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Once to Every Man, a novel by Larry Evans |
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Chapter 13 |
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_ CHAPTER XIII When he had first looked up from the green-topped table and seen him standing there in the entrance of the gymnasium Ogden had only sensed the bigness of Denny Bolton's body--only vaguely felt the promise which his smooth black suit concealed. It was the face that had interested him most at that moment, and yet he had not even noticed the half healed cut that ran almost to the point of the chin. Young Denny's grave explanation of his quiet mirth caused him to look closer--made him really wonder now what had been its cause. There was a frankly inquisitive question half-formed behind his lips, but when he turned to find Denny sitting stripped to the waist, waiting for the garments which he held in his hands, he merely stood and stared. Bobby Ogden had seen many men stripped for the ring. It took more than an ordinary man to make him look even once--but he could not take his eyes off this boy before him. Once he whistled softly between his teeth in unconcealed amazement; once he walked entirely around him, exclaiming softly to himself. Then he remembered. "Here, get into these," he ordered abruptly, and thrust the things into Denny's waiting hands. While Denny was obeying he continued to circle and to admire critically. "Man--man!" he murmured. "But you're sure put together right!" He was silent for a moment while he punched back and shoulders with a searching thumb. "Silk and steel," he went on to himself. "And not a lump--not a single knot! Oh, if you only knew how to use it; if you only knew the moves, wouldn't we give Flash the heart-break of his life! Now wouldn't we?" Denny finished lacing his flat shoes and stood erect, and even Ogden's chattering tongue was silent. It was very easy now to see why that big body had seemed shoulder-heavy. From the shoulder points the lines ran unbroken, almost wedgelike, to his ankles. He was flat and slim in the waist as any stripling might have been. All hint of bulkiness was gone. He seemed almost slender, until one started to analyze each dimension singly, such as the breadth of his back, or the depth of his chest. Then one realized that it was only the slimness of fine-drawn ankles, the swelling smoothness of hidden sinews which created that impression. And Ogden's quick eye caught that instantly. "I'd have said one-ninety," he stated judicially. "At least as much as that, or a shade better, before you undressed. Now I'd put it under--what do you weigh, anyhow?" He slid the weight over the bar after Young Denny had stepped upon the white scales. "One sixty-five--sixty-eight--seventy, and a trifle over," he finished. "Man, but you're built for speed! You ought to be lightning fast." At that instant the boy called Legs opened the door and thrust in his head. "The chief says if you're coming at all," he droned apathetically, "you might just as well come now." Ogden threw a long bathrobe over his charge's shoulders as the latter started forward. He wanted to note the effect which the sudden display of that pair of shoulders and set of back muscles would have upon Flash Hogarty's temper. As they crossed the long room Denny's grave lack of concern was made to seem almost stolid in contrast with the heliotrope silk-shirted boy's excessive nervousness. "Now remember what I told you," he whispered hoarsely. "Keep away from him--keep away and let him do the rushing--for he's got a punch that's sudden death! You can tire him out. He's old and his wind is gone." The brass rods had been set up in their sockets in the floor and the space which they outlined in the middle of the room roped off and carpeted with a square of hard, brown canvas. The man called Boots Sutton was already in his corner, waiting, and his attitude toward the whole affair was very patently that of sheer boredom. He barely lifted his eyes as Young Denny crawled through the ropes at the opposite corner, behind the officiously fluttering Ogden. This was merely part of his every day's work; he spent hours each week either instructing frankly confessed amateurs or discouraging too-confident, would-be professionals. It was only because of the strangely venomous harshness with which Hogarty had given him his orders while he was himself dressing that he vouchsafed Denny even that one glance. "I want you to get him," Hogarty snarled. "I want you to get him right from the jump--and get him!