Distinctly Montana Magazine

39 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m all) and the local Elks band. Polite applause fluttered around the largely empty stadium. Finally, as the day wore on and the heat beat down on the modest crowd, the fight began. The movie cameras, crucial to their plan to make at least a little money back, started to roll. The fight was largely unremarkable, except that Tommy Gib- bons proved himself to be a better-than-expected opponent. Dempsey won, as almost everyone thought he would, but Gib- bons would go into the record books as the only of Dempsey's opponents to last all fifteen rounds with him. The crowd, such as it was, was cheering just as much for Gibbons as it was for Dempsey, and Chief Curly Bear of the Blackfeet, who had been in attendance, declared Gibbons "Thunder Chief," taking his headdress off and placing it on Gibbons's battered brow. As for his opponent, author Jason Kelly writes, "[h]ailed as a hero when he arrived more than six weeks earlier, Dempsey rode out of Great Falls more or less on a rail." But, unlike Gibbons, who settled for $7,500 of the purse, Dempsey was a good deal richer. In the days and weeks following the match, four of Shelby's banks failed, including James Johnson's. The enormous sta- dium was disassembled, its boards auctioned off to the towns- folk. Today, there is no sign that the match ever occurred, ex- cept that at least some of the extant buildings must have been constructed out of, or patched up with, those boards. Eventu- ally, the town largely forgot the fight that nearly brought it to ruin. Maybe they were all too glad to forget it. Now that those hurt in the stunt have gone on to their eter- nal reward, some of the hurt has come out of the memory of the fight. Today, the story is remembered as a real humdinger —one of the great cons in American sports history, and a true Montana tall tale. But what about the matter of those boxing films that were sup- posed to save the Shelby investors' collective bacons, the distribu- tion rights to which Kearns gave the promoters in negotiation? Well, it turns out Kearns knew what the folks in Shelby didn't: federal law made transporting boxing films across state lines illegal. The films were, essentially, worthless. Perhaps just one more anecdote, then, to sum up. A day or two before the fight, Butte lawyer Frank Walker had, at the behest of the promoters, tried to get Kearns and Dempsey to see the fight through. He found Kearns to be a difficult man. This was the man, after all, who would later fondly recall having shut down four banks with one fight. The story goes that the lawyer, driven to his limit, finally told Kearns, "Here in Montana we have trees on which to hang fellows like you." Kearns looked out of a nearby window at the landscape of Montana's Hi-Line, all sweeping prairies, badlands, and grass. "I can't see a single tree out there," Kearns reportedly quipped.

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