The Killings of Stanley Ketchel (6 page)

I
N HIS FIRST
week on the job he was tested by a dozen of the town’s most eminent toughs, every man of them a miner. They had all heard how he’d put down O’Malley and Harris and they wanted to try him, and each night the place was packed with those who wanted to see the action. The Copper Queen’s business boomed.

He dispatched all challengers, knocking them out or beating them into submission, not always without getting bloodied himself. He sent the quitters on their way with a kick in the pants, he dragged the insensate to a side door and chucked them into the alley. The miners marveled at the prowess of someone so young. By the middle of his second week the deliberate trials fell off and he was dealing chiefly with unruly drunks disposed toward threatening the bartender or harassing the piano player or, the most common call for his intervention, taking excessive liberty with the girls.

The Queen’s girls doted on him. Like Gretchel, most of them were his elder, some by more than a decade, and as he was only seventeen they tended to mother him in all the best ways. But he was also good-looking and a more capable protector than any of them had ever had, and their impulses ranged beyond the maternal. Gretchel was annoyed by their flirtations and even more by his obvious pleasure in them. But experience had taught her the folly of jealous accusation, and she kept her discontent to herself and hoped for the best.

He lived with her for nearly three weeks before moving in with a girl named Olga Harting who worked at a dance hall a few blocks from the Copper Queen. Gretchel came home from the bakery one afternoon with a warm sack of the cinnamon doughnuts he was fond of and found a note atop the phonograph informing her of his departure and expressing gratitude for her help, saying he would see her later at the Queen.

Callow as he was about women, he had but a vague inkling of the depth of her affection, the intensity of her hopes. When he showed up for duty that evening he was prepared for a mean look, maybe a hard word, but not the drunken wrath he was met by. She berated him for a lowdown bastard and sloshed a mug of beer into
his face. He thanked her for the refreshment, then ducked the empty mug she threw and it smashed a mirror behind him. The onlookers whooped, but when she snatched up a slicing knife from the bar-top platter of pumpernickel and salt ham they all drew farther back. She swiped at Ketchel twice before he caught her wrist and disarmed her. She beat at him with the heels of her fists, cursing incoherently, beat at him until she tired, then burst into sobs and ran out.

It was another first-rate diversion for the patrons. Richardson had come out of his office and witnessed the tail end of it, and when Stanislaus asked him not to fire her, he said the thought never crossed his mind, she was too popular with his regulars. He would simply deduct a share of her wages every payday until she’d compensated for the busted mirror.

Gretchel did not speak to him for the next two weeks, not until she deigned to say “Thank you” after he flattened a miner who would not quit pawing her on the dance floor.

H
E NEXT TOOK
up with a moody, raven-haired girl named Kate Morgan. She had the prettiest legs and shapeliest bottom he’d ever seen. They lived in a room with a small porch in a spacious boardinghouse owned by a former employee of Venus Alley named Miss Juno who kept her nose out of her tenants’ affairs so long as they did not disturb the neighbors or do damage to the furniture. They shared the premises with Kate’s two cats, a caramel-and-gray called Harry in honor of Harry Longbaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, a man she had always admired, and a black-and-white named Otto because of a black splotch over its mouth in the shape of a Prussian moustache. She had named them in kittenhood a few weeks before realizing they were both females. By then she felt it
wouldn’t be right to change their names, thinking it might confuse them.

“Some clever kid I am,” she said. “Can’t even tell the boys from the girls.”

“You must’ve had your fingers crossed the first time I took my pants off for you.”

She threw a pillow at him.

She came from a wealthy ranching family in Wyoming. Her father’s success the more remarkable in light of her grandfather having landed in America a penniless cowherd from County Cork. She received a good education and extensive ballet training at a private school in Denver, but she’d been a wild-hearted sort even as a child and, to everyone in the family but her father, something of a black sheep. She was fifteen when her father was killed in a hunting accident, and she despised the man her mother married only a year later. At seventeen she joined with a company of entertainers who traveled in wagons all over the West, putting on shows in rough, remote regions. She was with them for three years, until the day the troupe finished up a stint in Butte, where she stayed behind and went to work on the stage of the Big Casino Saloon. She’d now been in Butte almost as long as she’d been with the troupe.

“Jesus, why Butte?”

“Well now, laddybuck,” she said in the brogue she sometimes liked to affect, “with all the harps hereabouts, it’s a right bit like the old sod to a lass of Irish root, don’t ye know?”

“Cut the malarkey, girl. Why not San Francisco? Why not Denver? Kansas City?”

She said she might well ask him the same question.

He shrugged. “I like the action around here.”

