Rough joking greeted their presence. Some suggested the Boss's Boy ought to take on the winner of the Great Frederick and Irish Hurricane fight. Matt responded that meeting the loser might be more his level.
A German announced that he had heard that the Boss's Boy was putting up a purse of five dollars to the main event's winner.
Matt responded by stating that he would if someone would change his fifty dollar gold piece. As anyone present would have had a hard time producing a dollar, probably including the boss's son, the offer was recognized as extremely safe.
There were announcements before battlers took to the squared-off flat spot along the creek. A man running for public office explained his qualifications, and a committee that had formed to encourage renaming the town of Petersburg as Duncannon made its pitch.
A pair of the Shuler brothers who made guns at Liverpool passed examples of their work for comment and appreciation, but eventually the side shows ended, and the audience settled for what it had come for.
Klubber Cole would referee most of the bouts, and there were fighters on both sides who had worked with the old fist fighter.
Matt thought some about the Klubber. Cole had been around for as long as he could remember, and he seemed to travel with the Miller projects.
When the headquarters moved to Petersburg, Klubber came along. Men who barely made enough to feed their families managed lessons for their sons with Cole. Matt expected Klubber was most often paid with meals and even nightly shelter, but somehow the once famous fighter held on. Cole was always around, and Matt wondered if he, too, considered himself a Miller Man?
Mickey McFee was Klubber's current prospect, and together they made a little money on Mickey's fights. Cole had a dozen other acolytes, however, and some of them expected to demonstrate their skills at this milling.
There appeared to be enough fighters to go around, and the only qualification or restriction seemed to be that the pugilists be about the same height. Each fight lasted until a man could not or would not stand up. If the fighters wore themselves out, the crowd would complain, and Klubber declared a victor, a draw, or no contest. The indecisive draws were the most common as untrained men could not last long, and if a smasher of a blow was not landed, the exhausted pair often ended leaning against each other.
It was a good show, and for a major bout of the evening the German's Baron made his appearance.
Until the Baron, there had been no technique for Matt to evaluate. Fighters shook hands, squared off, and began to swing from as far back as they could reach. Most bouts had been knockouts, most scored by the German side, and Matt suspected that the methodical Germans had prepared and planned their milling campaign against the more volatile and less organized Irish.
The Baron's sterling performance added weight to young Matt's preplanning suspicions and fueled his barely banked hunger to get into the game.
Baron Dieter Haas looked . . . well, baronial. He stood tall, held his chin high, and appeared to examine his opposition as if studying insects of suspect origin. Every Irishman in the gathering wished to punch his arrogant features. In fact, as the Baron entered the square, two Irish Miller Men grappled for the right to pound the German's face as flat as a skillet bottom.
One struggler broke free and entered the square. His friend immediately began shouting encouragement for him to, "Hammer his lordship all the way back to Paris."
Lukey Bates asked, "Paris?"
Matt said, "Geography is not a major study in the Irish camp, Lukey," but the Boss's Boy's attention was on the fighters.
They seemed a physical match, the Irishman wider in the shoulders, the German more finely muscled, and about the same in height. Klubber Cole brought them together at square-center and introduced them to each other and the audience.
The Baron made a significant moment of their handshake, but Germans shook hands at every opportunity anyway.
The referee ordered, "Fight!"
The Irish fighter stepped away, to gather himself for a rush, Matt supposed, and the German assumed his stance. The Baron's fighting style grabbed Matt Miller's attention because it was something new. The Baron turned sideward and crouched. His strong right arm was held forward with his elbow almost into his ribs. His back was very straight, and his right foot and knee pointed at his opponent. The left fist was held high protecting that side of his head. Matt thought the position stiff and inflexible.
The Irish fighter came in like a whirlwind. His fists swung when he was still too far away, and he grunted with every swing—each of which was expected to demolish anything it hit.
