sure the crowd got its money’s worth, to carry his opponent (sometimes almost literally since the dumb clods were practically too exhausted to stand) until it reached a point where it was okay to put them down.
As they went into the second round now, McMahon could see his opponent still had quite a bit left. He was showing some wear, sure, breathing hard and sweating—just as McMahon himself was—but the lad was far from being played out. In the corner, between rounds, Professor Hanratty had razor-slit McMahon above his left eye and then held ice against it so it wouldn’t start leaking right away. “Take a punch or two, let him get you bleeding good for the crowd,” he’d instructed. “Then go ahead and finish this rock-chopper before the round ends.”
McMahon nodded his agreement. He had no doubt he could end this contest whenever he wanted—the lad wasn’t that much different than the others. Yeah, he was in better shape and had a few moves; but he couldn’t counter-punch worth a damn and, judging from the big openings McMahon had allowed earlier for the sake of gauging exactly what he was up against, the kid didn’t know how to throw combinations and he was seldom able to get full weight into his harder shots for maximum effect.
So, when it was time, after a sticky flow of blood was smeared down the side of his face and the crowd’s excitement was sufficiently stoked, McMahon went to work and did what he was trained to do. He cut off the ring, backed the kid into a corner, began rocking him with lightning-fast flurries. The kid ducked, bobbed, got his arms up to block a lot of these blows. But the relentless peppering crowded him, didn’t give him a chance to breathe, and the repeated shots to his arms quickly started to make them heavier and slower to rise in defense. That’s when McMahon went head-hunting and started to throw high, hard, jarring combinations....
“It’s the combinations that’ll score you a knockout every time, especially coming from those amazing quick hands of yours,” coached the professor. “Generally speaking, it’s almost impossible to knock a man unconscious when he can see the punch coming, no matter how hard it lands. It might knock him down, it might rattle him all the way back to his ancestors, but he’ll still be conscious. Only when you throw combinations as fast and hard as you do, Mackie-boy, one of them is bound to be the blind punch that gets the job done.”
...And tonight that blind punch was a final shattering right cross to the jaw. The young man went down, hard, and everybody watching knew he wasn’t going to be get back up—at least not under his own power—any time soon.
The audience of grim-faced miners, gathered tight around the makeshift ring erected specially for this event, had been eager and loud and boisterous right from the get-go. The sight of McMahon’s blood had brought them to a near frenzy. And now, even as McMahon started to turn things around, their excitement level remained high. Although he was whittling down one of their own, they nevertheless harbored a grudging respect for his brutal, methodical skill. Once it was over, in their minds they had seen a hard-won fight, had gotten their blood lust slaked, and therefore turned away satisfied.
McMahon had done his job. Once again.
* * * *
“Ah, it’s those wonderful quick hands of yours, Mackie me boy. Never in my born days have I seen a big man like you with quicker hands. If only our paths had crossed sooner, I could have taken you to the best training camps in the country and managed you to becoming a contender right up there in the championship ranks. Even the great John L. would be taking notice! Why, we’d be the toasts of both coasts and every important city in between.”
The boxing bout was nearly an hour past now. Professor Hanratty was speaking as he treated the bruises to McMahon’s face and the cut over his eye. The fighter sat stoically through this, his hands soaking in a bowl of stinging salt brine. They were inside a large tent that had been put up between their two traveling wagons. Soft lantern light filled the enclosure with a golden glow, night shadows seeping in to claim only the corners. A low wind was building outside, moaning down out of the higher mountain range, lifting the tent skirts here and there and allowing cold drafts to swirl in. The day had been unseasonably warm. The temperature had been dropping steadily since sundown, though, and the feel of approaching winter was once again unmistakable in the air.
Professor Hanratty’s spiel, his marveling about McMahon’s quick hands, was standard after every fight. And as he made his reply, McMahon was aware that his words had become pretty standard by now, too.
“Never had that much of a hankerin’ to see the coasts. And I damn sure got no desire to get caught in the crush of any of those big ‘important’ cities you keep yammerin’ about,” he said. “Far as John L., he’s gone to gloved fightin’ these days under those Marquess of Queensberry Rules that all the swells are so keen on. Me, I’m strictly a bare-knuckler and too old to change.... Besides, suits me fine the way things are goin’ for us just like they are.”
“I don’t mind the way things are, either,” spoke up Molly from where she sat on the opposite side of the folding table, counting up the money from tonight’s take. “’Cept I really hate it when you have to cut Mac the way you done again tonight, Professor. Don’t he get bruised up and split open enough by those fellas he fights without you havin’ to add to it?”
Hanratty sighed dramatically (which was how he tended to do many things). “For the hundredth time, my dear, the answer is no, on occasion Mac does not get cut open enough by his opponents. That’s a sorry part of it, I know, but it nevertheless remains a fact. A large part of what we do—just like the way I carry on during my medicine spiel about your foot and Hugo’s misfortune—is showmanship. We have to do that in order to draw sufficient customers.... Without showmanship, that tidy sum of cash you have before you there would be a mere fraction because too few would be interested enough to shell out for what we are pitching.”
Now it was Molly’s turn to sigh. “I suppose you’re right,” she allowed. “You know a lot more about a lot more stuff than I probably ever will.... But I still don’t like seein’ Mac get cut up all the time.”
“Thanks for the concern, sweetie,” McMahon said, favoring the girl with a weary smile. “But gettin’ busted up some is part of what I signed on for. Like the professor said, it’s sort of necessary to the show. If I went out there and whupped all the fellas that step forward in these towns we visit and made it look too easy—without givin’ ’em some reason to believe they had a chance, or not let the crowd get worked up over thinkin’ it might be me who was goin’ down for the count—why, where would be the draw in that? What’s more, it might make those tough ol’ miners downright displeased to pay out their admission money and lay down their side bets only to see me plunk their boy without hardly breakin’ a sweat. How bad a shape you think I’d end up in if a whole passel of ’em rioted on us, maybe rode me out of town on a rail?”
“I seen a crowd riot once,” Hugo said from the other side of the tent, where he was bundling up the ring posts and ropes that he had dismantled after the fight. “It wasn’t a pretty sight. Nossir. I wouldn’t want to see another one, and that’s for sure.”
These four now gathered in the tent comprised the full make-up of Professor Hanratty’s Traveling Medicine & Health Show. In its present incarnation, Hanratty’s troupe had been working the mining camps along the front range of the Colorado Rockies for closing on three years. The centerpiece of the whole endeavor was Hanratty’s Astonishing Elixir, which the professor had been marketing for two decades. Truth be known, Alphonse Herschel Hanratty’s “professorship” had come in the mail for ten dollars sent to a Boston print shop—alas now burned to the ground—specializing in authentic-looking degrees and licenses of any type desired. Yet while the credentials for his title might be lacking, his dedication to purpose was not; he genuinely believed that his elixir had health benefits. Over time he worked to refine and improve the concoction even as he worked
