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