fighting. 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