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