Part 26 (1/1)

Rivera did not answer

”I will, so helpRivera sensed so The house did not Whatever it was it was there inside the ring with him and very close Danny's earlier surety seehtened Rivera Some trick was about to be worked Danny rushed, but Rivera refused the encounter He side-stepped away into safety What the other wanted was a clinch It was in some way necessary to the trick Rivera backed and circled away, yet he knew, sooner or later, the clinch and the trick would come Desperately he resolved to draw it He made as if to effect the clinch with Danny's next rush

Instead, at the last instant, just as their bodies should have coether, Rivera darted nimbly back And in the same instant Danny's corner raised a cry of foul Rivera had fooled them The referee paused irresolutely The decision that trembled on his lips was never uttered, for a shrill, boy's voice froallery piped, ”Raork!”

Danny cursed Rivera openly, and forced him, while Rivera danced away

Also, Rivera made up his mind to strike no more blows at the body In this he threay half his chance of winning, but he knew if he was to win at all it ith the outfighting that remained to him Given the least opportunity, they would lie a foul on him Danny threw all caution to the winds For two rounds he tore after and into the boy who dared not ain; he took blows by the dozens to avoid the perilous clinch During this supreme final rally of Danny's the audience rose to its feet and went mad It did not understand All it could see was that its favorite inning, after all

”Why don't you fight?” it demanded wrathfully of Rivera

”You're yellow! You're yellow!” ”Open up, you cur! Open up!” ”Kill'ot 'm! Kill 'm!”

In all the house, bar none, Rivera was the only cold man By temperament and blood he was the hottest-passioned there; but he had gone through such vastly greater heats that this collective passion of ten thousand throats, rising surge on surge, was to his brain no ht

Into the seventeenth round Danny carried his rally Rivera, under a heavy blow, drooped and sagged His hands dropped helplessly as he reeled backward Danny thought it was his chance The boy was at, his uard, lashi+ng out a clean drive to the mouth Danny went down When he arose, Rivera felled hiht on neck and jaw Three times he repeated this It was impossible for any referee to call these blows foul

”Oh, Bill! Bill!” Kelly pleaded to the referee

”I can't,” that official laive me a chance”

Danny, battered and heroic, still kept coan to cry out to the police to stop it, though Danny's corner refused to throw in the towel Rivera saw the fat police captain starting aardly to clih the ropes, and was not sure what it aily and helplessly before hi for Rivera when he struck the last blow There was no need to stop the fight, for Danny did not rise

”Count!” Rivera cried hoarsely to the referee

And when the count was finished, Danny's seconds gathered him up and carried him to his corner

”Who wins?” Rivera deloved hand and held it aloft

There were no congratulations for Rivera He walked to his corner unattended, where his seconds had not yet placed his stool He leaned backward on the ropes and looked his hatred at theos were included His knees tre from exhaustion Before his eyes the hated faces swayed back and forth in the giddiness of nausea Then he reuns were his The Revolution could go on