Contra Costa water at that when the rains is heavy on the hills."

"I... I didn't know prizefighting was like that," she faltered, as she
released her hold on the lines and sank back again beside him.

"It ain't the fightin', it's the fight-crowds," he defended with instant
jealousy. "Of course, fightin' hurts a young fellow because it frazzles
the silk outa him an' all that. But it's the low-lifers in the audience
that gets me. Why the good things they say to me, the praise an'
that, is insulting. Do you get me? It makes me cheap. Think of
it--booze-guzzlin' stiffs that 'd be afraid to mix it with a sick cat,
not fit to hold the coat of any decent man, think of them a-standin' up
on their hind legs an' yellin' an' cheerin' me--ME!"

"Ha! ha! What d'ye think of that? Ain't he a rogue?"

A big bulldog, sliding obliquely and silently across the street,
unconcerned with the team he was avoiding, had passed so close that
Prince, baring his teeth like a stallion, plunged his head down against
reins and check in an effort to seize the dog.

"Now he's some fighter, that Prince. An' he's natural. He didn't make
that reach just for some low-lifer to yell'm on. He just done it outa
pure cussedness and himself. That's clean. That's right. Because it's
natural. But them fight-fans! Honest to God, Saxon...."

And Saxon, glimpsing him sidewise, as he watched the horses and their
way on the Sunday morning streets, checking them back suddenly and
swerving to avoid two boys coasting across street on a toy wagon, saw
in him deeps and intensities, all the magic connotations of temperament,
the glimmer and hint of rages profound, bleaknesses as cold and far as
the stars, savagery as keen as a wolf's and clean as a stallion's, wrath
as implacable as a destroying angel's, and youth that was fire and life
beyond time and place. She was awed and fascinated, with the hunger of
woman bridging the vastness to him, daring to love him with arms and
breast that ached to him, murmuring to herself and through all the halls
of her soul, "You dear, you dear."

"Honest to God, Saxon," he took up the broken thread, "they's times
when I've hated them, when I wanted to jump over the ropes and wade into
them, knock-down and drag-out, an' show'm what fightin' was. Take that
night with Billy Murphy. Billy Murphy!--if you only knew him. My friend.
As clean an' game a boy as ever jumped inside the ropes to take the
decision. Him! We went to the Durant Sch