章节正文
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 defenselesshelplessness, 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
opponentstrovevainly 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.
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 suspiciouswhisperings. 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 perilousclinch. 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.
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 defenselesshelplessness, 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
opponentstrovevainly 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.
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 suspiciouswhisperings. 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 perilousclinch. 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.
- mexican [´meksikən]
n.&a.墨西哥人(语)的 (初中英语单词) - platform [´plætfɔ:m] n.(平)台；讲台；站台 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- safely [´seifli] ad.安全地；平安地 (初中英语单词)
- advantage [əd´vɑ:ntidʒ] n.优势；利益 (初中英语单词)
- glorious [´glɔ:riəs] a.光荣的；辉煌的 (初中英语单词)
- audience [´ɔ:diəns] n.听众；观众；接见 (初中英语单词)
- nevertheless [,nevəðə´les] conj.&ad.然而；不过 (初中英语单词)
- movement [´mu:vmənt] n.活动；运动；动作 (初中英语单词)
- desperate [´despərit] a.拼死的；绝望的 (初中英语单词)
- succession [sək´seʃən] n.继任；继承(权) (初中英语单词)
- career [kə´riə] n.经历；生涯；职业 (初中英语单词)
- device [di´vais] n.装置；器具；策略 (初中英语单词)
- punishment [´pʌniʃmənt] n.罚，刑罚 (初中英语单词)
- opening [´əupəniŋ] n.开放；开端 a.开始的 (初中英语单词)
- enable [i´neibəl] vt.使能够；赋予权力 (初中英语单词)
- spider [´spaidə] n.蜘蛛；三角架 (初中英语单词)
- whisper [´wispə] v.耳语 n.低语；沙沙声 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- hatred [´heitrid] n.憎恨，敌意 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- encounter [in´kauntə] vt.&n.偶然相遇；冲突 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- gallery [´gæləri] n.画廊；美术馆；长廊 (初中英语单词)
- supreme [su:´pri:m, sju:-] a.最高的，无上的 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- velvet [´velvit] n.&a.天鹅绒(般的) (初中英语单词)
- backward [´bækwəd] ad.向后 a.向后的 (初中英语单词)
- intervene [,intə´vi:n] vi.干涉；插进 (高中英语单词)
- painful [´peinfəl] a.痛(苦)的；费力的 (高中英语单词)
- sweeping [´swi:piŋ] a.掠过的 n.扫除；清除 (高中英语单词)
- strove [strəuv] strive的过去式 (高中英语单词)
- vainly [´veinli] ad.虚荣地；自负地 (高中英语单词)
- fighter [´faitə] n.战士；战斗机 (高中英语单词)
- treachery [´tretʃəri] n.背叛；背信弃义 (高中英语单词)
- suspicious [sə´spiʃəs] a.可疑的，多疑的 (高中英语单词)
- opponent [ə´pəunənt] a.对立的 n.对手 (高中英语单词)
- thereafter [ðeə´rɑ:ftə] adv.此后，其后 (高中英语单词)
- assent [ə´sent] vi.&n.同意，赞成 (高中英语单词)
- desperately [´despəritli] ad.绝望地；拼命地 (高中英语单词)
- shrill [ʃril] a.(声音)尖锐的 (高中英语单词)
- openly [´əupənli] ad.公开地；直率地 (高中英语单词)
- caution [´kɔ:ʃən] n.&vt.小心；告诫；警告 (高中英语单词)
- perilous [´periləs] a.危险的；冒险的 (高中英语单词)
- heroic [hi´rəuik] a.英雄的，英勇的 (高中英语单词)
- repeatedly [ri´pi:tidli] ad.反复地；再三地 (英语四级单词)
- unexpectedly [´ʌniks´pektidli] ad.意外地；突然地 (英语四级单词)
- obstinate [´ɔbstinit] a.顽固的；(病)难治的 (英语四级单词)
- winner [´winə] n.胜利者，得奖者 (英语四级单词)
- whirlwind [´wə:l,wind] n.旋风；猛烈的势力 (英语四级单词)
- seeming [´si:miŋ] a.表面上的 n.外观 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- resolved [ri´zɔlvd] a.决心的；坚定的 (英语四级单词)
- winning [´winiŋ] n.&a.胜利(的) (英语四级单词)
- vastly [´vɑ:stli, ´væstli] ad.巨大地；广阔地 (英语四级单词)
- awkwardly [´ɔ:kwədli] a.笨拙地；棘手地 (英语四级单词)
- exhaustion [ig´zɔ:stʃən] n.用完；精疲力尽 (英语四级单词)
- defenseless [di´fenslis] a.未设防的 (英语六级单词)
- helplessness [´helplisnis] n.无能为力 (英语六级单词)
- resplendent [ri´splendənt] a.灿烂的；辉煌的 (英语六级单词)
- clinch [klintʃ] n.&v.钉住；确定 (英语六级单词)
- promoter [prə´məutə] n.促进者；创办人 (英语六级单词)
- helplessly [´helplisli] ad.无能为力地 (英语六级单词)
- hoarsely [´hɔ:sli] ad.嘶哑地 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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