第51章 THE MEXICAN(8)

Again and again, attack after attack he straight-lefted away from him with accumulated damage to Danny's mouth and nose.But Danny was protean.That was why he was the coming champion.He could change from style to style of fighting at will.He now devoted himself to infighting.In this he was particularly wicked, and it enabled him to avoid the other's straight-left.

Here he set the house wild repeatedly, capping it with a marvelous lockbreak and lift of an inside upper-cut that raised the Mexican in the air and dropped him to the mat.Rivera rested on one knee, making the most of the count, and in the soul of him he knew the referee was counting short seconds on him.

Again, in the seventh, Danny achieved the diabolical inside uppercut.He succeeded only in staggering Rivera, but, in the ensuing moment of defenseless helplessness, he smashed him with another blow through the ropes.Rivera's body bounced on the heads of the newspaper men below, and they boosted him back to the edge of the platform outside the ropes.Here he rested on one knee, while the referee raced off the seconds.Inside the ropes, through which he must duck to enter the ring, Danny waited for him.Nor did the referee intervene or thrust Danny back.

The house was beside itself with delight.

"Kill'm, Danny, kill'm!" was the cry.

Scores of voices took it up until it was like a war-chant of wolves.

Danny did his best, but Rivera, at the count of eight, instead of nine, came unexpectedly through the ropes and safely into a clinch.Now the referee worked, tearing him away so that he could be hit, giving Danny every advantage that an unfair referee can give.

But Rivera lived, and the daze cleared from his brain.It was all of a piece.They were the hated Gringos and they were all unfair.And in the worst of it visions continued to flash and sparkle in his brain--long lines of railroad track that simmered across the desert; rurales and American constables, prisons and calabooses; tramps at water tanks--all the squalid and painful panorama of his odyssey after Rio Blanca and the strike.And, resplendent and glorious, he saw the great, red Revolution sweeping across his land.The guns were there before him.Every hated face was a gun.It was for the guns he fought.

He was the guns.He was the Revolution.He fought for all Mexico.

The audience began to grow incensed with Rivera.Why didn't he take the licking that was appointed him? Of course he was going to be licked, but why should he be so obstinate about it? Very few were interested in him, and they were the certain, definite percentage of a gambling crowd that plays long shots.Believing Danny to be the winner, nevertheless the y had put their money on the Mexican at four to ten and one to three.More than a trifle was up on the point of how many rounds Rivera could last.Wild money had appeared at the ringside proclaiming that he could not last seven rounds, or even six.The winners of this, now that their cash risk was happily settled, had joined in cheering on the favorite.

Rivera refused to be licked.Through the eighth round his opponent strove vainly to repeat the uppercut.In the ninth, Rivera stunned the house again.In the midst of a clinch he broke the lock with a quick, lithe movement, and in the narrow space between their bodies his right lifted from the waist.

Danny went to the floor and took the safety of the count.The crowd was appalled.He was being bested at his own game.His famous right-uppercut had been worked back on him.Rivera made no attempt to catch him as he arose at "nine." The referee was openly blocking that play, though he stood clear when the situation was reversed and it was Rivera who desired to rise.

Twice in the tenth, Rivera put through the right-uppercut, lifted from waist to opponent's chin.Danny grew desperate.The smile never left his face, but he went back to his man-eating rushes.Whirlwind as he would, be could not damage Rivera, while Rivera through the blur and whirl, dropped him to the mat three times in succession.Danny did not recuperate so quickly now, and by the eleventh round he was in a serious way.But from then till the fourteenth he put up the gamest exhibition of his career.He stalled and blocked, fought parsimoniously, and strove to gather strength.Also, he fought as foully as a successful fighter knows how.Every trick and device he employed, butting in the clinches with the seeming of accident, pinioning Rivera's glove between arm and body, heeling his glove on Rivera's mouth to clog his breathing.Often, in the clinches, through his cut and smiling lips he snarled insults unspeakable and vile in Rivera's ear.Everybody, from the referee to the house, was with Danny and was helping Danny.And they knew what he had in mind.Bested by this surprise-box of an unknown, he was pinning all on a single punch.He offered himself for punishment, fished, and feinted, and drew, for that one opening that would enable him to whip a blow through with all his strength and turn the tide.As another and greater fighter had done before him, he might do a right and left, to solar plexus and across the jaw.He could do it, for he was noted for the strength of punch that remained in his arms as long as he could keep his feet.