Jake didn’t say a word, but he would be good and goddamned if he was going to lie down for any man. He stepped into the ring, slipped on a patch of blood from another fight, almost fell. There was laughter in the crowd. Jake McCloskey exploded. He went after Sackett, who grinned and backed away from his first flurry. When Jake came in again, he took a hard left to the nose, spun away, came up under Sackett’s guard, knocked the man out cold with a right hook to the jaw thirty seconds into the fight.

Moe signed him on the spot. “I don’t know if you was just lucky,” he said, “or if Curly has a glass jaw, but what the fuck? If you’re that good, I’ll make you champion of the world.” Curly Sackett took the train home. Jake rode to Denver in Moe’s Lincoln, with Moe and a bottle blonde who called herself Miniver and licked her lips at him. He stayed at Moe’s house in Denver, where Miniver left Moe snoring in bed each night to crawl under the sheets with the young boxer. Jake worried about what would happen if Moe woke up, but Miniver laid a finger on his lips. “Don’t worry about him. I slip a little packet in his whiskey every night before bed, so’s he don’t bother me. I don’t like doin it with a fat man, but these times, a gal can’t afford to be choosy.”

Jake spent three months working in the gym with Bucky before Moe got him another fight. He knocked the man out in the second round and pocketed fifty dollars. He was nineteen years old and he was a professional prizefighter.

It was after dark by the time Bucky Betz got back to the Platte River Cabins. He was a little drunk already, with a gallon jug of bootleg corn liquor dangling from one finger. He offered the jug. Jake propped it along his arm and took a long swig as he reached for his shoes.

“Where you goin in such a all-fired hurry?”

“Out. I got better things to do than to set here watchin you drink corn liquor.”

“Well, hell. I thought we’d go back to that Arrowhead Diner, see if that pretty little lady is still waitin tables.”

“It’s after dark. I expect she’s gone home by now. Anyhow, she got me all riled up and I got to do something about it.”

Jake was almost to the door when Bucky hailed him back. “Hell, I forgot. Gimme my coat.”

Jake handed it over. Bucky dug into a pocket of his overcoat, hauled out an old copy of Time magazine. He thumbed through it and found what he was looking for. “This here is called ‘Mandolin Murder.’