Mormon felt the pressure of Russell's thigh-muscles closing relentlessly, clamping down on his chest, shutting off oxygen. His energy waned, his limbs grew heavy, nerveless, his brain clogged and dulled. He set his chin well down into his neck to save his jaw, but his right cheek was pounded, one eye closing. It was only a matter of moments before he must relax and then Russell would pin him down with one arm and send in the final smashing blow. He felt himself suffocating, sinking—the noise of roaring waters dinned in his ears.
He lay on his back, Russell on his side, one leg below, one leg above Mormon's body, bending at the hips in his efforts to reach the cowman's jaw. He bent a fraction too much, the scissors grip shifted imperceptibly and the message of that weakening of the chain flashed to Mormon's hazy brain. With every muscle taut in one supreme convulsion he managed to twist sidewise, back to Russell, opening the grip that now compressed shoulders instead of chest and back. He got a breath of air, dust-laden but blessed. His chest expanded, strength flowed in, he forced his arms apart, rolling over on Russell, crushing him into the soft earth with his weight. Another wriggling twist and he faced his man, bringing his mighty back into play to break clear. He got a forearm across Russell's Adam's apple, regardless of the blows that smashed into his face. He hammered home one jolt hard to the jaw and, as Russell's body grew limp, dragged himself from the relaxing hold and crouched on hands and knees, wheezing, spent, gulping air to his flattened lower lungs that refused to function.
Now he could hear the shouting of the crowd, a clatter of yells. He saw Russell's head move, his eyes opening in the moonlight. Mechanically Mormon stood up, swaying, bruised, one eye useless. Pardee began counting over Russell, according to the ruling he had made.
Russell rolled over on his face. It looked as if he was not going to try to get up. This was not how Mormon had wanted the fight to end, in a technical knockout, with his man beginning to come back and he not allowed to finish him.
Pardee had put in the clause, "Man down allowed ten seconds, with the other on his feet," merely to make a better, longer fight of it from the spectator's standpoint. It was supposed to be the sporting thing to do, but Mormon, blood-flushed, brain-dull, had no thought of ethics at that moment. Russell was lifting himself to knees and elbows, crouching as Mormon had done, watching his opponent, listening to the count. He was going to get up. He was up at nine, stooping, groggy, his long arms hanging low, and a shout went up from his backers as Pardee stepped aside.
Russell began to back away, to describe a half-circle, right forearm across his chest, left arm extended, both in slight motion. Mormon stood like a baited bear, slowly revolving to face Russell, wary of a feint to draw him out. There were smears of blood on Russell's arms, on his face, dark in the moonlight. Mormon's whiter skin showed greater defacement. There was a mouse swelling above his eye, the lids were clamping.
The ring of spectators was almost silent now, leaning forward, watching. Little jerky sentences passed between them.
"Russell's goin' to box." "He can beat the cowman at that game." "Cut him to ribbons. Blind him first."
The man in the crowd was right. Mormon knew little of boxing, but he knew enough to throw a cushion of sturdy arm across his jaw, the left elbow crooked, nose buried in it, eyes—one eye—indomitable above it. And the blunted elbow like a ram, as he ducked and Russell's straight right slid over his bald pate. He was far faster, lighter on his feet than Russell dreamed. The bully still underestimated his man, but woke to vivid and just appraisal as Mormon's elbow smashed against his collar-bone, left forearm clubbing his nose, starting spurts of blood, right fist coming up like a piston in short-armed, jolting upper-cuts.
Desperately Russell clutched, failed; held, clung, half tumbling into a clinch. Mormon's arms were about him, underneath, binding him with hoops of steel, compressing. He lost his footing, began to rise and he back-heeled in an outside click. They both went down together side by side in a dog-fall. Mormon loosed his arms as he rolled atop, got astride of Russell, strove to gather and control the arms that thrashed and smote.