Now for Ollie, this was no new thing. Life was, always, eat or be eaten. No law existed beyond the strength of your body, the quickness of your fists. This land he lived in was the land of fang and claw. A man stood in himself; the weak perished and the strong became stronger. And if you were strong enough, you became king. Now he was king. They were going to fight. In neither’s mind was there any doubt about that. Nevertheless, in the way of those who live by fang and claw, they could not advance to the fight immediately. Perhaps their challenges and blustering hearkened back to something deep in the human makeup, that civilization has successfully bred out. The trained killer can strike like a snake. They were children of battle; but they were not trained killers. Ollie advanced without hate, but he knew how necessary hate was to successful fighting, and, inside of himself, he fanned his rage, thinking of all the vile things that had ever been attributed to Negroes. Wary, perched upon the balls of his feet, his eyes shot about him.
