“WHEN THE PRESSURE’S ON, a promoter’s got to do the best he can,” Fred Reed said petulantly for the fourth time during his sales talk. He ought to make a recording, I thought to myself.
Fred Reed had done the best he could all right, but I didn’t like the setup, not any part of it. Including Mr. Reed, there were nine of us sitting around in the plush pink-and-white bridal suite of the new Southerner Hotel in Chattanooga. Johnny Norris, Roy Whipple, Omar and myself were all Southern Conference regulars, but the other entries were not, although they had paid their fees for the Chattanooga derby.
Except for promoter Fred Reed, who wore a suit and necktie, the rest of us were either in sports clothes or blue jeans, and we looked as out of place in the mid-Victorian décor of the bridal suite as a honeymoon couple would have looked bedded down in a cockpit. My picturesque partner, with his wild beard and bib overalls, sat uneasily on a fragile gilded chair by the door to the bathroom. I was sharing a blue velvet love seat with Old Man Whipple, a gray-stubbled cockfighter from North Carolina whose odor would have been improved by a couple quick runs through a sheep-dip.
Mr. Reed wiped his sweaty brow with a white linen handkerchief and continued: “Boys, when the S.P.C.A. really puts their foot down, the sheriff has to go along with ‘em, that’s all there is to it!
“Elections are coming up, and I just couldn’t pay nobody off. But I did get to the city officials and we can stage the derby right here in this suite without interference. I know you men have all fought cocks in hotel rooms before, but you’ve never had a better one than this! Just take a look at this wonderful floor.” Mr. Reed bent down with a broad smile on his face and rubbed the blue nylon carpet with his fingers. “Why, a carpet like this makes a perfect pit flooring for chickens! And don’t worry about damages. The manager has been tipped plenty, and I promised him I’d pay any cleaning charges on the carpets. You’ve all got reserved rooms on the floor, and we’ve got the exclusive use of the service elevator to bring the cocks straight up from the basement garage.
“Frankly, boys, I think the Chattanooga derby is better off here than it is at my pit outside of town. There won’t be as many spectators because of the space limitations, but I’ve invited some big money men, and you’ll be able to place bets as high as you want to on your birds.”
Old Roy Whipple, sitting beside me on the love seat, spat a stream of black tobacco juice onto the nylon carpet and then cleared his throat. “Where’re we goin’ to put the dead chickens, Mr. Reed?”
“That’s an excellent question, Mr. Whipple,” Reed replied pompously. “I’m glad you asked it. The dead cocks will be stacked in the bathtub. Are there any other questions?”
“Yes, sir. I have one,” Johnny Norris said politely. “The action will be slowed down considerably, won’t it, if we have to bring the cocks up from the basement before every fight? It’ll take forever to finish the derby. And what do we use for a drag pit?”
“That’s another good question, Mr. Norris,” Reed replied, with the deference in his voice that Johnny Norris usually received. “But these matters have all been taken into account. Except for the traveling pit, the rest of the furniture in here will be removed, and folding chairs will be set up. You’ll heel the cocks in the bedroom, and the weights’ll be announced far enough in advance so that there’ll always be another pair waiting to pit. There’s another connecting door through the bedroom to the next suite—the V.I.P. suite, the hotel calls it—and the living room of the next suite’ll be used as a drag pit. With two referees, I can assure you, gentlemen, that the fighting will be as fast here as anywhere else. Are there any more questions, anything at all?”
There were no more questions.
“All right then, gentlemen. The fighting starts at ten a.m. tomorrow morning. Mimeographed schedules will be run off tonight and will be slipped under the doors to your rooms. If you’ll all give me a list of your weights, I’ll get started on the matching right away. By the way, gentlemen, if you don’t want to dress up for dinner, you can have your meals served in your rooms. Otherwise, the hotel’s got a rule about wearing coats and ties in the dining room. Your meals have been paid for, too, including tips.”
