They had
meant nothing to her; she had barely understood them before. Now they
lived with reality, and so deeply had his influence penetrated into
the very heart of her desire, that she knew she would not have had
him different.
Then her eyes dragged back to the scene below her. The men were still
sparring; waiting--as Traill had said--for the first falling blow
to heat their blood to boiling. At last it fell. Jim Morrison, in
a false moment of vantage, rushed in, head down, arms drawn back like
the crank shafts of some unresisting engine, ready to deal the
crushing body blows. Sally's eyes were wide in a gaping stare. She
expected to see the other fall, waited to hear the grunt of the breath
as it crushed out of him. But it did not come. She did not try to
think how it happened; she only saw Morrison's head shoot upwards
from a blow that seemed to rise from the earth. For a moment he poised
before his man, head lifted, eyes on the second dazed with the
concussion. And then fell Tucker's second blow--the heavy lunge of
the body, the thump of the right foot as it came down upon the stroke,
and the lightning flash of that bare left arm as it shot through the
ugly shadows and found its mark.
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