“Down to the lake hunting crabs. We didn’t find any,” they said.
You see there is no law in Mexico that every child must go to school, and the parents of Juan and Ignacio didn’t make them go either, so they often stayed away.
[p 72]
“What’s the reason you’re not in school?” Juan said to Tonio. “I thought your father always made you go.”
“Well,” said Tonio, “I—I—hum—well—I thought I would rather play bull-fight up in the pasture! I’ve got an old goat up there trained so he’ll butt every time he sees me. Come along.”
The three boys crossed on the stepping-stones, and ran up the hill on the other side of the river to the goat-pasture.
There was a growing hedge of cactus plants around the goat-pasture. This kind of cactus grows straight up in tall, round spikes about as large around as a boy’s leg, and higher than a man’s head. The spikes are covered with long, stiff spines that stick straight out and prick like everything if you run into them. The only way to get through such a fence is to go to the gate, so the boys ran along until they came to some bars. They opened the bars (and forgot to put them up again) and went into the pasture.
IV
When they got inside the pasture the boys looked about for the goat. This goat was quite a savage one, and was kept all by himself in a small field. It did not take them long to find him. He was grazing quietly in the shadow of a mesquite[14] tree. As Tonio had the only lasso there was, he knew he [p 74] could have the game all his own way, so he said,—