Discussions began among the other cockfighters, and they started to work on their weight lists. I caught Omar’s eye and jerked my head for him to follow me out into the hall. When Omar joined me in the corridor, I led the way to our room. I wrote a short note to my partner on a sheet of hotel stationery:
No good, partner. Deputies understand agrarian people and cockfighters, but city cops have a bad habit of not staying bought. There’ll be a lot of drinking and a lot of money changing hands. That means women present and women mean trouble. We’ve got thirty of our best cocks in the basement and a confiscation raid would ruin us for the season. Get our entry fee back from Mr. Reed.
Omar read the note and then stared at me morosely with his large brown eyes. The corners of his mouth were probably turned down as well, but I couldn’t see his mouth beneath his heavy moustache. “Damn it, Frank,” he said, “I’m inclined to go along with you, but we’ll be passing up a whole lot of easy money. Fred Reed told me personally that there were two big-money gamblers flying in from Nashville tonight, and we get fat. Really fat! The only entry we really have to worry about is Johnny Norris from Birmingham.”
I took the note out of his hands and ran a double line under every word in it to emphasize the meaning, and passed it back.
“I’m with you, all right. Don’t worry,” he said earnestly. “But don’t forget those eight cocks we selected to enter. They’re trimmed mighty fine. If we don’t fight them tomorrow they’re likely to go under hack.”
I nodded, thinking about the problem.
If we didn’t fight our eight conditioned gamecocks, we would have to put them back on a regular maintenance diet and then recondition them all over again for the January 10 Biloxi meet. Even if they were reconditioned, they would be stale. And stale, listless cocks aren’t winners.
I opened my suitcase, remembering the four-cock derby scheduled at Cook’s Hollow, Tennessee. I flipped through the pages of my Southern Cockfighter magazine until I found Vern Packard’s advertisement for the meet. As I recalled, the derby was scheduled for the next day, December 15, at the book’s Hollow Game Club. Vern Packard was a friend of mine, although I hadn’t fought at his pit for more than four years. I circled Vern’s telephone number in the advertisement, and wrote on the margin of the magazine:
Call Packard. We’re too late for the derby, but I can fight our cocks in post- and pre-derby hacks. Vern’s a friend of mine. You take the truck and the rest of the cocks on to Biloxi like we planned.
Omar, cheered considerably, laughed and said: “I’ll buy that, Frank. And raid or no raid, the idea of fighting cocks in a bridal suite doesn’t appeal to me anyway.”
Omar picked up the telephone and called Vern Packard. As I thought, I was too late to enter Vern’s derby, but there were only three entries instead of four, and Vern planned “feathering the pit” hacks as well as post-derby hacks. He was happy to have me, and told Omar that he would put me up in his spare bedroom and have some coops readied for my eight cocks.
While Omar looked for Fred Reed to get our entry money back, I packed both our bags. Ordinarily, we would have had to forfeit the two hundred dollars we put up because we had already signed the contracts and mailed them in from Ocala. But we had contracted to fight at the Chattanooga Game Club, five miles out of the city, not in a hotel suite. It was Fred Reed’s hard luck that the sheriff had padlocked his pit, not ours. I repacked our bags, and by the time Omar returned to the room we were ready to leave.
As we entered the elevator, Omar said: “Fred was mighty unhappy about our withdrawal, Frank. We were the only entry to pull out. He tried his damnedest to talk me out of it. There’s going to be a bar with free drinks and sandwiches all day, he said, which only proves that we’re doing the right thing. By one tomorrow afternoon that suite’ll be so full of smoke and drunks you won’t be able to see the chickens.”
Although I couldn’t have agreed with Omar more, I hated to leave. There was something exciting about fighting cocks in a hotel and the prospect of winning large sums of money. It’s almost impossible to resist free drinks, and there would be some beautiful women around to spend some money on. And when it comes to good-looking women, Chattanooga has got prettier girls than Dallas, Texas.
I had written to Dirty Jacques Bonin in Biloxi and arranged a deal to put Omar and me and our gamecocks up at his game farm. When he came to fight his chickens at the Ocala derby in February, we would fix him up with like facilities either at my place or Omar’s.
We shook hands and parted in the basement garage of the hotel. Omar headed for Biloxi in the pickup with twenty-two gamecocks, and I drove to Cook’s Hollow with Icky and the derby-conditioned birds in the station wagon.
