Meanwhile,
the object of each man was to find his opportunity for a sweeping blow
which would lay his opponent's face open. Now all that was pretty to
look at, but it was mere playing at fighting and he never wanted to
practise it. He was not a fighter by inclination; he wanted to live
with and be one with the gauchos, but not to fight. There were numbers
of men among them who never fought and were never challenged to fight,
and he would be of those if they would let him. He never had a pistol,
he wore a knife like everybody else, but a short knife for use and not
to fight. But when he found that, after all, he had to fight or else
exist on sufferance as a despised creature among them, the butt of
every fool and bully, he did fight in a way which he had never been
taught and could not teach to another. It was nature: it was in him.
When the dangerous moment came and knives flashed out, he was
instantly transformed into a different being. He was on springs, he
couldn't keep still or in one place for a second, or a fraction of a
second; he was like a cat, like india rubber, like steel--like
anything you like, but something that flew round and about his
opponent and was within striking distance one second and a dozen yards
away the next, and when an onset was looked for it never came where it
was expected but from another side, and in two minutes his opponent
became confused, and struck blindly at him, and his opportunity came,
not to slash and cut but to drive his knife with all his power to the
heart in the other's body and finish him for ever.
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