IV

Barely noticed was Rivera as he entered the ring. Only a very slight and

very scattering ripple of half-hearted hand-clapping greeted him. The

house did not believe in him. He was the lamb led to slaughter at the

hands of the great Danny. Besides, the house was disappointed. It had

expected a rushing battle between Danny Ward and Billy Carthey, and

here it must put up with this poor little tyro. Still further, it had

manifested its disapproval of the change by betting two, and even three,

to one on Danny. And where a betting audience's money is, there is its

heart.

The Mexican boy sat down in his corner and waited. The slow minutes

lagged by. Danny was making him wait. It was an old trick, but ever it

worked on the young, new fighters. They grew frightened, sitting thus

and facing their own apprehensions and a callous, tobacco-smoking

audience. But for once the trick failed. Roberts was right. Rivera had

no goat. He, who was more delicately coordinated, more finely nerved and

strung than any of them, had no nerves of this sort. The atmosphere of

foredoomed defeat in his own corner had no effect on him. His handlers

were Gringos and strangers. Also they were scrubs--the dirty driftage

of the fight game, without honor, without efficiency. And they were

chilled, as well, with certitude that theirs was the losing corner.

“Now you gotta be careful,” Spider Hagerty warned him. Spider was his

chief second. “Make it last as long as you can--them's my instructions

from Kelly. If you don't, the papers'll call it another bum fight and

give the game a bigger black eye in Los Angeles.”

All of which was not encouraging. But Rivera took no notice. He despised

prize fighting. It was the hated game of the hated Gringo. He had taken

up with it, as a chopping block for others in the training quarters,

solely because he was starving. The fact that he was marvelously made

for it had meant nothing. He hated it. Not until he had come in to the

Junta, had he fought for money, and he had found the money easy. Not

first among the sons of men had he been to find himself successful at a

despised vocation.

He did not analyze. He merely knew that he must win this fight. There

could be no other outcome. For behind him, nerving him to this belief,

were profounder forces than any the crowded house dreamed. Danny Ward

fought for money, and for the easy ways of life that money would bring.

But the things Rivera fought for burned in his brain--blazing and

terrible visions, that, with eyes wide open, sitting lonely in the

corner of the ring and waiting for his tricky antagonist, he saw as

clearly as he had lived them.

He saw the white-walled, water-power factories of Rio Blanco. He saw the

six thousand workers, starved and wan, and the little children, seven

and eight years of age, who toiled long shifts for ten cents a day.

He saw the perambulating corpses, the ghastly death's heads of men who

labored in the dye-rooms. He remembered that he had heard his father

call the dye-rooms the “suicide-holes,” where a year was death. He

saw the little patio, and his mother cooking and moiling at crude

housekeeping and finding time to caress and love him. And his father he

saw, large, big-moustached and deep-chested, kindly above all men,

who loved all men and whose heart was so large that there was love to

overflowing still left for the mother and the little muchacho playing

in the corner of the patio. In those days his name had not been Felipe

Rivera. It had been Fernandez, his father's and mother's name. Him had

they called Juan. Later, he had changed it himself, for he had found

the name of Fernandez hated by prefects of police, jefes politicos, and

rurales.

Big, hearty Joaquin Fernandez! A large place he occupied in Rivera's

visions. He had not understood at the time, but looking back he could

understand. He could see him setting type in the little printery, or

scribbling endless hasty, nervous lines on the much-cluttered desk. And

he could see the strange evenings, when workmen, coming secretly in the

dark like men who did ill deeds, met with his father and talked long

hours where he, the muchacho, lay not always asleep in the corner.

As from a remote distance he could hear Spider Hagerty saying to him:

“No layin' down at the start. Them's instructions. Take a beatin' and

earn your dough.”

Ten minutes had passed, and he still sat in his corner. There were no

signs of Danny, who was evidently playing the trick to the limit.

But more visions burned before the eye of Rivera's memory. The strike,

or, rather, the lockout, because the workers of Rio Blanco had helped

their striking brothers of Puebla. The hunger, the expeditions in the

hills for berries, the roots and herbs that all ate and that twisted and

pained the stomachs of all of them. And then, the nightmare; the waste

of ground before the company's store; the thousands of starving workers;

General Rosalio Martinez and the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz, and the

death-spitting rifles that seemed never to cease spitting, while the

workers' wrongs were washed and washed again in their own blood. And

that night! He saw the flat cars, piled high with the bodies of the

slain, consigned to Vera Cruz, food for the sharks of the bay. Again

he crawled over the grisly heaps, seeking and finding, stripped

and mangled, his father and his mother. His mother he especially

remembered--only her face projecting, her body burdened by the weight

of dozens of bodies. Again the rifles of the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz

cracked, and again he dropped to the ground and slunk away like some

hunted coyote of the hills.

To his ears came a great roar, as of the sea, and he saw Danny Ward,

leading his retinue of trainers and seconds, coming down the center

aisle. The house was in wild uproar for the popular hero who was bound

to win. Everybody proclaimed him. Everybody was for him. Even Rivera's

own seconds warmed to something akin to cheerfulness when Danny ducked

jauntily through the ropes and entered the ring. His face continually

spread to an unending succession of smiles, and when Danny smiled he

smiled in every feature, even to the laughter-wrinkles of the corners of

the eyes and into the depths of the eyes themselves. Never was there so

genial a fighter. His face was a running advertisement of good feeling,

of good fellowship. He knew everybody. He joked, and laughed, and

greeted his friends through the ropes. Those farther away, unable to

suppress their admiration, cried loudly: “Oh, you Danny!” It was a

joyous ovation of affection that lasted a full five minutes.