In the heat of the fighting the next day at Vern Packard’s pit, I realized how much I had depended upon Omar to look after things during the season so far. If Vern hadn’t done a good portion of my talking for me, I would have had a rough time getting matches. But thanks to Vern’s efforts, I managed to fight five of my eight cocks, and I won every hack. By picking the winning derby entry and laying even money with a local gambler, I won four hundred dollars. My five hack wins added two hundred and fifty dollars more to my roll, and I was well satisfied with the outcome of the side trip to Cook’s Hollow. This was a small sum compared to what we might have won at Chattanooga, but it was enormous compared to winning nothing at all.
By four that afternoon the fighting was over, and I hadn’t been able to get a match for Icky. Icky scaled now at a steady 4:02 and was too light for derby fighting in the Southern Conference. All of the S.C. derby weights began at 5:00, and the only way I could fight Icky was in hack battles. In New York and Pennsylvania, where the use of short heels is preferred and smaller gamecocks are favored, I could have had all the fights I wanted. So far, Icky had only had two fights. Before he met Jack Burke’s Little David at Milledgeville, I wanted him to win at least three more. He would need all of the pit experience he could get to win over Burke’s Ace.
The Cook’s Hollow Game Club was similar to a hundred other small southern cockpits. The pit was on Vern Packard’s rocky farm, adjacent to his barn, and covered with a corrugated iron roof. There were three-tier bleachers on three sides, and the fourth side was the barn wall. A double door in the barrier provided an entranceway inside, and two-by-two coops were nailed to the interior walls of the barn to serve as cockhouses for visitors.
There was a large blackboard nailed to the outside of the barn. The fans could follow the running results of the derby as they were chalked up by the referee following each battle. Cockfighters looking for individual hacks also used the blackboard. I had written my name and the weights of all my cocks in square letters, hoping for a challenge. When three-quarters of the crowd had left, I decided to quit myself.
I was inside the barn, transferring my birds into my traveling coops, when Vern Packard introduced me to an old farmer and his son.
“Frank,” Vern said, “this is Milam Peeples and his son, Tom.”
I shook hands with both men. Milam Peeples was in his late fifties, tanned and well weathered by his years of outside labor. The yellow teeth on the left side of his mouth, I noticed, were worn down almost to the gum line from chewing on a pipe. The son was a full head taller than his father, with long thick arms and big raw-looking hands. He had a lopsided smile, a thick shock of wheat-colored hair, and he wore a gauze pad over his left eye. His right eye was blue. A thin trickle of spit ran down his chin from the left corner of his slack mouth. Either it didn’t bother him or he didn’t notice it. I noticed it, and it bothered me.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Mansfield,” Tom Peeples said.
“I saw on the blackboard out there”—his father made a sweeping gesture with his malodorous briar pipe—“that you got a 4:02 lookin’ for a fight. If you don’t mind givin’ me an ounce, I got a 4:03 out to my place that can take him.”
“He’s my cock, Mr. Mansfield,” Tom broke in. “Little Joe. You ever hear of him?”
“Mr. Mansfield hasn’t fought in this neck of the woods for some years, Tom,” Vern answered for me. “I doubt if he has.”
“Little Joe’s a six-time winner, Mr. Mansfield,” the old man continued, “but I’ve never fought him here in Vern’s pit. He’s crowd shy and can’t be conditioned to people or noise. But if you want to drive on out to my farm, maybe we could have us a little private hack.”
I nodded sympathetically. Often a gamecock is crowd shy. But I wasn’t too anxious to pit Icky against a six-time winner.
“I’ll tell you what,” Milam Peeples said generously, “I’ll give you two-to-one odds, and you can name the amount. After all, you got to fight at my place instead of here, and I want to be fair.”
I agreed, holding up five fingers.
“Nope,” Milam Peeples shook his head. “I ain’t fightin’ Little Joe for no fifty dollars. Ain’t worth the risk.”
I had meant five hundred dollars. I grinned and opened and closed my fist five times, as rapidly as I could.
