"Four men hold logging tools next to a team of two oxen in the woods. In the background is the wagon of C.R. Monroe, Traveling Photographer".
"Fistfights were to loggers what gunfights were to cowboys. “One crew was always ready to fight any other crew,” one veteran recalled, “and when we was in some lumbering town it was sometimes rough.”
"In the early 1890s, Bat Meagher, “a hard-boiled and hairy giant” from Marinette, was widely feared. But one winter he heard about a fighter who could lick him, a logger-turned-bartender named Pete Curtis, the “Champeen of Michigan.” When spring came, Meagher crossed the state line to Curtis’ tavern in Hardwood, Michigan".
"A crowd was waiting when he burst through the door. The fight began immediately and both men were soon bloody. As the fight dragged on, neither would go down".
"Eventually Meagher lifted Curtis up and threw him over a cast-iron stove. The blow momentarily knocked the wind out of the Champeen, but he pulled himself up and charged his opponent with renewed fury. Meagher halted in amazement, because when Curtis rose, his right leg was turned entirely around with the toes facing backwards".
“Hold on,” Meagher shouted, “You win. Any man that’ll look for more with a broken leg is too much for me. I’m through.” And he stumbled out the tavern door".
"Meagher didn’t know that Curtis had lost his lower leg years earlier in a logging accident and been fitted with a wooden one. This prosthetic had twisted around backwards and stunned Wisconsin’s best fighter. He disappeared down the tote road and history does not record whether he ever learned the truth".
— Wisconsin Historical Society