140 THE COUNTRY BOY 



would leave Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday 

 night of the following week — this was Fri- 

 day — for New Orleans, with a select aggrega- 

 tion of sporting men from Portland to the 

 Dempsey-Fitzsimmons championship fight. I 

 read the statement many times, and felt more 

 enthusiastic after each reading; so I went to 

 the barn with the team, told father it was too 

 dry to plow, and took the next train for Port- 

 land. 



When I got to Portland, I went to the pub- 

 lisher of the Sunday Mercury, as it was the 

 only sporting paper there; told him I was an 

 artist and wanted to go to the big fight at 

 New Orleans and do him a series of pictures. 

 He asked me how much I would charge him, 

 and I told him all I wanted was my transpor- 

 tation for the round trip. Ben AValton was 

 an enterprising man, and strange as it may 

 seem, agreed without ever asking to see any of 

 my art work, and that fact alone made it pos- 

 sible for me to go. When I found I was really 

 going, I wrote to my relatives and friends at 

 Silverton of the great trip I was going to 

 take, and in a couple of daj^s my grandmother 

 sent me by express a basket of roast chickens, 