“Five hundred dollars?” Mr. Peeples took the pipe out of his mouth.
When I nodded, he hesitated.
“Now that’s getting mighty steep. If I lose, you win yourself a thousand dollars.”
“You offered Frank two to one,” Vern Packard reminded the old man.
“Little Joe can take him, Daddy!” Tom said eagerly.
“All right.” Peeples agreed to the bet and we shook hands. “When you’re ready to go you can follow us on out in your car.”
“Why don’t you load Mr. Mansfield’s coops in his station wagon, Tom,” Vern suggested. “And I’ll take him up to the house to get his suitcase.”
“Yes, sir,” Tom said.
As soon as Vern and I entered the back door of his house into the kitchen, he dropped into a chair beside the table where we had eaten breakfast. There was an amused smile on his friendly, open face. Vern was a short wiry little man with a sparse gray moustache, and he had been a good host.
“Just a second, Frank,” Vern’s voice stopped me as I started for the bedroom. “It’s a trick. Old Man Peeples has never heard of you, Frank, and he’s taken you for a sucker. I’ve seen him take itinerant cockers before, and I’ve never said anything. Why not? Peeples is a local cocker, and most of the drifters who fight here don’t come back anyway. But I don’t feel that way about you. Because the local gamblers didn’t know your reputation I won six hundred bucks today on your hacks.” Vern laughed with genuine amusement.
“You wouldn’t fight the old man anyway, once you saw his setup. He’s got a square chunk of waxed linoleum in his barn for the floor of his cockpit. And that cock of his hasn’t won six fights, he’s won at least eighteen fights! He rubs rosin on Little Joe’s feet, and on that slick waxed floor the opposing cock doesn’t have a chance. But if you really think your cock can take him, now that you know their game, I’ll give you a chunk of rosin. That way, you’ll both start even.”
I got my suitcase out of the bedroom. Vern rummaged through the drawers of the sideboard.
“Here,” he handed me an amber chunk of rosin the size of a dime-store eraser. “You don’t need very much, Frank. But don’t fight him on that waxed linoleum unless you use it. If you want my advice, you’re a damned fool to fight him at all!”
I winked, shook hands with Vern and crossed the yard toward the station wagon again. These two peckerwoods had a lesson coming, and I had made up my mind to teach it to them. Icky was in peak condition, as sharp as a needle. They would be counting on their trick to win. With the rosin safe in my pocket, the odds were in my favor. I couldn’t believe that Little Joe, despite his eighteen wins, was in proper condition to beat Icky in an even fight.
I put my suitcase in the back, checked Tom’s loading of my coops, climbed into the front seat, and honked my horn to let Peeples know that I was ready to go. I followed his vintage black car out of the parking lot. The Peeples farm was some six miles out in the country, and to get there I had to follow the lurching car over a twisting, rock-strewn, spring-breaking dirt road. When the old cockfighter stopped at the entrance to his dilapidated barn, I parked beside him.
I could see the cockpit without getting out of the station wagon. The linoleum floor was a shiny, glistening design in blue-and-white checkered squares. The glassy floor was such a flagrant violation of pit regulations—anywhere—that I began to wonder if there wasn’t more going on here than Vern Packard had told me. But Vern had advised me not to fight, so I decided to go ahead with it and see what happened.
When I leaned over to pull out Icky’s coop, Tom opened the front door and offered his help.
“I’ll hold him for you, Mr. Mansfield.”
I took my blue chicken out of the coop and passed him to Tom Peeples. He smiled, hefting Icky gently with his big raw hands.
“He feels jes’ like a baseball!” Tom said, as I opened my gaff case. “Sure does seem a shame to see Little Joe kill a pretty chicken like this one.”
I cleared Icky’s spur stumps with typewriter-cleaning fluid, and heeled him low with a set of silver one-and-a-quarter-inch gaffs. Holding the cock under the chest with one hand, Tom passed him back to me.
“By the way,” he said, snapping his fingers, “Little Joe always fights in three-inch heels, if you want to change.” Tom had waited patiently until I had finished heeling before providing me with this essential information. Another violation of form. Of course, he had no way of knowing that I wouldn’t have changed to long heels anyway.