--and keep on getting him! Either make him squeal--make him quit--or beat him to death!" But if Sutton failed to note the play of those muscles that bunched and quivered and ran like live things beneath the skin of the boy's back, when Bobby Ogden threw off the enveloping wrap with an ostentatious flourish and knelt to lace on his gloves, that disclosure was not entirely lost upon Hogarty. Watching from the corners of his eyes, Bobby saw him scowl and chew his lip as his head came forward a little. And immediately he turned to speak again in a whisper to Boots, squatting nonchalantly in his corner. "There's no need, mind, of being careless," he cautioned. "He--he might have a punch, you know, at that. Some of 'em do--a lucky one once in a while. Just watch him a trifle--and hand it to him good!" Sutton nodded and rose to his feet. Watch in hand, Hogarty vaulted the ropes, and Ogden, with a last whispered admonition, bundled up the bathrobe and scuttled from the ring. At that moment Young Denny's bulkily slender body was even more deceptive. Sutton, even when trained to his finest, would have outweighed him twenty pounds. Now that margin was nearer thirty, and added to that, he was inches less in height. He was shorter of neck, blocky, built close to the ground. And the span of his ankle was nearly as great as that of Denny's knee. Comparing them with detail-hungry eyes, Bobby Ogden saw, however, that from the waist up the boy's clean, swelling body totally shadowed the other's knotted bulk; he noted that, with arm outstretched, heel of glove against Sutton's chin, Denny's reach was more than great enough to hold the other away from him. Hard on the heels of that thought came the realization that that was a fine point of the game utterly outside of the boy's knowledge. It was quiet--oddly, peacefully quiet for a second--in that long room. Then in obedience to a nod from Hogarty the lanky boy called Legs languidly touched a bell, and all that peaceful silence was shattered to bits. Ogden shouted aloud, without knowing it, a shrill, dismayed cry of warning, as Sutton catapulted from his corner; he shouted and shut his eyes and winced as if that rushing attack had been launched at himself. But he opened them again--opened them at the sound of a sickening smash of glove against flesh--to see Denny blink both eyes as his whole body rebounded from that blow. Ogden waited, forgetting to breathe, for the boy to go down; he waited to see his knees weaken and his shoulders slump forward. But instead of shriveling before that pile-driver swing, he realized that Denny somehow was weathering the storm of blows that followed it; that somehow he had managed to keep his feet and was backing away, trying to follow faithfully his instructions. Just as Ogden had pictured it would be, it all happened. Foot by foot Sutton drove him around the ring. There was no opening for Denny to return a blow--nothing but a maze of battering fists to be blocked and ducked and covered. Even the speed, the natural speed of lithe muscles for which Bobby had hoped, and hopelessly expected, was entirely lacking in every motion. Heavy-footed, ponderous, Young Denny gave way before that attack. Sutton, always reputed slow, was terribly, brutally swift of movement in comparison with the boy's faltering uncertainty. Twice and a third time in the first minute of fighting Boots feinted aside his guard with what seemed childish ease and then drove his glove against the other's unprotected face. Time after time he repeated the blow, and at each sickening smack that answered the crash of leather against flesh Bobby Ogden gasped aloud and marveled. For at each jolt Denny merely blinked his eyes as he recoiled--blinked, and retreated a little more slowly than before. At the bell Ogden was through the ropes and dragging him to his corner. A little trickle of blood was gathering on the point of Denny's chin where the glove had opened afresh the half-healed cut on his cheek; he was shaking his head as he waved aside the wet towel in Ogden's hands. "Man, but you're some bear for punishment!" Ogden chattered, strangely weak himself beneath his belt. "If you only had a little speed--just a little! Why, he sent over a dozen to your chin that ought to have laid you away. But you're playing him right! You're working him, and if you can manage to hang on you'll get him in the end. Just keep away--keep away and let him wear himself out. But--oh, if you did have it. Just one real punch!" Young Denny continued to shake his head--continued to shake it doggedly. "Do--do you mean that that is as hard as he is likely to hit?" he queried slowly. "Do you mean--he was really trying--hard?" Ogden stopped urging the wet towel upon him and stood and gazed at him with something close akin to awe in his eyes. "Hard!" he echoed in a small voice. "Hard! How hard do you expect a man to hit?" "Then your plan was wrong," Young Denny told him. "Of course," he hastened to soften that abrupt statement, "of course it would work all right, only--only