Rivera was disregarded. For all that the audience noticed, he did not

exist. Spider Lagerty's bloated face bent down close to his.

“No gettin' scared,” the Spider warned.

“An' remember instructions. You gotta last. No layin' down. If you lay

down, we got instructions to beat you up in the dressing rooms. Savve?

You just gotta fight.”

The house began to applaud. Danny was crossing the ring to him. Danny

bent over, caught Rivera's right hand in both his own and shook it with

impulsive heartiness. Danny's smile-wreathed face was close to his. The

audience yelled its appreciation of Danny's display of sporting spirit.

He was greeting his opponent with the fondness of a brother. Danny's

lips moved, and the audience, interpreting the unheard words to be

those of a kindly-natured sport, yelled again. Only Rivera heard the low

words.

“You little Mexican rat,” hissed from between Danny's gaily smiling

lips, “I'll fetch the yellow outa you.”

Rivera made no move. He did not rise. He merely hated with his eyes.

“Get up, you dog!” some man yelled through the ropes from behind.

The crowd began to hiss and boo him for his unsportsmanlike conduct,

but he sat unmoved. Another great outburst of applause was Danny's as he

walked back across the ring.

When Danny stripped, there was ohs! and ahs! of delight. His body was

perfect, alive with easy suppleness and health and strength. The skin

was white as a woman's, and as smooth. All grace, and resilience,

and power resided therein. He had proved it in scores of battles. His

photographs were in all the physical culture magazines.

A groan went up as Spider Hagerty peeled Rivera's sweater over his head.

His body seemed leaner, because of the swarthiness of the skin. He had

muscles, but they made no display like his opponent's. What the audience

neglected to see was the deep chest. Nor could it guess the toughness of

the fiber of the flesh, the instantaneousness of the cell explosions

of the muscles, the fineness of the nerves that wired every part of

him into a splendid fighting mechanism. All the audience saw was a

brown-skinned boy of eighteen with what seemed the body of a boy. With

Danny it was different. Danny was a man of twenty-four, and his body

was a man's body. The contrast was still more striking as they stood

together in the center of the ring receiving the referee's last

instructions.

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 audience, 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. 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 they

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,

he 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.

Rivera's seconds were not half-caring for him in the intervals between

rounds. Their towels made a showing, but drove little air into his

panting lungs. Spider Hagerty talked advice to him, but Rivera knew

it was wrong advice. Everybody was against him. He was surrounded by

treachery. In the fourteenth round he put Danny down again, and himself

stood resting, hands dropped at side, while the referee counted. In

the other corner Rivera had been noting suspicious whisperings. He saw

Michael Kelly make his way to Roberts and bend and whisper. Rivera's

ears were a cat's, desert-trained, and he caught snatches of what was

said. He wanted to hear more, and when his opponent arose he maneuvered

the fight into a clinch over against the ropes.

“Got to,” he could hear Michael, while Roberts nodded. “Danny's got to

win--I stand to lose a mint--I've got a ton of money covered--my own.

If he lasts the fifteenth I'm bust--the boy'll mind you. Put something

across.”

And thereafter Rivera saw no more visions. They were trying to job him.

Once again he dropped Danny and stood resting, his hands at his slide.

Roberts stood up.

“That settled him,” he said.

“Go to your corner.”

He spoke with authority, as he had often spoken to Rivera at the

training quarters. But Rivera looked hatred at him and waited for Danny

to rise. Back in his corner in the minute interval, Kelly, the promoter,

came and talked to Rivera.

“Throw it, damn you,” he rasped in, a harsh low voice. “You gotta lay

down, Rivera. Stick with me and I'll make your future. I'll let you lick

Danny next time. But here's where you lay down.”

Rivera showed with his eyes that he heard, but he made neither sign of

assent nor dissent.

“Why don't you speak?” Kelly demanded angrily.

“You lose, anyway,” Spider Hagerty supplemented. “The referee'll take it

away from you. Listen to Kelly, and lay down.”

“Lay down, kid,” Kelly pleaded, “and I'll help you to the championship.”

Rivera did not answer.

“I will, so help me, kid.”

At the strike of the gong Rivera sensed something impending. The house

did not. Whatever it was it was there inside the ring with him and very

close. Danny's earlier surety seemed returned to him. The confidence of

his advance frightened 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 come

together, 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 from the gallery piped, “Raw work!”

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 threw away half his chance of winning, but he knew if he was to

win at all it was with 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 meet him at close quarters. Rivera was struck again and again;

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 was

winning, 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'm,

Danny! Kill 'm!” “You sure got '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 more than the velvet

cool of a summer twilight.

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

mercy. Thus Rivera, feigning, caught him off his guard, lashing out a

clean drive to the mouth. Danny went down. When he arose, Rivera felled

him with a down-chop of the right 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 lamented back. “He won't give me a chance.”

Danny, battered and heroic, still kept coming up. Kelly and others near

to the ring began 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 awkwardly to climb through the ropes, and was not sure what it

meant. There were so many ways of cheating in this game of the Gringos.

Danny, on his feet, tottered groggily and helplessly before him. The

referee and the captain were both reaching 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 demanded.

Reluctantly, the referee caught his gloved 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 them, swept it on and

about him till the whole ten thousand Gringos were included. His knees

trembled under him, and he was sobbing from exhaustion. Before his eyes

the hated faces swayed back and forth in the giddiness of nausea. Then

he remembered they were the guns. The guns were his. The Revolution

could go on.