He entered the ring accompanied by the cornermen Halliday assigned to him, a pair of ex-pugs named Hardy and Smith. Smith was missing an ear and his head jerked slightly every few seconds, as if still trying to dodge some of countless blows it had absorbed over the years. When Ketchel asked Hardy how many fights he’d had, he said, “Oh, around fifty, I guess.”
“How’d you do?”
“Not too bad. Won them all but about forty.”
Halliday had wanted to bill him as “Kid Ketchel,” or, better still, “Cyclone Kid” Ketchel, but Ketchel said no, his regular name would do fine. Halliday said all right, then casually asked where he was from. It came as a surprise when Wild Bill Nolan, owner and operator of the Big Casino, introduced him to the crowd as Stanley Ketchel, the Michigan Assassin. As the hometown fighter, he drew loud cheers. There was a scattering of women in the crowd, including Kate, who had begged the night off from the stage manager so she could see Ketchel’s first fight. Sitting at ringside she blew him a two-hand kiss and hollered, “You’ll kill him, baby!”
That his opponent had the reverse intention was clear enough from his name, Killer Kid Tracy. He was from Helena, and the polite scattering of applause at his introduction was muted by the requisite booing for the outsider. Tracy was only a year older than Ketchel, a farm boy whose success in county-fair boxing matches had convinced him he had what it took to be a top professional. At the afternoon weigh-in he had scaled 163 pounds, a few pounds over the middleweight limit of 160, while Ketchel, at 143 pounds, was just shy of the welterweight limit of 145. Such disparity in size between opponents was not unusual in that day, when catchweight bouts were often agreed to. The light heavyweight class, between 160 and 175 pounds, had only just come into being and would not gain full acceptance for some years yet. He who weighed above 160 was still generally considered a heavyweight.
The fighters’ hands had been taped in the dressing room, but the gloves didn’t go on until the boxers were in the ring. Each man’s gloving was observed by one of his opponent’s cornermen to ensure that nothing more than hands went into the gloves. It was not unheard of for a fighter’s second to slip a little something, such as an iron pestle, into a glove to add persuasion to his man’s punch.
Now everyone left the ring except the fighters and the ref, who gave the standard prefight warnings against illegal tactics and then asked if they had any questions.
Tracy fixed Ketchel with a menacing stare and said, “Yeah, I got a question. Where you want the body sent?”
Ketchel laughed.
“I’m gonna make you famous, Mac, the first of my many victims in the squared circle,” the Killer Kid said.
They went to their corners to wait for the bell, and Ketchel asked Hardy, “Say, what’s he talking about, squared circle?”
“What you’re standing in. They call it a ring but it’s got four corners. I still ain’t figured it out myself.”
In the opposite corner, Tracy opened his jaws so that his second could insert a rudimentary mouthpiece, a tightly sewn roll of cloth to clamp between his teeth to better protect them. He glowered across the ring at Ketchel and punched his gloves together, a figure of ready wrath. Ketchel spurned a mouthpiece and always would.
In those years, the traditional handshake was exchanged after the starting bell. When the gong sounded, Ketchel and Tracy hastened out to mid-ring and touched right gloves, then Tracy snorted and jabbed Ketchel twice to the forehead and that was all the Killer Kid would ever remember of the fight. During the next few seconds he was hit so many times so fast that his head whipped from side to side as if vehemently denying all notion of continuing in this ill-chosen occupation. His mouthpiece sailed out of the ring. Ketchel missed with his last two swings only because Tracy was already falling. The Killer Kid lay spread-eagled and the ref didn’t bother with a count. He waved his arms over his head in superfluous indication that the match was over and raised Ketchel’s hand. The fight had lasted nine seconds.
Stanley Ketchel grinned at the ovation and winked at Kate, who was beaming up at him and applauding lustily. Yes, he thought. Yes yes yes.
AMONG THE SPECTATORS at that match was a young boxing coach and manager named Maurice Thompson, who preferred to be called Reece. Later that evening he introduced himself to Ketchel at the Copper Queen, where the Michigan Assassin was celebrating in the company of Tex Halliday and various well-wishers.