I'm not much good at that kind of fancy work. I--I just have to wade right in, when I want to do any damage, because I'm slow getting away from a man. I can't punch--not hard--when I'm backing off. But now I aim to show you how hard I expect a man to hit, just as soon as they ring that bell!" Hogarty was leaning over Sutton in the opposite corner, frowning and talking rapidly. "What's the matter, Boots?" he demanded anxiously. "Haven't lost your kick, have you?" Sutton gazed contemplatively down at his gloved hands and up again into his employer's face. "Who'd you say that guy was?" he countered. "Where's he blowed in from--again?" "A rube--down from the hills he called it. Just some come-on," Hogarty repeated his former information, "who thinks because he's cleaned up main street and licked the village blacksmith that he's a world-beater. Why, Boots? You aren't worried, are you?" The contemplative gleam in Sutton's eyes deepened. "Because," he stated thoughtfully, "just because there's some mistake--or--or he's made of brass. I--I hit him pretty hard, Flash--and do you know what he done? Well, he blinked. He--blinked--at--me. I never hit any man harder." Hogarty's face had lost a little of its inscrutability. He flashed one sharp glance across at Young Denny in the other corner as he stepped back out of the ring and his frown deepened a little after that brief scrutiny. For the boy's body, squatting there, crouched waiting for the bell, was taut in every sinew, quivering with eagerness. "You just failed to place 'em right, I guess," he reassured Boots. "Take a little more time, and get him flush on the bone. You can slow up a little. He isn't even fast enough to run away from you." Again Hogarty nodded to the boy called Legs, and again the gong rang. Five minutes earlier it would have been hard for Bobby Ogden to have explained just what it was which he had half dreamed might lurk in those rippling muscles that bunched and ran beneath Denny's white skin. For want of a better name he had named it speed. And now, at the tap of the bell, he watched and recognized. Swift as was Sutton's savage rush across the canvas, he had hardly left his corner in the ropes before Young Denny was upon him. The boy lifted and sprang and dropped cat-footed in the middle of the ring, hunched of shoulder and bent of knee to meet the shocking impact. It was bewilderingly rapid--terrifyingly effortless--this explosive, spontaneous answer of every muscle to the call of the brain. Just as before, Sutton feinted and saw his opening and swung. Young Denny knew only one best way to fight; he knew only that he had to take a blow in order to give one, and Sutton's fist shot home against his unprotected chin. He blinked with the shock, just as he had blinked before, and swayed back a little. Sutton had swung hard--he had swung from his heels--and he was still following that blow through when Denny snapped forward again. It wasn't a long swing, but it was wickedly quick. From the waist it started, a short, vicious jolt that carried all the boy's weight behind it, and the instant that Denny whipped it over Sutton's chin seemed to come out to meet it--seemed almost to lift to receive it. And then, as his head leaped back, even before his body had lifted from the floor, the boy's other hand drove across and set him spinning in the air as he fell. He went down sideways, a long, crashing fall that dropped him limp in the corner which he had just left. For a moment Denny crouched waiting for him to rise. Then he realized that Sutton would not rise again--not for a time. He saw Hogarty leap over the ropes and kneel--saw the boy Legs rush across with ammonia and water--and he understood. Ogden was at his side, pounding him upon the shoulder and shrieking in his ear. His eyes lifted from the face of the fallen man to that of the heliotrope silk-shirted person beside him. "He's not really badly hurt, is he?" he inquired slowly. "I--I didn't hit him--too hard?" Ogden ceased for a moment thumping him on the back. "Hurt!" he yelped. "Didn't hit him too hard! Why, man, he's stiff, right now. He's ready for the coroner! Gad--and I was pitying you--I was----" Young Denny shook him off and crossed and knelt beside the kneeling Hogarty. And at that moment Sutton opened his eyes again and stared dully into the ex-lightweight's face. After a time recognition began to dawn in that gaze--understanding--comprehension. Once it shifted to Denny, and then came back again. He made several futile efforts before he could make his lips frame the words. Then, "Amateur," he muttered, and he managed to rip one glove from a limp hand and hurl it from him as he struggled to sit erect. "Amateur--hell! A-a-a-h, Flash, what're you tryin' to hand me?" _ |
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