Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

The fifth bull was black as ebony. He dashed fearlessly into the arena, charged and wheeled and tossed his horns in the splendor of his strength, sending every red-vested chulo scrambling over the wall. Then he backed to the middle of the sanded circle, snorting and pawing the earth. Another instant, and the nearest horse and rider went crashing against the barrier. The picador, with a bruised face, forced up the gasping horse, mounted and rode it, the beast treading out its entrails as it went, to meet a second charge. But the swaying horse fell dead before it reached those lowered horns again. The next picador, too, went down heavily under his jade and received an awkward sprain. He mounted once more, to show that he could, and the circus cheered him, but his horse, torn to death, could not bear his weight. He gave it an angry push with the foot as he left it writhing in its life-blood. This whirlwind of a bull, who shook off all but one of the banderillas, mortified even the matadores. Disregarding the red rag, he rushed at Fuentes himself. The nimble torero leapt aside, but the bull's horn struck his sword and sent it spinning half across the arena. His comrades immediately ran, with waving capas and bright steel, to his aid, but that too intelligent bull, fighting for his life, kept his foes at bay until the circus hissed with impatience. The toreros, visibly nettled, gathered closer and closer, but had to play that death-game cautiously. This bull was dangerous. The coliseum found him tedious. He took too long in dying. Stabbed again and again and again, he yet agonized to his feet and shook those crimsoned horns at his tormentors, who still hung back. It really was dull. The matadores buzzed about him, worrying his dying sight, but he stood sullen in their midst, refusing the charges to which they tempted him, guarding his last drops of strength, and, cardinal offence in a toro, holding his head too high for the professional stroke. His vital force was ebbing. Red foam dripped from his mouth. That weary hoof no longer pawed the earth. The people shouted insults even to their pet Guerrita, but Guerrita, like the rest, stood baffled. At last that formidable figure, no longer black, but a red glaze of blood and sweat and foam, fell in a sudden convulsion. Then his valiant murderers sprang upon him, the stabs came thick and fast, and the jingling mule-team pranced in to form his funeral cortège.

One more,—the sixth. I was long past indignation, past any acuteness of pain, simply sickened through body and soul and unutterably wearied with this hideous monotony of slaughter. The last bull, a white star shining on his black forehead, tore into the arena, raced all about the circle, and struck with amazing rapidity wherever he saw a foe. Three horses were down, were up again, and were forced, all with trailing intestines, to a second charge. The bull flashed like a thunderbolt from one to another, rending and digging with his savage horns, until three mangled bodies writhed on the reddened sand, and stabbers watched their chances to run forward and quiet with the knife the horrible beating of those hoofs in air. The circus yelled delight. It had all been the work of a moment,—a brave bull, a great sensation! For the performers it was rather too much of a good thing. Those disembowelled carcasses cluttered up the arena. The scattered entrails were slippery under foot. The dart-throwers hastened to the next act of the tragedy. Theirs was a subtlety too much for the fury-fuddled wits of that mighty, blundering brute. He galloped to and fro, spending his strength in useless charges and, a score of times, ignoring the men to hook wildly at their brandished strips of colored cloth. The darts had been planted and he was losing blood. The matador went to his work, but the uncivil bull did not make it easy for him. Bombita could not get in a handsome blow. The house began to hoot and taunt. A stentorian voice called to him to "kill that bull to-morrow." Exasperated by the laughter that greeted this sally, Bombita drove his Toledo blade to its mark. While the final scene of general stabbing was going on, boys, men, even women vaulted into the arena, played over again with one another the more memorable incidents, ran to inspect those shapeless carcasses of what God created horses, and escorted the funeral train of the bull, one small boy riding in gleeful triumph on top of the great black body, harmless and still at last. As we passed out by a hallway where the dead animals had been dragged, we had to pick our way through pools of blood and clots of entrails. Thus by the road of the shambles we came forth from hell.

The Giralda

"I do not understand at all," sincerely protested my Spanish host, disconcerted by the continued nausea and horror of red dreams which, justly enough, pursued me for weeks after. "It was a very favorable corrida for a beginner,—no serious accident, no use of the fire-darts, no houghing of the bull with the demi-lune, nothing objectionable. And, after all, animals are only animals; they are not Christians."

"Who were the Christians in that circus?" I asked. "How could devils have been worse than we?"

He half glanced toward the morning paper but was too kindly to speak his thought. It was not necessary. I had read the paper, which gave half a column to a detailed account of a recent lynching, with torture, in the United States.

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