I shook my head indifferently, and he ran to meet his father who was rounding the corner of the barn. Mr. Peeples had gone to the rows of chicken runs behind the barn to get Icky’s opponent while Tom had helped me heel. I took a good look at Little Joe from the front seat.
The cock had been so badly battered I couldn’t determine his game strain. His comb and wattles were closely cropped for fighting, and most of his head feathers were missing, pecked out in earlier battles. Instead of the usual graceful sweep of arching tail feathers, the Peeples cock had only three broken quills straggling from his stern. Both wings were ragged, shredded, in fact. Both wings had been broken in fighting, and although they had knitted, they had bumpy leading edges. As Milam Peeples sat down on a sawhorse beside the pit and turned the cock on its back for Tom to heel him, I noticed that Little Joe’s left eye was missing. A blinker on top of everything else. If Little Joe had won eighteen fights, and from his appearance he had been in many battles, Icky was in for the toughest fight of his life.
Maybe his last.
Under cover from Milam and Tom Peeples, I sat in the front seat of the station wagon holding Icky in my lap and briskly rosined the bottom of his feet. I was still rubbing the feet when the old man called out that he was ready. There was only a sliver of rosin left, but I put it in my shirt pocket and joined Milam and his son at the pit.
“I’m goin’ to handle,” the old man said. “And if you don’t have no objections, Tom here can referee.”
I nodded, stepped over the low wooden wall of the pit, and took my position on the opposite score. The waxed floor was so slick my leather heels slipped on it slightly before I got to the other side. Although I figured Mr. Peeples was expecting an argument of some kind about the illegal flooring, I kept a straight face. I wondered, though, what kind of an explanation he used to counter arguments about the pit. It must have been a good one.
“Better bill ‘em, Mr. Mansfield,” Tom said.
We billed in the center, and Icky got the worst of the pre-fight session. The bald head of Little Joe and shortage of neck feathers didn’t give him a mouthful of anything. The Peeples cock was the meanest and most aggressive biller I’d seen in some time. I dropped back to my score. Both sets of scores, the eight and the two feet, had been straightedged onto the linoleum with black paint. As I squatted behind my back score, Tom asked me if I was ready, and I pointed to his father.
“Get ready, then,” Tom said to the old man.
Milam was forced to hold the straining Little Joe under the body with both hands. There weren’t enough tail feathers for a good tall hold—and I watched Tom’s lips.
“Pit!”
The fight was over.
The battle ended so quickly, all three of us were stunned. I’ve seen hundreds of cockfights end in the first pitting, a great many of them in fewer than fifteen seconds. But the fight between Icky and Little Joe didn’t last two seconds.
I was aware that Little Joe’s feet were rosined as well as Icky’s. Mr. Peeples had coated them surreptitiously when he got the chicken from its coop run behind the barn. So the only way I can account for the quick ending is by crediting Icky’s superior speed and conditioning and my long-time practice of releasing him first. The old man was hampered when the time came to let go, because of the manner in which he had to hold the Ace cock.
Tom’s sharp order to pit was still echoing in the rafters of the barn when I released my Blue. Icky, with his sticky feet firmly planted, didn’t take the two or three customary steps forward like he usually did. He flew straight into the air from a standing takeoff. Old Man Peeples scarcely had time to pull his hands away from beneath Little Joe’s body when Icky clipped twice and cut the veteran fighter down on its score. It happened that fast. Click! Click! One heel pierced Little Joe’s head, and the other heel broke his neck.
As the three of us watched in silent stupefaction, Icky strutted proudly in the center of the pit, leaving white gummy footprints in his wake, and issued a deep-throated crow of victory. The expressions on the faces of Milam Peeples & Son were truly delightful to see. And then Tom Peeples’s face changed from milky white to angry crimson.
“You killed my Little Joe!” he shouted.