She waggled her brow. “I know what you mean, honeybunch, but it’s not like Frisco doesn’t have plenty of action. Denver too. Bigger action.”

“Yeah, and there’s a lot more law in those places. A lot more cops. This place feels…I don’t know…freer, somehow. More like…” He shrugged.

“The Wild West?” she said, lowering her voice like a conspirator. She pretended to draw a gun from her hip, aimed her index finger at him and flicked her thumb. “Pow!”

He clutched at his heart and fell across the bed, kicking his feet in a death throe. She clapped lightly and said, “Bravo!”

Their room was adjacent to the communal bathroom, and one evening she heard him singing in the tub and was amazed at the loveliness of his voice. He blushed when she told him so, and she kissed him and said he should be proud of such a voice and show it off every chance he had. Every night afterward, he sang to her in bed.

One night she asked if his Christian name was spelled “s-t-e-ph-e-n” or “s-t-e-v-e-n,” and he confessed it was Stanislaus.

“Really?”
She sat up in the bed.

“Yep. Polack to the bone.”

“Daddy’s name was Stanley. When I was little, Ma used to call him Manly Stanley.” And then she was crying into her hands over the memory of her fled girlhood and deceased father.

He held her close and said she could call him Stanley if she wanted to. He’d never before thought of using the name, but he liked it. Then sang her to sleep with her favorite song, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”

H
e’d been in Butte less than two months when a local promoter named Tex Halliday asked if he was willing to substitute for an injured boxer on the fight card scheduled for the following night at the Big Casino Saloon. In addition to a bar and a theater, the Big Casino boasted the most popular boxing arena in town, an enormous hall with a regulation ring and enough benches to seat hundreds. Halliday had seen Ketchel in action as a bouncer and thought he might do well in the ring.

“You’d be going against another first-timer,” he said. “He’s got the weight on you, but I’d say you got the sand on him. You won’t even have to hire your own seconds. I got a few fellas who work the corners for fighters who ain’t got their own crew.”

Although he’d been to the Big Casino once to watch Kate Morgan
dance, Ketchel had not gone into the arena. In fact, he had never seen a boxing match, not a real one, with gloves and rules and a referee. His acquaintance with boxing was entirely through hearsay and the pages of the
Police Gazette,
the foremost sporting periodical of the day, which had given him a standard familiarity with such famous heavyweight champions as the legendary John L. Sullivan, Gentleman Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, and the present champ James Jeffries, the fearsome Boilermaker himself. But like every boy who liked to scrap, Ketchel had often wondered how well he might fare in a prize ring.

The winner of a Big Casino match always got fifty dollars, Halliday said, the loser no less than twenty-five. Ketchel went to Richardson and told him he was taking the next night off.

P
RIZEFIGHTING WAS A
rougher endeavor in those days. In some states boxing was altogether outlawed, and in some states where it was not, the police were invariably on hand to put an end to a fight as soon as it seemed a boxer was in imminent danger of being maimed. In most legal venues, however, even a one-sided battering was permitted to continue to its last scheduled round if the boxer getting the worst of it did not get knocked out before then. Or quit. Or, as happened every now and then, fall down dead. Fighters routinely engaged in several matches a month and sometimes fought two or three times within a week. Bouts of twenty rounds or more were commonplace. A fight to the finish—until one of the boxers was knocked out or was otherwise unable to continue—was still legal in some states, and such fights could last for hours. The referee enforced the rules against patently dirty tactics such as low blows and hitting a man while he was down, yet otherwise seldom intervened in the proceedings. Some states granted the referee the authority to name the winner of a fight unresolved by knockout, or to call the
bout a draw, but boxers often agreed contractually that if there was no knockout the fight
had
to be a draw, even if it was manifestly one-sided. Other states, particularly in the East, altogether prohibited outcomes by decision, the idea being that a ref without authority to decide an outcome was a ref who could not be bribed. In such states, any fight that ended without a knockout was by default declared “no contest.” Reporters could grant a “newspaper verdict,” but their opinions were strictly unofficial. Montana was at this time one of the few states that used a scoring system to determine the winner of a match that did not end by knockout.

A
S ALWAYS ON
fight nights the arena was packed. The clamorous room was moistly hot and smelled thickly of sweat and tobacco fumes and whiskey. The overhead lights were webbed with smoke. Ketchel wore borrowed shoes, baggy red trunks bunched at his waist by the drawstring, a tatty robe imprinted on the back with
DR. WATKINS’ MIRACLE HEALTH NOSTRUM
.

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 Stan
ley 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.

A
MONG 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.

A
ND SO HE
began going to the gym every day and training under 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.

H
E 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.