Thompson congratulated him on his victory and said he could certainly punch, but he fought like a windmill in an Oklahoma dust storm. His style could use some discipline. What he needed was a manager who could teach him how to box.
Ketchel said, “I bet I know who you got in mind.”
“I’m a good coach,” Thompson said. “Ask anybody. A lot of fight managers have never had the gloves on, but I’ve done plenty of amateur boxing, so I know what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah, I bet. Thanks, but no thanks. I think I know how to fight.”
Thompson turned to Halliday and said, “You tell him.”
Halliday said it was hard to criticize a first-round knockout.
“Yeah, against a guy who couldn’t box, either,” Thompson said. “But you can’t knock out a guy you can’t hit, and the only way to hit a boxer is to box him.” To prove his point, he offered to fight Ketchel on the next week’s card even though he himself had never had a professional fight.
“I ain’t got the punch to knock down a schoolgirl,” he said, “but I’ll beat you by boxing. If I do, you let me be your manager. You beat me, I’ll let you have my share of the purse.”
Ketchel said he had a deal.
The following week, as they came together at the opening bell and shook hands, Thompson said, “Okay kiddo, lesson time.”
The match went six rounds and Ketchel never landed a solid punch. Reece Thompson boxed on his toes, weaving and feinting and jabbing, circling one way and then the other, keeping Ketchel off balance, easily darting out of reach of his roundhouse swings. By the end of the first round Ketchel was flustered. By the end of the second he was in a rage. The angrier he became, the wilder were his punches, the clumsier his feet. In round three he fell down from the force of a missed swing, and he fell at least once in every round after for the same reason. The crowd was almost as angry as Ketchel. It wasn’t interested in an exhibition of pugilistic finesse, it wanted action, a slugging match, blood. It jeered Thompson and demanded that he stand and fight, but he continued to hit and run, consistently scoring with the jab. In the last round Ketchel grabbed at him in sheer frustration, trying to seize him and hold him still for one good punch. The spectators roared their approval, but Thompson broke free, and the referee warned Ketchel against such alleyway style. Thompson easily won the decision.
When they got back to the dressing room Ketchel accused him of dancing rather than fighting, of deliberately trying to make him look foolish.
“You didn’t look foolish,” Thompson said, “you looked like a guy who don’t know how to box. I wouldn’t stand a chance slugging it out with you, but like I said, a slugger can’t beat a boxer except with a lucky punch. I’ll teach you to box.”
Ketchel said it would be a frozen day in hell before he would teach him anything. Thompson reminded him they’d had a deal. Ketchel said the deal depended on a fight and Thompson had refused to fight.
Thompson shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. I’m not the one who might have what it takes be a champ.”
The remark stuck with him. For the next few days he thought things over. Then went to Thompson’s gym and asked him if he really thought he had what it took to be champion.
“I said you might have,” Thompson told him. “You got a lot to learn. But as I recall, you have to wait for a certain weather change in hell before I can start teaching it to you.”
Ketchel said he guessed Thompson hadn’t heard the latest news, about the devil buying himself a pair of ice skates.
AND SO HE began going to the gym every day and training unde
r Mickey Ashburn, who worked for Thompson and helped him to coach his fighters. Ketchel didn’t care for the boredom of calisthenics and skipping rope, for the monotony of hitting the heavy and light bags, for any of the exercises Ashburn insisted upon before letting him spar. Sparring was the only aspect of training he enjoyed, even though he was constantly being admonished to jab, jab, keep moving, box, box. He heard over and over that a missed punch used more energy than one that landed, that in a twenty-round bout it was stamina that usually decided things and wild punching was a waste of strength. But he had no doubt about his strength, no doubt he could punch all day and night if he had to.
