This was an hour after finishing breakfast with Stephen Stoddard. Sovich, dressed in the type of black suit and white shirt and red-lined cape you would expect to see on an opera baritone, walked into the boxing camp smiling. Guild, John T. Stoddard, and Stephen Stoddard all stood staring at him. “You’d better tell Guild here that guns don’t always frighten me,” Sovich said, strolling up. It was hot in the alley, just as it had been yesterday afternoon, though thunderheads had begun massing in the flat blue midwest-em sky and there was a promise of a brief respite from the heat. The two Mexican boys were in the rope ring again. They would precede Sovich and the black man. Guild just hoped the skinnier of the boys somehow learned to box between now and tomorrow afternoon. A small group of reporters stood in the wide mouth of the alley, to the left of the livery stable, where you could smell heat and iron and smoke, talking to a small, prim group of churchwomen who were here to protest fisticuffs in general and any fight with Victor Sovich in particular.