The Baron edged straight back, keeping his weight on his rear foot, then, like a lightning strike, his right arm straightened, his body lunged, and his glove-clad fist splatted into his opponent's features as if it were the butt end of a clothes pole.
The Irishman was stopped in his tracks. His head snapped back, blood spurted from a smashed nose—and the Baron struck again.
The blow was the same. The right arm stabbed straight with the German's body behind it, and the result was similar—only this punch staggered the Irish fighter and turned his legs into willow wands.
Before the Boss's Boy or the audience understood what was happening, the third blow was en route, another straight and perfect, jabbing punch.
Matt's appreciation of how the Baron was fighting did not help the unfortunate Irish battler. The Baron's third blow dropped him like a discarded shirt, and although he was struggling to his feet, the dazed fighter was facing away from his opponent, and Klubber Cole was quick to end the bout by stepping between the still willing combatants.
Lukey Bates said, "What a slaughter," and Matt had to agree. The still woozy Irishman was escorted back to his seat and a large rag was provided to hold against his seriously altered nose.
The defeated Irishman's companion was already in the square, demanding he be next and against the Baron. He declaimed for all to hear that, unlike his friend, he was ready for sneak punches.
Lukey asked, "Sneak punches?"
Matt laughed aloud. "They probably taught those sneaky blows over there in Paris."
Mickey McFee was seated to his right, and Matt caught his eye. The Mick smirked, perhaps with the same knowledge the Boss's boy was still absorbing. Before he could think more about it, Klubber Cole called the fighters to the center, the handshaking took place, and the command "Fight!" started them at it.
The second fight was longer but much the same. The Irishman charged, the Baron drew straight back, then he countered with his stabbing and astonishingly accurate right hand. If the Irishman withdrew, the Baron was instantly on him, and his blows were weighty and swift.
When they grappled, The Baron did not do as well, but neither had come to wrestle, and the instant they parted, Baron Dieter Haas's fist resumed its stunning splats and thuds into his opponent's bloodied features. This fight would clearly not be long in duration.
Matt said, "He's a sword fighter, Lukey. He moves straight in and straight back out. Look at his stance. That is the way sword fighters duel and fence. I watched a lot of them at the University in Philadelphia. He does not go sideward well. He has no left hand at all. His sword arm, the one he is jabbing with, is his only weapon."
Then Matt added, "But it's a good one, and a fighter is stupid to stand there and get hit by it."
Matt started to say, "What you have to do is . . ." but just then the Irish battler landed on his tailbone. He struggled to regain his feet, but the referee had seen enough. These were almost friendly bouts, and no one should be permanently injured. He waved the fight over, and the Germans howled in triumph.
Von Haas turned smiling to receive their accolades, and the Boss's Boy stood up.
Matt wondered a little if he had planned to fight even before they had come to watch. The desire had been in his mind, of course, but seeing two of his men go down to ignominious defeat tripped something, and suddenly he was standing.
Then he was walking into the
square, ignoring Lukey Bates' somehow distant calling, brushing figures aside, and receiving encouraging slaps on his shoulders. The thought came that both his father and China would kill him for this, but the worry instantly passed, and he found his unwrapped fists clenched waist high and ready to go. The Boss's Boy was no unpolished slugger, and he expected that he knew how to fight the obviously skilled Baron Dieter Haas.
Klubber Cole said, "I wondered how long you'd sit there, Boss's Boy," and introduced him to the confident-appearing Baron.
They shook hands, and Von Haas included a short bow of recognition that he was engaging an employer in combat. Matt returned the bow and stepped away to shed his coat and shirt.
Mickey McFee pushed to the edge of the square. "You know how to handle him, Boss? He hits hard with that one hand."
Matt said, "I'm going to knock him colder than a fish trapped in ice." Matt's voice was cold and hard—a fighter's voice, just like his own, Mickey realized.