In June he was matched against one Jimmy Quinn. For the first minute of the bout he tried to fight as Thompson and Mickey Ashburn had been coaching him. He stayed on the move, jabbing, searching for an opening before throwing a big punch. Thompson and Mickey hollered their approval from the corner. Then Quinn connected with a hard cross that set Ketchel back a few steps and jolted him into a fury. He attacked Quinn as if the man were on fire and he meant to beat out the flames with his fists. He drove him across the ring and against the ropes, hammering aside Quinn’s arms to get at his head, punching so furiously he missed as often as he landed and at one point lost his balance and nearly plunged through the ropes. He kept punching even as Quinn sagged down to his haunches, head jerking under the blows. Not until the seat of Quinn’s trunks touched the canvas did the ref finally push between them, permitting Quinn to keel over and be counted out. Ketchel circled the ring with his hands above his head, reveling in the crowd’s acclaim.
Thompson ran both hands through his hair and shook his head. “Yeah,” Mickey Ashburn said. “Like leading a horse to water.”
It was Jimmy Quinn’s first and last professional fight. When he regained consciousness he was permanently blind in one eye.
HE HAD CONTINUED to write his mother regularly, but now for the first time risked a return address, though he was no more specific than “general delivery.” He told her of his name change and instructed her to use it on her letters, else they might never reach him, or worse, even somehow help the law to track him down.
By way of her answering letter, addressed to “S. Ketchel,” he came to learn there were no warrants for his arrest and never had been, as Thomas Kaicel was still among the living, albeit in chronic pain. He now spent the greater part of each day with a gin bottle, and it was left to Ketchel’s mother and his brother, John, to maintain the farm, toiling from dark to dark. Kaicel had lately taken to drinking at the taverns rather than at home, a variation she was glad of, as she much preferred to have him drunk at a distance than drunk in her parlor. She could not help wondering what Stanislaus was doing in such a remote reach as Montana and asked if he would return home now that he knew he was in no trouble with the law. As for changing his name to Ketchel, she only wished that by doing the same she could remove Thomas Kaicel from her life. She would not, however, then or ever after, address Ketchel as “Steve” or even “Stanley,” not even on an envelope. To her he would always be Stanislaus.
He wrote back that he was employed in a gymnasium, but he would return to the farm if Kaicel were abusing her. He hoped the offer would comfort her, and hoped even more she would not take him up on it and force him to disappoint her. He was vastly relieved when her next letter admitted that although she was tempted to allege mistreatment in order to draw him home, she could not bring herself to deceive him. The fact of the matter, she said, was that Kaicel seemed to have lost all inclinations except for the demon rum, even his keenness for bullying. Still she hoped Stanislaus would at least come for a visit sometime soon, and she would continue to pray for his safety. She closed with the news that John had begun to court a lovely young neighbor girl named Rebeka Nelson.
HE BOUGHT HIS first suits and some candy-striped shirts, a stylish derby. Kate Morgan presented him with a pocket watch. She taught him the sartorial trick of wearing gray-green neckties to compliment his eyes. They took afternoon walks through town, hearing the screech and growls of the gallows frames, the whistles and clangor of the trains bearing ore to the smelters. Kate liked everything about summer in Butte except for the higher stink it raised from the scores of privies along the shantytown alleys at the bottom of the hill.
He had never seen so many cripples in one town. All of them former miners. Men with missing fingers, missing a hand, an arm. Faces disfigured with burn scars. Here and there an eye patch. It seemed half the people who worked in town had limps. One day he and Kate turned a corner and had to hop aside to avoid being bowled over by a pair of legless men scooting side by side along the walkway on little roller platforms, arguing loudly whether Jeffries the Boilermaker was the equal of the Great John L. in his prime.
Everywhere in town they heard coughing. The “song of the mines,” Kate called it, although she herself had a chronic need to clear her throat and was sometimes taken by seizures of hacking that left her red-eyed and breathless and had permanently rasped her voice. The first time she had such a coughing fit in Ketchel’s presence, she said she guessed she better quit her job at the Neversweat mine before it killed her.
