Shouts and hands indicated the changing odds. Three fingers. Hilario wrote a chit for a somber Navajo in a velvet shirt. Shapiro had moved closer, and looked as if he was sucking a cyanide pill or had bet on the wrong fighter. Across the court, the kid didn’t want to rest. He bounced on his toes and stared at Joe until Hilario called the two men forward.

The kid had madness and speed. Joe sidestepped, but the kid was there. When he stepped back, the kid was ahead of him. The scar on the stomach had turned a dull red as if alive all by itself, and it occurred to Joe that it might be the mainspring, the potent source of that insanity. It looked like the sort of tear a cow horn would make. No matter how good the kid got, he’d never have a career fighting with a split stomach; he couldn’t even get drafted. How would an over-the-hill professional, a fake Indian chief, look to a kid like that? No wonder his lips twisted in effort as he wound up for the hook, chest cords popping and driving off the back leg, bringing his weight through without lunging or losing his balance, merely delivering as much hate as his fist could carry to the old damage above Joe’s left eye.

Fighting was a subtle matter, sooner or later a case of one man dominating first the center of the ring and then, corner by corner, the rest of it. Even under a tent in the rain, there was a centrifugal pattern to the steps, the feints, the mental concentration. Hate was a good thing to bring to a fight.

Joe’s brow popped under nothing harder than a touch. One moment he could see, and the next moment his eye was a well of blood. The kid was all over Joe, and ignoring Hilario, who was shouting for time so he could get one more round of bets down, until Joe made the kid step back with a jab.

“What time is it?”

Ray pinched Joe’s brow closed, taped it, daubed it with jelly and wiped his face.

“Eighty-twenty, eight-thirty. You don’t need a clock, you need a zipper.”

“The last money. Bet it, spread it around.”

“With you bleeding to death, we can get pretty good odds.”

“Bet it.”