Manuel Morales shouldered him away. Taking the hoof again between his knees, he dug at the head of the nail with his bare fingers. It seemed a preposterous thing to do, but he worked with a gnawing persistency. The mule shivered in every member, and made hoarse, almost human sounds of pain. Suddenly it screamed. Morales, his round face dark with blood and shiny with sweat, his body hunched all in a knot, slowly drew out the nail between the vise of two strong bullfighter's fingers!
"Now we will go on," said Carson.
"And no more of your Gypsy tricks, you lagarto!" Morales warned the guide.
Aguilino ignored the threat.
"The hole is spurting black blood," he said. "Let me make a poultice to stop the bleeding."
He gathered a handful of the stick leaves of a gum cistus which grew in the crevices of the cliff wall, chewed them in his mouth, then spit the cud into his palm and pressed it over the ragged hole left by the nail in the mule's hoof.
Yet, for all the appearance of doing good, he seemed to handle the painful leg with unwarranted brutality. The mule, snorting in agony and anger, recoiled sharply from him toward the brink of the path. Before the others could realize that anything untoward was in motion, before ever they could leap forward to save the beast, he pressed his head and shoulders against the burdened animal and it tottered on the crumbling edge of the cliff, then went over, turning round and round like an empty wine cask, banging its panniers against the rock faces, kicking the air with frail legs, and screaming all the while frightfully.
Manuel Morales caught the guide as he almost followed into the void. With his two strong arms, the matador lifted him bodily into the air and held him over the miles of emptiness.
"You snake in the grass!" he swore. "We will see now with how much grace you take the leap yourself!"