I was still squatting on my heels when he yelled, and I was totally unprepared for the enormous fist that appeared from nowhere and caught me on the temple. I crashed sideways into the left pit wall and it was smashed flat under the weight of my body. My eyes blurred with tears. All I could see were dark red dots unevenly spaced and dancing upon a shimmering pink background. I must have sensed the darker shadow of Tom’s heavy work shoe hurtling toward my head. I rolled over quickly, and his kick missed my head. Two more twisting evasive turns, and I was in the empty horse stall next to the pit. As I scrambled to my knees, my fingers touched the handle of a heavy grooming brush. I regained my feet and swung it an arcing loop from the floor. Tom saw the edge of the weighted brush ascending, tried to halt his rushing lunge, and half turned away. The brass-studded edge caught him on his blind side, on the bump behind his left ear. As Tom fell, his arms held limply at his sides, the opposite wall of the pit collapsed under him. He was out cold.
I could see all right now, but I kept a firm grip on the brush handle as I watched Milam Peeples to see what his reaction was going to be. The old man shook his head sadly, and removed an old-fashioned snap-clasp pocket-book from his front pocket.
“You didn’t have no call to hit the boy that hard, Mr. Mansfield,” he said. “Little Joe was Tom’s pet. He was bound to feel bad about losin’ him so quick.”
I tossed the brush back into the empty horse stall and rubbed my sore side. My bruised ribs felt like they were on fire. My head was still ringing, and I probed my throbbing temple gingerly with a forefinger. There was a marble-sized knot beneath the skin, and it was swelling even more as I touched it.
“Now, I’m a little short of a thousand dollars in cash, Mr. Mansfield,” Milam Peeples said plaintively, standing on the other side of Tom’s felled body, “but here’s three hundred and fifty-two dollars in bills. You’re goin’ to have to take the rest of the debt out in game fowl. We’d best go on down to the runs and you can pick ‘em out. I figure six gamecocks’ll make us even.”
I didn’t. I counted the bills he handed me, shoved the wad into my hip pocket, and then held up ten fingers.
“Most of these cocks are Law Grays, Mr. Mansfield,” Peeples protested. “And three are purebred Palmetto Muffs. You know yourself there ain’t no better cocks than Palmetto Muffs! Take a look first, and you’ll see what they’re worth. I only got ten gamecocks altogether.”
I followed the old man out of the barn.
Professional cockers frequently pay off their gambling debts with gamecocks instead of cash. But this kind of pay-off is normally agreed upon before a fight—not afterward. I had no objection to taking gamecocks, instead of money, this late in the season. Some hard-hitting replacements would be useful before we entered the Milledgeville Tourney, and I was on the high side of the hog when it came to settling up with Peeples.
On the way to the coop walks, Peeples stopped at the watering trough to light his pipe and to do some preliminary dickering.
“Now you seen them three Grays I fit this afternoon, Mr. Mansfield. Aces every one. You take them, and any five more of the lot and we’ll be fair and square. Countin’ the cash I gave you already, you’re gettin’ the best end and you know it.”
Giving Peeples more credit than he probably deserved, I figured his gamecocks were worth about fifty dollars a head. According to my arithmetic I would be short about two hundred and fifty dollars if I only took eight cocks. Even if I took all of them I would be one hundred and fifty dollars short of the thousand dollars he had bet me. I shook my head with a positive-negative waggle.
Feet pounded on the hard-packed ground behind me. I turned. Less than twenty feet away Tom Peeples was charging toward me with a hatchet brandished in his upraised right hand. His red face was contorted and his angry blue eye was focused on infinity.
Without taking time to think I jumped toward him instead of trying to dodge his rush, twisted my body to the left, and kicked hard at his right shinbone. Tripped neatly, he sprawled headlong in the dirt. The hatchet flew out of his hand and skittered for a dozen yards across the bare ground. Before he could recover himself I had a handgrip in his thick hair and another hold on his leather belt. With one jerk as far as my knees, followed by a short heave, Tom Peeples was in the water trough. I shifted my left hand from his belt to his hair and held him beneath the water with both hands. His legs thrashed the scummy water into green foaming milk, but he couldn’t get his head up. I watched the popping bubbles break at my wrists and held him under until his feet stopped churning.
“You’d best not hold his head under too long, Mr. Mansfield,” his father said anxiously. “He’ll be drownded!”
