Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

My friends, observing with concern that I was not enjoying myself as much as they had promised, tried to divert my attention to the technical features of their ghastly game. It was really, they explained, a drama in three acts. It is the part of the mounted picador to draw off the first rage and vigor of the bull, weakening him, but not slaying him, by successive wounds. Then the jaunty banderilleros, the streamers of whose darts must correspond in color with their costumes, supply a picturesque and amusing element, a comic interlude. Finally an espada, or matador, advances alone to despatch the tortured creature. The death-blow can be dealt only in one of several fashions, established by rule and precedent, and the espada who is startled into an unprofessional thrust reaps a bitter harvest of scoffs and hisses.

A team of gayly-caparisoned mules with jingling bells had meanwhile trundled away the mangled bodies of the slaughtered animals, fresh sand had been thrown over the places slippery with blood, and the band pealed the entrance of the second bull. This was a demon, black as a coal, with a marvellous pride and spirit that availed him nothing. Horse after horse crashed down before his furious rushes, while the circus, drunk with glee, shouted for more victims and more and more. It was a massacre. At last our hideous greed was glutted, and the banderilleros took their turn in baiting the now enfeebled but undaunted bull. Wildly he shook himself, the fore half of his body already a flood of crimson, to throw off the ignominy of those stinging darts. The chulos fretted and fooled him with their waving cloaks of red and yellow, till at last the creature grew hushed and sullen. A strain of music announced that the matador Fuentes was asking beneath the president's box permission to kill the bull. For my part, I gave the bull permission to kill the man. Fuentes, all pranked out in gray and gold, holding his keen blade behind him and flourishing a scarlet square of cloth, swinging from a rod, the muleta, advanced upon the brute. That bleeding body shook with a new access of rage, and the other espadas drew near and stood at watch. But even before a blow was struck the splendid, murdered creature sank to his knees, staggered up once more, sank again with crimson foam upon his mouth, and the music clashed jubilantly while Fuentes drove the weapon home. And again the team of mules, with foolish tossing of their bright-ribboned heads, jerked and jolted their dead kindred off the scene.

The third bull galloped in with a roar that was heard far beyond the Plaza and gored his first two horses so promptly and so frightfully that, while the hapless beasts still struggled in their agony, the amphitheatre howled with delirious joy. Several capas were caught away on those swift, effective horns, and one picador was hurt. But the rain of darts teased and bewildered the bull to the point of stupidity, although he was dangerous yet.

"Dark is his hide on either side, but the blood within doth boil;

And the dun hide glows, as if on fire, as he paws to the turmoil.

His eyes are jet, and they are set in crystal rings of snow;

But now they stare with one red glare of brass upon the foe."

It was the turn of Bombita, a dandy in dark-green suit with silver trimmings; but his comrades, pale and intent, stood not far off and from time to time, by irritating passes, drew the bull's wrath upon themselves, wearying him ever more and more, until at last Bombita had his chance to plant a telling blow.

Would it never end? Again the fatal door swung open, and the fourth bull bounded in to play his tragic rôle. He was of choicest pedigree, but the utter strangeness of the scene turned his taurine wits. He made distracted and aimless rushes hither and thither, unheeding the provocations of the horsemen, until he came upon the spot drenched with his predecessor's life-blood. He pawed away the hasty covering of sand, sniffed at that ominous stain, and then, throwing up his head with a strange bellow, bolted back to the door by which he had entered, and turned tail to the arena. The fourteen thousand, crazy with rage, sprang to their feet, shook their fists, called him cow. The chulos brandished their cloaks about his horns; men leaned over from the barrier and prodded him with staffs. Finally, in desperation, he turned on the nearest horse, rent it and bore it down. The picador, once set up by the chulos upon his stiff, iron-cased legs, his yellow finery streaked with red from his lacerated horse, tugged savagely at the bridle to force that dying creature to a second stand. One attendant wrenched it by the tail, another beat it viciously over the face; the all-enduring beast, his entrails swinging from a crimson gash, struggled to his feet. The picador mounted, drove in the spurs, and the horse, rocking and pitching, accomplished a few blind paces toward those dripping horns that horribly awaited him. But to the amazement and scandal of the aficionados, the circus raised a cry of protest, and the discomfited rider sprang down in the very moment when his horse fell to rise no more. A chulo, at his leisurely convenience, quieted those kicking hoofs by a stab,—the one drop of mercy in that ocean of human outrage.

Straw-colored darts, wine-colored darts, sky-colored darts, were pricking the bull to frenzy. I wished he had any half-dozen of his enemies in a clear pasture. Those glittering dragon-flies were always just out of reach, but he stumbled on the sodden shape of the unhappy horse and tossed it again and again, making the poor carcass fling up its head and arch its neck in ghastly mockery of life. Cowardice avails a bull as little as courage. This sorry fighter had been deeply pierced by the garrochas, and now, as he galloped clumsily about the arena, in unavailing efforts to escape from his tormentors, his violent, foolish plunges made the dark blood flow the faster. It was Guerrita, Guerrita the adored, Guerrita in gold-laced jacket and violet trousers, who struck the ultimate blow, and so cleverly that sombreros and cigarettes, oranges and pocket-flasks, came raining, amid furies of applause, into the arena. This was such a proud moment as he had dreamed of long ago in the Cordova slaughter-house, when, the little son of the slaughter-house porter, he had stolen from his bed at midnight to play al toro with the calves, and then and there had solemnly dedicated himself to the glorious profession. Now the master of his art and the idol of all Spain, easily making his seventy-five thousand dollars a year, earning, in fact, three thousand on that single afternoon, Guerrita little foresaw that with the coming autumn he should go on pilgrimage to La Virgen del Pilar, and before her beloved shrine at Saragossa cut off his bull-fighter's pigtail and renounce the ring.