Weird West 04 - The Doctor and the Dinosaurs Read Online Free Page A

the door and pointing to a large crowd perhaps half a mile away.
    It took Holliday almost twenty minutes to traverse the distance on foot, and once there he walked up to the hastily constructed ticket booth and bought a standing-room ticket, well behind the seated area, since he was much less interested in watching the fight than meeting the referee.
    There was a preliminary bout going on, and the crowd was cheering for its favorite, a short stocky man with a shock of blond hair. Holliday saw that the referee was a lean bearded man, and went off to find something to drink. The best he could do was a warm beer, so he took it, spent a few minutes polishing it off, and returned to where he could see the ring. A cheer went up from the crowd just as he reached it, and he saw that the stocky man's hand was being held above his head, while his opponent's corner men were trying to awaken the unconscious fighter.
    There was another bout, which ended about ninety seconds after it began, and then the ring stood empty for almost fifteen minutes. Finally a band began playing. Holliday turned and saw the uniformed trumpeters and drummers marching down the aisle to the ring, leadinga tall, broad-shouldered man who he recognized from photos and drawings in the few newspapers he had seen in the last couple of years as being John L. Sullivan. The crowd stood up and cheered, and Sullivan smiled and waved to them.
    When they reached the ring the band stopped playing and Sullivan climbed the four stairs, stepped between the ropes, and stood calmly, awaiting his opponent.
    A moment later William Smiley walked to the ring in solitary splendor. Again, the crowd began cheering when they saw him, and one woman even threw him a bouquet, which he caught, brought carefully to his lips, and then handed to a teenaged girl who was standing on the aisle.
    Holliday studied Smiley as he gracefully made his way to the ring. He was a lean man except for his arms, which were heavily muscled. His face bore no marks of previous battles, and in a time of cauliflower ears and crooked noses that was remarkable in itself. He smiled and waved to the crowd as he entered the ring, then walked over to shake Sullivan's hand. Sullivan, straight-faced, said something that made Smiley laugh, and Smiley's reply elicited nothing more than a sneer from Sullivan.
    But Holliday wasn't watching them. His attention was focused on a third man who was approaching the ring: medium height, broad of chest, wearing the mustache he'd grown during his last trip out West, and watching the world through a pair of rimless glasses.
    A man dressed in his Sunday best entered the ring and held a bullhorn to his mouth.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” he intoned, “welcome to the match for the heavyweight championship of the world. Cheyenne is proud to host this momentous event, and we are delighted to welcome the reigning champion, the great John L. Sullivan!”
    Sullivan bowed from the waist as he received a huge ovation.
    “Fighting against him will be our own undefeated native son, William Smiley!
    The cheer was even louder this time, and Smiley waved to the crowd.
    “And coming out from New York just to referee this momentous event is Theodore Roosevelt.”
    Roosevelt nodded his head briefly to the mild cheers, and then called the two fighters to the center of the ring to give them their instructions.
    “Why the hell did they bring out a politician to ref the damned thing?” complained a man standing next to Holliday.
    “He's a little more than a politician,” said Holliday.
    “Oh?”
    Holliday nodded. “For one thing, he was a boxing champion at Harvard.”
    “Where's that?” asked the man.
    Holliday smiled. “Little school back East.” He was about to list Roosevelt's other accomplishments, including the treaty with Geronimo, but then the bell rang and the fight began.
    Strategy wasn't Smiley's strong suit. He went right at Sullivan, and received a bloody nose for his trouble.