McFee was sobered and a trifle bemused by the Boss's Boy's intensity. This was not the overheated youth of canal-side scrapping from years past. Matt Miller meant what he said.
If he could do it! McFee was not so sure, but he recognized that, even if he lost, the Boss's Boy intended to put serious marks on the other man.
Klubber Cole introduced the fighters to the crowd. The Boss's Boy received a thunderous ovation from the Irish side but little from the Germans. Concentrating on what he was going to do, Matt barely heard, but a corner of his mind recognized that, at least for the moment, he had placed himself in the Irish camp. He would have to fix that later. Right now, he just wanted to whale the tar out of the fighter called the Baron.
The fighters toed Klubber's line in the dirt, and Cole said, "Fight."
As ready as he thought he was, the Boss's Boy instantly absorbed a mind-rattling thump just above his left eye. The Baron was explosive, but Matt was away before he could be hit again.
Wondering if the stiff jab had sliced him open Matt swiped a hand across his brow—and barely escaped a second stabbing right fist that was followed by another and another, so swiftly that they almost flowed together.
The Boss's Boy's concentration tightened. The crowd, the referee, and all else disappeared from his mind. Only the crouched and sliding forward Baron Von Haas lay within his focus. He saw the cocked right fist and moved to his left. The Baron's front foot edged to follow, and Matt knew what would be next and what he would do about it.
Edging to his left, the Boss's Boy moved away from the Baron's left cross—if he even had one. More important, he disturbed the German fighter's comfortable forward-and-back balance.
Swordsmen fought in straight lines. Unlike children dancing about while swinging wildly with their wooden swords, masters of the saber, the épée, or even the foils shuffled in and out in straight lines that wore grooves in the stones of the older academies. They did not train to shift out of line and into varied angles of defense or attack.
China Smith did. He swiveled, ducked, bobbed and wove. He slipped close from a side and shifted instantly to strike from a different location. So, the Boss's Boy fought the same.
Young Matt Miller drifted left, dropped his left hand almost to his side—and the Baron saw the opening. The swordsman stabbed into the space left by his opponent's lowered fist. He thrust into it and his feet followed as they had to, leaving him crouched, tightly balanced and ready for his next straight ahead stab.
The Boss's Boy let the expected jab through, but he leaned his head out of the way, and the Baron's fist passed close to his ear.
It was not a new move, and the riposte from the Baron's opponent would be either a left hook over the extended jabbing arm or a countering right cross. The German had seen them both, and he was ready for either.
Instead, Matt's dropped left arm rose outside the Baron's thrusting right arm and slammed downward with almost crushing force onto the German's forearm. The weight of the blow held the Baron's entire right arm lower than planned, and powered by the momentum of his own slamming punch, Matt came in over it with the straightest and most classic right cross he had ever thrown—aimed exactly and delivered with all of his whippy body behind it onto the point of Baron Von Haas's chin. There was no instant for the Baron's head-protecting left hand to block. Unobstructed, Matt's fist went in deep, and the Boss's Boy felt his knuckles grind and everything ahead of those knuckles folding and giving way.
The impact of Matt's clenched fist sounded sodden, as if he had punched the side of a horse, but the result was thunderous. The Baron dropped as if struck by a sledge. He collapsed straight down and lay as if dead with his face buried in the dirt of the fight square.
The Irish crowd exploded in a mindless shout while the Germans sat silent and barely believing.
Matt's had been a tremendous punch, planned and perfectly executed, and if he had been present, China Smith would have joined the crowd's enthusiasm.
Leaving the opening to tempt the Baron's almost certain lunging jab had been routine, but turning the fighter just enough to degrade his swordsman's balance, denying instantaneous retreat or dipping sideward for the crucial instant, had left the Baron stuck in place as if nailed to the ground.
The mob of spectators on both sides would recognize no such refinements. To them, only the blow had really counted. China Smith would have appreciated the opening created by Matt's downward smash of the Baron's jabbing arm, and he would have especially approved of the straight-as-a-string right hand that detonated against the Baron's jaw, knocking the sword fighter unconscious.
