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What little Herford left him, Gans gambled away. He was bad
at picking winners at the racetrack, and he was a loser at cards
and dice. He always kept enough money, however, to maintain a
fine wardrobe. He wore three-piece suits with a handkerchief
jutting from the breast pocket, white shirts with starched collars,
a diamond stickpin, a loop of gold watch chain across his chest,
and a derby when he stepped out at night. One of his outfits was
especially celebratory: a pale green suit, Alice blue socks, and yel-
low shoes. Daytimes, he preferred turtleneck jerseys or sweaters,
slacks, and a cap.
Appearances aside, Gans was as poor in 1906 as in 1896,
when he emerged from his native Baltimore to seek the light-
weight championship. If the heavyweight division was boxing’s
most prestigious, the lightweight ranks were its most competi-
tive. A boxer could make good money as a lightweight. The divi-
sion was filled with great fighters, and almost every one was
vicious and unforgiving. Nelson, born in Copenhagen and nick-
named “the Durable Dane,” was a brawler who could withstand
the hardest punches. If knocked down, he could be counted on
to get up and keep swinging as though he hadn’t been touched.
He hit below the belt, he held and hit, and he gouged eyes.
There wasn’t a dirty tactic that he hadn’t tried.
Like prospectors out for gold, Gans would work with his
hands, and his work, like theirs, would take time. It might punish
and discourage him. The desert fed discouragement. So did Nel-
son, who was twenty-four and in his fighting prime.
Gans was thirty-one. He had been boxing almost half his life,
and there were indications that his best days in the ring had
passed. As he sought a divorce the previous year, The Washing-
ton Post paraphrased his testimony in Baltimore’s Circuit Court
No. 2, saying that even Gans himself believed “the zenith of his
success had been reached and that he was now on the backward
track . . . that he was about all in as a professional scrapper.”
12 WILLIAM GILDEA
Gans’s wife demanded $200 to cover her lawyer’s fee and $25
a week in alimony pending the outcome of his suit. Gans ex-
plained that he was not only broke but also in debt to Herford for
thousands of dollars with little hope of repaying him. No one
could say that he was exaggerating his decline as a boxer and his
capacity for earning money in the future, including the presiding
judge, who awarded Gans’s wife a customary $25 for her lawyer’s
work and $5 a week in alimony pending the court’s decision.
Herford had a reputation for paying his fighters next to
nothing.
Boxing was a bettor’s province, and for years Herford had
raked in money by betting heavily on Gans—not only that he
would win, but when he would win—in what round. He often
arranged to have Gans go easy on white fighters, enabling them
to last a respectable amount of time so as not to embarrass them
too badly. Gans had the talent to score a knockout in the round
Herford ordained—and bet on. When Herford let him fight
without restrictions, he was practically invincible. In time, Her-
ford found fewer and fewer takers for his bets; almost no one
wanted to bet against Gans. So he persuaded Gans to lose inten-
tionally. One effect of this was to take money out of the pockets
of poor blacks who bet on Gans religiously—and the thought
tormented him. Six months before his trip into the desert, he
admitted his folly to a newspaper reporter and vowed to fight
honestly every time. Leaving Herford behind, Gans headed to
Goldfield nagged by regret.
2
“If you lose, you’ll never get out of Goldfield alive,” Sullivan
told him. “My friends are going to bet a ton of money on you.
They will kill you if you don’t beat Nelson.”
Gans took the threat with a laugh.
“If I had any money,” he replied calmly, “I’d bet it on myself.”
LONE
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