That was true enough. I didn’t want to drown the man. I only wanted to cool him off so I could complete my business with Mr. Peeples and get back to Cook’s Hollow. When I let go of Tom’s head, he broke free to the surface, blubbering. He had lost the bandage in the water, but both eyes were closed. He took handholds on both sides of the tin-lined trough and brought his body up to a crouched position. He stayed that way, half in the water, and half out, his chin on his chest, weeping like a child. But he wasn’t a child. He was at least twenty-two years old, and he had tried to kill me.
Mr. Peeples and I continued our walk toward his chicken runs. Although the old cockfighter complained, he helped me put the seven mature cocks into narrow traveling coops that were in the runs, and brought the three Grays that were already in coops over to my station wagon from his old car. It was easy to catch Icky, who was scratching in a horse stall. After cutting off the heels, I put him back in his coop.
“I suppose you’re goin’ to tell Vern Packard how you beat me,” Mr. Peeples said, as I slipped behind the wheel and slammed the door.
Looking him directly in the eyes, I nodded my head.
“If you do, Mr. Mansfield,” he begged, “me or Tom neither’ll be ashamed to show our faces down to the pit for two or three years.”
I shrugged, and let out the clutch.
As I drove out of the barn lot, Tom Peeples was still hunkered down dejectedly in the water trough like an old man washing his privates in a bathtub.
On the return drive to Vern Packard’s house I missed one of the turns and had to redouble twice before I found the way back to the main road. It was dark when I wheeled into his driveway. Vern switched on the yard lights and came outside to meet me
“Who won?” he asked excitedly, as I got out of the station wagon.
I handed him the fragment of rosin, took the wad of bills out of my pocket and counted off one hundred dollars. Grinning, I pushed the hundred dollars into his hand. He kissed the bills, and returned the sliver of rosin.
“You keep it, Frank,” he said happily. “You paid me enough for it. Come on inside and eat. I was looking for you to get back an hour ago, but I’ve been waiting supper on you. It’s still warm though.”
As soon as I was seated at the kitchen table, Vern served the plates and turned the burner up higher under the coffee to reheat it. There were rolls, baked ham and candied sweet potatoes. Vern put enough food on my plate for three men, but I dug into it.
As he poured the coffee, Vern said jokingly, “What do you carry, Frank? A rabbit’s foot, a lucky magnet or do you wear a bag of juju bones around your neck?”
I stopped eating and looked at him.
Vern laughed. “Your partner telephoned about twenty minutes after you left. Mr. Baradinsky. First, he wanted to know how you made out, and I told him. Then he had some news for you about the Chattanooga derby in the Southerner Hotel.”
I put my knife and fork down and waited, trying to hide my impatience at the way he was dragging out the story.
Again Vern laughed. “No,” he said, “it isn’t what you’re thinking, Frank. They weren’t raided. The pit was hijacked, and the thieves got away with about twenty-five thousand bucks, according to your partner. He got the information secondhand, and it won’t be in the papers. No chickens were lost, but everybody there—cockers, gamblers and even Mr. Reed himself—lost their pants. There were three holdup men, all with shotguns, and they knew exactly what they were doing. They made everybody take off their pants and throw them in the middle of the pit. Then one of them filled up a mattress cover with all the pants and they left the hotel suite. They didn’t fool with rings or watches. Just the pants.”—Vern laughed heartily—“but the money was in the pants! That closed the Chattanooga meet. I’ll bet Fred Reed has a tough time getting an okay from Senator Foxhall for a S. C. derby next year!”
I pursed my lips thoughtfully, nodded my head, and started eating again. My swollen temple was throbbing, and I wanted to put an ice pack on it.
The next morning I left Cook’s Hollow to join Omar in Biloxi, with a standing invitation to fight at Vern Packard’s game club any time I felt like it. I had added $902 to my bankroll and ten purebred fighting cocks to our stake in the S. C. Tourney. But no matter what Vern Packard thought, I wasn’t lucky.
At long last, my experience and knowledge of cock-fighting were beginning to pay off. That, and the fact that I was using the good sense God gave me.