Laughingly, Mr. Hampton called attention to the lad.
“His job is to haul out the dead bulls,” explained Captain Cornell. “Every Mexican boy in the audience would give his right eye to be in that boy’s place. Many a famous matador has risen from just such an apprenticeship, and some day that boy may be the idol of the populace. Who knows? Certainly, you can count on it that he thinks he’ll become a great man some day. Probably, he has a wooden sword, and practices the matador’s strokes continually.”
Before the box occupied by the Mexican general commanding the garrison, the matadors made their bow. Then the boy with the two mules retreated, the picadors on horseback drew behind a barricade between the front tier of seats and the arena, the toreadors with their capes scattered about the arena, and Estramadura who was to kill the first bull lounged by himself with a bored air.
On the topmost tier of seats on the shady side, five Americans leaned forward almost as interested—yet not quite—as the thousands of Mexicans about them. All that had gone before was merely a flourish. The drama was now about to begin. Even the band, seated on a box near that of the commandant, ceased blowing its horns and thumping its drums.
A door in the fence opened.
A huge black bull charged into the arena.
A moment the black bull stood with head down, nostrils quivering, eyes flashing. Then he charged—straight toward the nearest toreador. The man waited until the bull was perilously close, then flaunting his long cape in front of the charging animal, leaped nimbly aside.
The bull became more enraged. This way and that he charged. Toreadors whipped their capes across his eyes.
He became more accustomed to their tricks. The last three toreadors were so hard-pressed that they were compelled to seek shelter by leaping over the stout plank wall into the runway separating the lowest tiers of seats from the arena.
Hysterical yelps of laughter bespoke the tenseness to which the crowd was working itself up.