“I––I just got back down from the timber, three days ago,” he explained, and somehow, entirely unintentionally, as he spoke the slow statement seemed almost an apology for his lack of information. “I guess I haven’t heard much of anything lately––up here. Is it––is it something big?”
Old Jerry hesitated. He felt suddenly the hopeless, overwhelming dearth of words against which he labored in the attempt to carry the tidings worthily.
“Big!” He repeated the other’s question. “Big! Why, Godfrey ’Lisha, boy, it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to this town. It––it’s terrific! We’ll 67 be famous––that’s what we’ll be! In a week or two Boltonwood’ll be as famous as––as––why, we’ll be as famous as the Chicago Fair!”
He broke off with a gasp for breath and started fluttering madly through the paper which he had wrenched from Young Denny’s bundle of closely wrapped mail, until he found the page he sought.
“There ’tis,” he cried, and pointed out a lurid headline that ran half across the head of the sporting section. “There ’tis––or leastwise that’s a part on it. But they’s more a-comin’––more that that won’t be a patch to! But you just take a look at that!”
Young Denny took the paper from his hand with a sort of sober patience, and there across the first three column heads, following the direction of Old Jerry’s quivering forefinger, he found his first inkling of the astounding news.
“Jed The Red wins by knockout over The Texan in fourteenth round,” ran the red-inked caption.
Word by word he read it through, and a second time his grave eyes went through it, even more painstakingly, as though he had not caught at a single reading all its sensational significance. Then he looked up into the seamed old face above him, a-gleam and a-quiver with excitement.
“Jed The Red,” the boy said in his steady voice. “Jed The Red!” And then, levelly: “Who’s he?”
Old Jerry stared at him a moment before he shook 68 his head hopelessly and collapsed with a thud upon the torn seat behind him, in an excess of disgust for the boy’s stupidity which he made no effort to conceal.