“I will give one thousand sucres to the lazar-house of Quito if a bull kills a man this day.”
“You like bulls?” said Maria Valenzuela with a smile.
“I like such men less,” said John Harned. “A toreador is not a brave man. He surely cannot be a brave man. See, the bull's tongue is already out. He is tired and he has not yet begun.”
“It is the water,” said Luis Cervallos.
“Yes, it is the water,” said John Harned. “Would it not be safer to hamstring the bull before he comes on?”
Maria Valenzuela was made angry by this sneer in John Harned's words. But Luis Cervallos smiled so that only I could see him, and then it broke upon my mind surely the game he was playing. He and I were to be banderilleros. The big American bull was there in the box with us. We were to stick the darts in him till he became angry, and then there might be no marriage with Maria Valenzuela. It was a good sport. And the spirit of bull-fighters was in our blood.
The bull was now angry and excited. The capadors had great game with him. He was very quick, and sometimes he turned with such sharpness that his hind legs lost their footing and he plowed the sand with his quarter. But he charged always the flung capes and committed no harm.
“He has no chance,” said John Harned. “He is fighting wind.”
“He thinks the cape is his enemy,” explained Maria Valenzuela. “See how cleverly the capador deceives him.”
“It is his nature to be deceived,” said John Harned. “Wherefore he is doomed to fight wind. The toreadors know it, you know it, I know it—we all know from the first that he will fight wind. He only does not know it. It is his stupid beast-nature. He has no chance.”