Almost all the downtown buildings were of brick or paintless stone and stained by smelter fumes. The surrounding mountains were black and gray, the hills streaked sickly yellow with tailings of ore. On good days the sky was the color of old tin, more often looked like a lid of dirt. The air was a tan haze and smelled of dirty pennies. A bird was a rare sight. Yet every Sunday that Ketchel and Kate rode the trolley to the Columbia Gardens at the edge of town to rent a rowboat on the lake and listen to the band concert and dance at the pavilion, the park was packed with happy crowds.
Sometimes he and Kate took dinner in the Finlen Hotel, which she informed him was the swankest to be found in all of the West between Denver and San Francisco. Sometimes they ventured into the sizable Chinatown to regard the Celestials and wonder at their catlike speech, the mysterious orthography of their signs and posters, the peculiar odors permeating the neighborhoods. They dined on fried rice and egg rolls and savory exotic dishes whose ingredient meats Kate advised him it was best not to inquire into, considering the rumors of what so often became of cats and dogs in Chinatown.
They attended the theater and delighted in the vaudeville acts, in the comic skits and acrobatic dogs and jugglers and magicians. At the Broadway he saw his first moving picture, a short film featuring a locomotive that sped head-on toward the camera and sent spectators scrambling from their seats to get out of its way. When The Great Train Robbery came to town the theater was packed every night, and Ketchel was hardly the only one who attended its every showing. No dime novel he’d ever read roused such vivid images in his head as were projected onto the white sheet screen for twelve thrilling minutes. At the end, when one of the outlaws pointed his six-shooter at the audience, some among them gasped and Ketchel felt the room’s collective cringe, and when the gun discharged with a puff of smoke he flinched too. Even on subsequent viewings, each time he stared into the bore of the bandit’s revolver he felt the same exhilarating dread.
A few days after the movie left town, he looked into the muzzle of an actual pistol, cocked and aimed at him across a span of some ten feet as the crowd in the Copper Queen parted from the line of fire. It was the first time a real gun had ever been pointed at him, and yet the situation felt somehow familiar. The man with the gun was a miner with a grievance regarding a dance girl but perhaps was neither so cold-blooded nor so drunk as to be oblivious to the consequence of murder. Maybe that was why he hesitated to pull the trigger. Or maybe it was simply a paralyzing disbelief as Ketchel walked up to him without a word or blink and snatched the gun aside so abruptly the man inadvertently squeezed off a round through the front window and into the side of a passing dry goods wagon. Ketchel wrenched the gun from his grasp and backhanded him with it, opening his cheek to the bone and knocking him to his knees. Then dragged him by the collar to the door and slung him into the street.
The ejected miner never returned nor made claim for his six-shooter, so Ketchel kept it. A single-action .45-caliber Frontier model Colt. And Kate Morgan, who’d grown up the only girl among five brothers on the family ranch and learned much about guns from an early age, taught him how to shoot it.
They went to the garbage dump outside of town and fired upon numberless cans and bottles. He was elated to discover he had a knack, and he laughed like a happy child when she called him a natural-born deadeye. He stood poised with the gun tucked in his waistband and stared narrowly at an empty bottle of James E. Pepper whiskey atop an empty oil drum and said with low menace: “I told you this town wasn’t big enough for both of us, Bad Jim.” Then yanked out the Colt and fired, reducing the hapless Bad Jim Pepper to shattered glass.
“I’m Jesse James!” he shouted. “I’m Bob Dalton!”
“Yes, yes, you are!” Kate happily yelled.
A rat emerged from a pile of scrap and rose on its hind legs as if to have a better look at the cause of all this clamor. Kate spotted it. “Bushwhacker on your right, Jesse!”
Ketchel whirled and fired at it and missed, the bullet ringing off a rusted axle. The rat remained upright and staring. It had been shot at more times than Ketchel could know and it had grown confident in its long experience with poor marksmanship. It twitched its whiskers.
“Bedamn if the rascal’s not funning you,” Kate said.
The rat turned and started to walk away in no hurry at all. Ketchel shot it and it went tumbling and then lay spasming until he stepped closer and with his next bullet removed half its head.
“I guess he’ll think twice before giving you the razz again,” Kate said. Then saw Ketchel’s face. “What?”
The Killings of Stanley Ketchel Page 6
