BUCKY AND JAKE CHECKED INTO THE PLATTE River Motel Cabins that afternoon. They grabbed a little shut-eye first, then Bucky went in search of liquor while Jake headed out to do some roadwork along the banks of the North Platte River. It was familiar territory, the willows and poplars along the riverbank, the big bluff brooding over the town, the broad, flat river itself with its sandbars and eddies, its crawfish and bullheads. He had first come this way after mustering out of the army in 1919. Hopped a freight out of Camp Dix, New Jersey, headed for California, made it as far as Kimball, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific line. He had struck out from there, looking for work with three other veterans of the Great War, found it fifty miles to the north in Scottsbluff, loading sugar beets with a pitchfork. The pay was three dollars a day for a twelve-hour day.

He was slinging beets on a chilly October morning when a long, black Lincoln came crawling into the field and Moe Spitzer climbed out, puffing on a big stogie. Moe was putting on a fight card that night headlined by Curly Sackett, a Denver heavyweight who was supposed to be world champ someday. Sackett’s opponent had pulled out at the last minute, so if one of the harvest hands was brave enough to step into the ring with the heavyweight, it was worth one hundred dollars cash money. Any man in that field would have let himself get knocked out for a hundred dollars, but Jake happened to be bigger and younger than most. He was standing up front when Moe made his pitch. Moe didn’t mention that Curly Sackett had knocked out twenty-eight of the thirty men he had faced, but it would have made no difference. As far as Jake was concerned, they could carry him out of the ring on a stretcher, as long as he got his hundred dollars when he came to. Moe had found his man.

Jake forked sugar beets all day and barely made it to the arena in time. Bucky Betz taped his hands and slipped on the gloves.

“You ever fight before, son?”

“Not in the ring, but I been fightin my whole damned life.”

“Well, keep your hands up and don’t lead with your chin. He’ll carry you three, four rounds, then when he’s ready to end it, he’ll wave one hand like he’s showboatin. You take one on the kisser and go down. Don’t try to be a hero, we don’t want nobody hurt.”