"It's you or me now, Jerry Durand."
The prize-fighter gave a snort of derisive triumph. "You damn fool!
I'll eat you alive."
"Mebbeso. I reckon my system can assimilate any whalin' you're liable
to hand me. Go to it."
Durand had the heavy shoulders and swelling muscles that come from
years of training for the ring. Like most pugilists out of active
service he had taken on flesh. But the extra weight was not fat, for
Jerry kept always in good condition. He held his leadership partly at
least because of his physical prowess. No tough in New York would
willingly have met him in rough-and-tumble fight.
The younger man was more slightly built. He was a Hermes rather than a
Hercules. His muscles flowed. They did not bulge. But when he moved
it was with the litheness of a panther. The long lines of shoulder and
loin had the flow of tigerish grace. The clear eyes in the brown face
told of a soul indomitable in a perfectly synchronized body.
Durand lashed out with a swinging left, all the weight of his body
behind the blow. Clay stepped back, shot a hard straight right to the
cheek, and ducked the counter. Jerry rushed him, flailing at his foe
blow on blow, intending to wear him out by sheer hard hammering. He
butted with head and knee, used every foul trick he had learned in his
rotten trade of prize-fighting. Active as a wild cat, the Arizonan
side-stepped, scored a left on the eye, ducked again, and fought back
the furious attack.
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