For all of their years together, China had preached that the shortest distance from point to point was always a straight line. The straight punch got there first, and if the fighter rolled his shoulder behind the punch, as the Boss's Boy had, the impact could be magnified into a knockout blow.
Shaking the pain from already swelling knuckles, young Matt Miller felt the enthusiastic adulation of the crowd envelop him. Klubber Cole held Matt's fist aloft in victory, and German companions knelt to help revive the barely moving Baron Von Haas.
Within the crowd, Mickey McFee shook his own fist in excited approval, and Matt was especially pleased by that. He saw Lukey Bates standing with his jaw still agape and his head twisting, as if he could not accept what he had seen.
Germans approached with hands outstretched for shaking. As he completed those rounds and survived the heavy backslapping of the Irish contingent, the Baron got himself erect and pushed aside helping hands.
Von Haas presented himself with grace and dignified congratulations. The Boss's Boy filed the Baron's graciousness in defeat as a proper way to act—if his own occasion ever appeared.
An immense swelling was already forming near the joint on one side of the Baron's jaw, and Matt expected bone might have broken.
Klubber Cole shortened their handshake to turn the defeated fighter to his handlers and to suggest that the swelling be immediately soaked for some hours in the coldest water they could manage and that the jaw be immobilized by wrapping tightly until swelling went down and the damaged jaw bone properly examined.
Before Mickey McFee entered the square for the big fight of the evening, Matt got his own battered hand into a bucket of stream water. Caring for his swelling knuckles allowed him to calm after the adrenalin rush of the fast and furious battling.
The Baron's single punishing stab had landed high enough not to swell Matt's eye, and the Boss‘s Boy was grateful for that. He would have an undisguisable lump for a day or two, and Big Matt would be angry enough without the sight of his son with a blackened and swollen eye. Matt tried to hope that China might blunt the sting of his father's exasperation at least a little, but China, too, might not think much of his fighting unprepared, wearing work boots, and with his fists unwrapped.
Matt resolved to enjoy the rest of the evening and leave tomorrow to whatever came. If the boss and China were real late, Matt thought he might be absent visiting the upriver coal operation, eve
n if it was Sunday.
Mickey McFee met Frederick The Great at ring center, and Matt doubted that either man took a step backward. Frederick was tough and threw punches from all angles, but McFee right-handed him until Matt feared the German's head might fall from his shoulders.
McFee punished his opponent until the man collapsed. Mickey took his own licks as if they had never landed, but the Boss's Boy knew that China Smith would have shook his head and claimed that win or lose, if McFee took many such batterings he would be fit only to carry heavy things.
Mickey sure could hit, though, and Matt Miller found himself wondering how he would stand up to such hammer blows launched one after another until his opponent folded?
Something to consider, if he really ever expected to meet Mickey McFee in the so-called square circle.
Chapter 9
It was not that bad. The Boss was late coming, and China had worked at smoothing young Matt's path.
Matt had not slipped away to other duties. Lukey Bates was at church, and Matt had considered that escape option as well. Instead, the Boss's Boy worked at odds and ends—killing time until his father appeared.
When he arrived alone, China had planted his feet and examined his charge's swollen temple.
"They claim the Baron did that with a single jab. He must have power."
Matt was not defensive about it. "Hardest jab I have ever seen, China. Haas is a sword fighter, and he stabbed his best hand straight out with body lunges as if his arm were a sword and brought his back leg forward so that he was set to jab again. He is very practiced and well balanced.
"Every time he landed, the punch was dazing. The two Irishmen he flattened ahead of me ate enough jabs to last a lifetime. They couldn't get away from the Baron's punches, and their only chance was to land a lucky punch—which never happened." Matt gently touched his swelling. "He only got to me once, but I felt it clear to my toes.
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