第48章 THE MEXICAN(5)

"I'm not casting reflections on the referee, or the present company.I'm not sayin' nothing about book-makers an' frame-ups that sometimes happen.But what I do say is that it's poor business for a fighter like me.I play safe.There's no tellin'.Mebbe I break my arm, eh? Or some guy slips me a bunch of dope?" He shook his head solemnly."Win or lose, eighty is my split.What d' ye say, Mexican?"Rivera shook his head.

Danny exploded.He was getting down to brass tacks now.

"Why, you dirty little greaser! I've a mind to knock your block off right now."Roberts drawled his body to interposition between hostilities.

"Winner takes all," Rivera repeated sullenly.

"Why do you stand out that way?" Danny asked.

"I can lick you," was the straight answer.

Danny half started to take off his coat.But, as his manager knew, it was a grand stand play.The coat did not come off, and Danny allowed himself to be placated by the group.Everybody sympathized with him.Rivera stood alone.

"Look here, you little fool," Kelly took up the argument.

"You're nobody.We know what you ve been doing the last few months--putting away little local fighters.But Danny is class.

His next fight after this will be for the championship.And you're unknown.Nobody ever heard of you out of Los Angeles.""They will," Rivera answered with a shrug, "after this fight.""You think for a second you can lick me?" Danny blurted in.

Rivera nodded.

"Oh, come; listen to reason," Kelly pleaded."Think of the advertising.""I want the money," was Rivera's answer.

"You couldn't win from me in a thousand years," Danny assured him.

"Then what are you holdin' out for?" Rivera countered."If the money's that easy, why don't you go after it?""I will, so help me!" Danny cried with abrupt conviction."I'Il beat you to death in the ring, my boy--you monkeyin' with me this way.Make out the articles, Kelly.Winner take all.Play it up in the sportin' columns.Tell 'em it's a grudge fight.

I'll show this fresh kid a few."

Kelly's secretary had begun to write, when Danny interrupted.

"Hold on!" He turned to Rivera.

"Weights?"

"Ringside," came the answer.

"Not on your life, Fresh Kid.If winner takes all, we weigh in at ten A.M.""And winner takes all?" Rivera queried.

Danny nodded.That settled it.He would enter the ring in his full ripeness of strength.

"Weigh in at ten," Rivera said.

The secretary's pen went on scratching.

"It means five pounds," Roberts complained to Rivera.

"You've given too much away.You've thrown the fight right there.Danny'll lick you sure.He'll be as strong as a bull.

You're a fool.You ain't got the chance of a dewdrop in hell."Rivera's answer was a calculated look of hatred.Even this Gringo he despised, and him had he found the whitest Gringo of them all.

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.