pulled tightly around his ears. They shook hands.

"Hello, Murphy, what have you been doing since the night that Mexican
nearly killed me?" asked John, feeling somehow that he owed the second
something for the care he had taken of him after he had staggered from
the ring, bruised and battered.

"Oh, da same old stuff, da same old stuff," Murphy replied. "Haven't
been doin' any more fightin', have ya?"

"No," said John, with a laugh, "the beating the Battler gave me was
enough. You know, it's a good man who knows when he has had enough."

"Ya didn't seem to know when ya had enough da night ya mixed it with da
Battler," said Murphy. "Ya took a beltin' that night and came up for
more as long as ya could."

"Let's step inside; I'll buy you a drink of whatever they have," John
invited.

Over steins of near-beer which Murphy drank with a wry face John learned
that Battling Rodriguez had fought himself to the top and was now boxing
main events at Vernon, at the American Legion stadium in Hollywood and
occasionally in San Francisco and San Diego. He told Murphy that he was
working on the newspaper, endeavoring to develop himself into a
reporter.

They were about to leave and had turned away from the bar when there was
a scuffle of feet at the front door. John was startled to see a number
of men rush in and form a line across the front of the long room.

It flashed into his head that the men were bandits. One of them, he saw,
had a gun in his hand. But this suspicion was quickly routed from his
mind when one of the men, apparently the leader, stepped forward and
shouted a command:

"Get in the corner, there, you birds, you're pinched," he ordered.

John recognized the men as deputy sheriffs and for a moment he was
nonplussed. Then he stepped forward to explain there was no cause for
them to arrest them.

"In the corner, I said, in the corner," shouted the foremost of the
deputies, pushing John back. "Get over there or I'll put you there,
see!"

John "saw." He stepped back into the corner of the room which the deputy
indicated, joining a group of a dozen men herded there by the other
deputies who swept through the "saloon." Murphy, beside him, whispered
in his ear:

"Don't get excited, kid, it's nuttin'; just another phoney pinch, dat's
all."

"But what for?" asked John.

"Loiterin' around a handbook joint. You'll be squared, kid, you'll be
squared. Stick with me and you'll come out on top; ten bucks to the