other side to where the Kid is sitting examinin' all them handles and buttons.
"Sapristi!" he yells at the Kid. "Where you go, Meester Kid Scanlan? Everybody she's a look for you—Meester Potts he'sa want you right away! We starta firsta reel of your picture to-day. Everybody she'sa got to wait for you!"
"Keep your shirt on!" growls the Kid. "You told me this mornin' I had lots of time, didn't you?"
Genaro grabs hold of a tree and does a little dance. ”

“ And then Scanlan, poppin' up from somewheres, jumps in front of Arthur, his face the color of that busted table, but his body as steady as the Rockies, as he plants himself there before the big guy, swingin' his head back easily before that tremblin' iron pole. The Kid throws his hands up in a fightin' position and dances from one foot to the other lookin' for a openin', like a guy with a pail of water tryin' to put out hell! Arthur hesitates, starin' wildly at the Kid, and then his face begins to change till it's almost human. ”

“ De Vronde turns pale and Miss Vincent giggles.
"Of course we're going to Oakland!" she laughs. "I'm going to be your leading woman next week in 'How Kid Scanlan Won the Title.'"
"Suits me!" says the Kid. "But say, on the level now—I'm there forty-seven ways on that Shakespeare thing, ain't I?"
CHAPTER II EAST LYNCH
Success has ruined more guys than failure ever will. It's like a Santa Cruz rum milk punch on an empty stomach—there's very few people can stand it. Many a guy that's a regular fellow at a hundred a month, becomes a boob at a hundred a week. ”

“ His dashin', smashin', soft hat was yanked down over his home-breakin' face, and his dimpled chin was buried in his lily white hands. He looked like a guy that has worked twenty-seven years inventin' a new steamboat and then seen it sink the first time he tried it out.
The Kid runs over and slaps him on the back just hard enough to make his hat fall off.
"Cheer up, Cutey!" pipes Scanlan. "They can't hang a guy for tryin'!"
Harold retrieves his hat, smoothes it out carefully and lets loose the gloomiest sigh I ever heard in my life.
"Have you a cigarette?" he asks sadly. ”

“ I couldn't figure out what the Kid's education had to do with his health, so I beats it upstairs and all but fell over Eddie Duke. He's holdin' one eye and mumblin' somethin' about "roughnecks" and "ingratitude." I kept on through the crowd and into the Kid's room. Scanlan is still on the bed groanin', and beside him is the hotel clerk, thumbin' a almanac.
"Wait!" pants the clerk, as I come in. "I'll have it in a second." He turns over a lot more pages and then he hollers, "Ah! Here we are—what did I tell you? 'First Aid to the Injured.'" He clears his throat and the Kid looks up hopefully. ”

“ I shook it and Scanlan kissed it—a trick he stole from Van Ness.
The dinner and dance that night was a knockout! Film City is lit up like a plumber used to be on Saturday night, and the inhabitants is dressed like the people that poses for the ads of any cigarette over fifteen cents a pack. As usual, Miss Vincent had the rest of the dames lookin' like sellin' platers in stake race and, believe me, some of them society girls would have worried Venus. The Kid was so swelled up because she kept within easy call all night that he forgot his promise to fix up G. Herbert with Helen Dear. ”

“ The chair I throwed at him was wasted, because Scanlan stepped aside and flattened the assassin with a left hook to the jaw. The big guy gives one yell and rushes out of the office.
"Who's your friend?" I asks the Kid, pointin' to the sleepin' beauty on the floor. ”

“ Oh, you men are horrid!" She gathers up her skirts and flashes Scanlan a look, "I thought you, at least, were different!" she whispers—and trips into the picture!
For about three minutes the Kid stands lookin' after her without sayin' a word. He acts like he has stopped one with his chin!
"The big English stiff!" he busts out finally. "What does he mean by comin' over here and gettin' me in a jam with my girl? I'll get that bird, though, believe me!" ”

“ She says a little bit of society went a long ways with her, and where was the Kid? Before I can answer her along comes Helen Dear and she plumps down at the table and starts to tell us what a magnificent man Mister Van Ness was. She claims she never seen such a perfect gentleman in her life. I liked to snickered out loud at the disappointed way she pulled that one and then the Kid, G. Herbert and Van Ness suddenly comes around a tree and joins the party.
Scanlan winks at Miss Vincent, and she looks at him inquiringly, but he just shakes his head. ”

“ The Kid and me stood watchin' him the first time he worked, with our eyes and mouths as open as a mobile crap tourney.
"Ain't he a bear?" asks Eddie Duke, comin' up. "That's all two-dollar stuff he's pullin' there, bo! Y' don't see actin' like that every day, eh?"
"Oh, I don't know!" says the Kid, takin' a fresh slant at Van Ness. "I bet I could give him a battle in Shakespeare, at that! I was a riot in 'Richard the Third,' wasn't I?"
"Cease!" sneers Duke. "This bird has got them classics layin' down and rollin' over when he snaps his fingers. ”

“ Anybody could see that this stuff was causin' two people to register worry. They was the Kid and the dame that come over with the troupe. Scanlan watches Brown-Smith makin' his play for Miss Vincent, and he seen that if she wasn't encouragin' him, she wasn't complainin' to the police either, but the Kid keeps quiet and takes it out in makin' them sparrin' ex-bartenders tired of life. ”

“ Get everybody excite! You get throw from sheep in ocean, fella shoot at you when you try sweem, bada fella come along in motorboat, he'sa run you down! Then you swim five, six, seven mile to land and there dozen feller beat you with club—so you no fighta the champ!"
The Kid has sunk down on a chair and he's fannin' himself. His face was the color of skim milk.
"What you think?" asks Genaro. "She's a maka fine picture, what?"
"Great!" I says. "If that guy that wants to fix the Kid so he no fighta the champ loses out, they can't say he wasn't tryin' anyhow! ”

