El Tigre received his sword, muleta, and cape. The muleta is a straight two-foot stick over which the cape is draped, and, held in the matador's left hand, usually is extended well to the right of his body. Thus in an ordinary fight the bull is actually charging the blood-red cape, and not the matador. But, with Sofia an onlooker, determined to make this the fight of his life, El Tigre tossed aside the muleta, wrapped the crimson cape about his body, and stood alone awaiting the bull's charge, his malleable sword-blade bent slightly downward, sufficiently to give a true thrust behind the shoulder, a down-curve into heart or lungs.
With a bull of such extraordinary activity the act was almost suicidal, but El Tigre smilingly took the chance. By toreador etiquette, the matador must receive and dodge the first two charges; not until the third may he strike. On the first charge El Tigre stood like a rock until the bull had almost reached him, and then lightly leaped diagonally across his lowered neck. The second charge, come an instant after the first, before most men could even turn, he dodged. The third he swiftly side-stepped, thrust true, and dropped the great Utreran midway of a leap aimed at his elusive enemy.
It was a deed magnificent, epic, and the plaza rung with plaudits while hats, fans, and even purses and jewels showered into the arena—all of which, by toreador etiquette, were tossed back across the barrier to their owners.
Then the teams entered and quickly dragged the dead from the arena; the ugly, dangerously slippery red patches were fresh sanded, and the second bull was admitted. Thus, with more or less like incident, three more bulls were fought and killed.
The fifth and last, however, proved a disgrace to his race. Bluff he did, but fight he would not; the noise and crowd unnerved him. At last, frenzied with fear and seeking escape, he made a mighty leap to mount the barrier directly in front of the box of the Presidente. And mount it he did, and down it crashed beneath his weight, leaving the bull for a moment half down and tangled in the wreckage, struggling to regain his feet.
Directly in front of the bull, not six feet beyond the sharp points of his deadly horns, sat Sofia. Indeed none about her had risen; all sat as if frozen in their places. And just as well they might have been, for escape into or through the dense mass of spectators about them was utterly impossible. Whatever horror came they must await, helpless.
But at the bull's very start for the barrier, El Tigre, realized Sofia's peril and instantly sprang empty-handed in pursuit; for it was early in this the last corrida and he did not have his sword,
Leaping the wreckage, El Tigre landed directly in front of the bull, happily at the instant it regained its feet, where, with his right hand seizing the bull by the nose—his thumb and two fore-fingers thrust well within its nostrils—and with his left hand grabbing the right horn, with a mighty heave he uplifted the bull's muzzle and bore down upon its horn until he threw it with a crash upon its side that left it momentarily helpless.
But, himself slipping in the loose wreckage, down also El Tigre fell, the bull's sharp right horn impaling his left thigh and pinning him to the ground.
Before the bull could rise, the men of the cuadrilla had it safely bound and El Tigre released. El Tigre, however, did not know it. With the shock and pain of his wound he had fainted.