第50章 THE MEXICAN(7)

Rivera noticed Roberts sitting directly behind the newspaper men.He was drunker than usual, and his speech was correspondingly slower.

"Take it easy, Rivera," Roberts drawled.

"He can't kill you, remember that.He'll rush you at the go-off, but don't get rattled.You just and stall, and clinch.

He can't hurt cover up, much.Just make believe to yourself that he's choppin' out on you at the trainin' quarters."Rivera made no sign that he had heard.

"Sullen little devil," Roberts muttered to the man next to him.

"He always was that way."

But Rivera forgot to look his usual hatred.A vision of countless rifles blinded his eyes.Every face in the aidience, far as he could see, to the high dollar-seats, was transformed into a rifle.And he saw the long Mexican border arid and sun-washed and aching, and along it he saw the ragged bands that delayed only for the guns.

Back in his corner he waited, standing up.His seconds had crawled out through the ropes, taking the canvas stool with them.Diagonally across the squared ring, Danny faced him.The gong struck, and the battle was on.The audience howled its delight.Never had it seen a battle open more convincingly.The papers were right.It was a grudge fight.Three-quarters of the distance Danny covered in the rush to get together, his intention to eat up the Mexican lad plainly advertised.He assailed with not one blow, nor two, nor a dozen.He was a gyroscope of blows, a whirlwind of destruction.Rivera was nowhere.He was overwhelmed, buried beneath avalanches of punches delivered from every angle and position by a past master in the art.He was overborne, swept back against the ropes, separated by the referee, and swept back against the ropes again.

It was not a fight.It was a slaughter, a massacre.Any audience, save a prize fighting one, would have exhausted its emotions in that first minute.Danny was certainly showing what he could do--a splendid exhibition.Such was the certainty of the audience, as well as its excitement and favoritism, that it failed to take notice that the Mexican still stayed on his feet.It forgot Rivera.It rarely saw him, so closely was he enveloped in Danny's man-eating attack.A minute of this went by, and two minutes.Then, in a separation, it caught a clear glimpse of the Mexican.His lip was cut, his nose was bleeding.

As he turned and staggered into a clinch, the welts of oozing blood, from his contacts with the ropes, showed in red bars.

across his back.But what the audience did not notice was that his chest was not heaving and that his eyes were coldly burning as ever.Too many aspiring champions, in the cruel welter of the training camps, had practiced this man-eating attack on him.He had learned to live through for a compensation of from half a dollar a go up to fifteen dollars a week--a hard school, and he was schooled hard.

Then happened the amazing thing.The whirling, blurring mix-up ceased suddenly.Rivera stood alone.Danny, the redoubtable Danny, lay on his back.His body quivered as consciousness strove to return to it.He had not staggered and sunk down, nor had he gone over in a long slumping fall.The right hook of Rivera had dropped him in midair with the abruptness of death.

The referee shoved Rivera back with one hand, and stood over the fallen gladiator counting the seconds.It is the custom of prize-fighting audiences to cheer a clean knock-down blow.But this audience did not cheer.The thing had been too unexpected.

It watched the toll of the seconds in tense silence, and through this silence the voice of Roberts rose exultantly:

"I told you he was a two-handed fighter!"By the fifth second, Danny was rolling over on his face, and when seven was counted, he rested on one knee, ready to rise after the count of nine and before the count of ten.If his knee still touched the floor at "ten," he was considered "down," and also "out." The instant his knee left the floor, he was considered "up," and in that instant it was Rivera's right to try and put him down again.Rivera took no chances.The moment that knee left the floor he would strike again.He circled around, but the referee circled in between, and Rivera knew that the seconds he counted were very slow.All Gringos were against him, even the referee.

At "nine" the referee gave Rivera a sharp thrust back.It was unfair, but it enabled Danny to rise, the smile back on his lips.Doubled partly over, with arms wrapped about face and abdomen, he cleverly stumbled into a clinch.By all the rules of the game the referee should have broken it, but he did not, and Danny clung on like a surf-battered barnacle and moment by moment recuperated.The last minute of the round was going fast.If he could live to the end, he would have a full minute in his corner to revive.And live to the end he did, smiling through all desperateness and extremity.

"The smile that won't come off!" somebody yelled, and the audience laughed loudly in its relief.

"The kick that Greaser's got is something God-awful," Danny gasped in his corner to his adviser while his handlers worked frantically over him.

The second and third rounds were tame.Danny, a tricky and consummate ring general, stalled and blocked and held on, devoting himself to recovering from that dazing first-round blow.In the fourth round he was himself again.Jarred and shaken, nevertheless his good condition had enabled him to regain his vigor.But he tried no man-eating tactics.The Mexican had proved a tartar.Instead, he brought to bear his best fighting powers.In tricks and skill and experience he was the master, and though he could land nothing vital, he proceeded scientifically to chop and wear down his opponent.He landed three blows to Rivera's one, but they were punishing blows only, and not deadly.It was the sum of many of them that constituted deadliness.He was respectful of this two-handed dub with the amazing short-arm kicks in both his fists.

In defense, Rivera developed a disconcerting straight-left.