“ If he wasn't the original old Kid Kill-Joy, he was the bird that rehearsed him, believe me! Y'know just from lookin' at this guy, a man would get to thinkin' about his past life, the time he throwed the baby down the well when but a playful child, how old his parents was gettin' and the time Shorty Ellison run off with the red-headed dame that lived over the butcher's. You wished you had saved your money or somebody else's, suddenly findin' out that it was a tough world where a poor man didn't have a Chinaman's chance, and you wondered if death by drownin' was painful or not. ”

“ Except for where the Kid had jabbed him, he wasn't a bad lookin' bird, his best bets bein' a crop of dark, wavy hair and a set of features which any movie leadin' man could give ten thousand bucks for and make it up on the first picture. The suit of clothes he was wearin' had probably put the tailor over, and he also had two yellow gloves and a little trick cane. He walks over to where me and the Kid was standin' and takes off his hat. It was one of them dashin', devilish soft things that has names like Pullman cars—you know, "The Bryn Mawr, $2.50. All Harvard Wears One." ”

“ They walked away, and I turns to Genaro who had stepped aside for a minute.
"Say!" I asks him. "Is this De Vronde guy worth anything to you?"
"Sapristi!" he tells me, makin' a face. "I could keel him! He'sa wan greata big what you call bunk! He'sa no good! He can't act, he can do nothing. Joosta got nice face—that's all!"
"Well," I says, "he won't have no nice face, if he don't lay off the Kid! If Scanlan hears him make any cracks about him like he just did now—well, he'll practically ruin him, that's all!" ”

“ We was talkin' to the doctor, when Miss Vincent come in—stands in the doorway for a minute lookin' like a swell picture in a punk frame, and comes to the Kid with a yours-for-keeps look in her eyes. Scanlan throws up his head like he's just thought of somethin'.
"Say!" he pipes through the bandages. "I know what that psychological moment thing is now—the doc has just been tellin' me. It seems," he says with a grin. "It seems I pulled one off here this afternoon!"
THE END
CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER'S WESTERN NOVELS May be had wherever books are sold. ”

“ Daughter reaches up and grabs the Kid's hand.
"I—I—want to thank you," she says, "for saving my mother. I—I don't know what might have happened, if you hadn't been here!"
"That's all right!" pipes the Kid. "D'ye want us to do anything else?"
"Yes," she says. "Will you tell me where you heard that—that description of the—the million lovely loaves?"
"Sure," answers the Kid. "When we was comin' East, we stopped off at a hick burg somewheres and a guy took us over a bakery—"
Daughter claps her hands and laughs.
"Poetic justice!" she says. "That explains everything. ”

“ At the same time, I'm willin' to admit that my feelin's in the matter ain't gonna prove the ruin of the haunted house promoters. They's a whole lot of things which I look on as plain and simple bunk, that the average guy studies at college. But the reason I say they may be, is because when me and Kid Scanlan come back East this year we stopped off somewheres in the hurrah for prohibition part of the country and was showed over what the advertisin' matter admitted to be the greatest bakery in the world. ”

“ But at two o'clock, when the Kid is leavin' for his daily maulin' bee with big Arthur, she comes along in her racin' car and asks him to go to Los Angeles with her. The Kid stalls and says he's just about got time to get over and give the South American entry a workout, although he'd rather take the ride with her than defend his title against a one-armed blind man. She frowns for a minute, and then she smiles and says hop in with her and she'll drive him over to the sanitarium. ”

“ 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! ”

“ For a guy who had never tried the thing before, he struck me as bein' real swift at pickin' up the rules, because he faced the cameras at the right angles and pulled a lot of fancy stuff that usually nobody but a sure enough movie actor knows. The Kid sidesteps him and puts a light left to his chin and Brown-Smith comes back with a right swing that would have floored the Kid, if it hadn't been too high. The Kid went back on his heels and a little trickle of claret comes from his lips. Genaro jumps in the air, clappin' his hands. ”

“ If that guy we was just talkin' to is a lady's maid for Cutey, I can sing like Caruso!"
"He doesn't look like a valet," says Miss Vincent, kinda doubtful.
"I don't blame him!" says the Kid. "And lemme tell you, he never got them muscles from brushin' clothes and buttonin' vests. I felt his arm when I swung him around that time, and this guy is just about as soft as the Rock of Gibraltar!"
"I can't understand," says Miss Vincent, "how a strong, healthy man can be a valet—ugh!" she winds up, with a little shiver.
"That's easy," sneers the Kid. "A man can't!" ”

“ Even old Chris himself was looked on as Kid Stupid, because he claimed the earth was round. The gang he trailed with had it figured as bein' square like their heads.
The guy that invented the airship was doped out as a boob until the thing begin to fly, the bird that turned out the first steamboat was called a potterin' old simp and let him alone and he'd kill himself—and that's the way it goes.
The sucker is the boy that keeps the wise guys alive. He'll try anything once, and it don't make no difference to him whether it's three-card monte or a new kind of submarine. ”

“ I looked around for a director and a camera man, but they was nobody else in sight, so figurin' this couldn't be nothin' more than a dress rehearsal, I stepped over to the Kid.
"Who's your friend?" I asks him, noddin' to the sleepin' beauty.
"I seen Genaro lookin' for you," says the Kid. "I'll bet you been over to Frisco tryin' to nail that dame at the Busy Bee, ain't you?"
"A gambler will never get nowheres," I tells him, "but you're startin' off with a win on that bet!" I points at the model for still life again. "When does that guy get up?" ”