Defender Monarch looked down at the girl, and his eyes were evil. Then he looked at the ring of white faces that lined the top of the corral. He seemed to understand the situation; he seemed to know that he had plenty of time, and he gloated. He turned away from Janey, trotted to the farther end of the corral, wheeled about, and surveyed the distance between himself and the girl’s body; then he lowered his head with his gleaming prongs, and gathered his body for a charge.
The aghast onlookers became aware that something was in the corral besides the girl and the bull. A figure had come through the gate of the inclosure, silently and swiftly. It was a small man in velvet trousers and he was strolling toward Defender Monarch as casually and placidly as if the bull were a rose-bush. On the brown face of Velvet Pants there was not the slightest trace of fear; indeed, he was smiling, a slight, amused smile. Otherwise he was as matter of fact as if he were about to sit down to his breakfast. A brown-paper cigaret hung limp from one corner of his lips; with the mincing strut they had noticed and made fun of, he walked slowly quite near to Defender Monarch. The animal, distracted, stood blinking at the little man. Within a few feet of the bull, Velvet Pants halted; with magnificent nonchalance he blew a cloud of smoke into the bull’s face, and then they saw a flash of something red. It was Ben Crosby’s red flannel undershirt that a few moments before had been drying on the line. The small man had flicked it across the bull’s face. Defender Monarch forgot for the moment his plan for smashing Janey Crosby; he saw the red, and he plunged toward it. The women turned their heads away, the men clenched their teeth. They saw Velvet Pants slip aside with the quickness of a jungle cat, and the bull, unable to check himself, jolt his head against one of the sides of the corral. Velvet Pants turned round, smiled pleasantly, and bowed very low to the spectators. They saw that he had in his right hand something long and bright that caught the rays of the sun; they realized that it was Grandpa Crosby’s old Civil-War sword that had hung in the dining-room. He was holding it as lightly and as easily as if it were a butter-knife.
Defender Monarch, recovering from his fruitless charge against the wall, spun about; once more the red shirt was deftly flapped before his bright, mad eyes. Once more, with a roar of wrath, he launched his bulk straight at Velvet Pants. Then something happened to Defender Monarch. It happened with such speed that all the onlookers saw was a flash; then they saw the huge frame of the bull totter, crumple, and sink down. Sticking from the left shoulder of the bull they saw the hilt of Grandpa Crosby’s sword; they saw the hilt only, for Velvet Pants had driven the point into Defender Monarch’s heart.
The people of Crosby Corners allege that Ben Crosby kissed the little tanned man on both cheeks, but this he denies; he admits, however, that he hugged him and patted him, and said many husky words of gratitude and admiration to Velvet Pants, who seemed abashed and quite unable to understand why everyone was making so much of a fuss about him.
“And I called you a coward,” Ben Crosby kept saying. “I called you a coward, and you went in and faced a mad bull without batting an eyelash.”
“It was nuzzing,” murmured the small brown man.
“Nothing to face a mad bull?”
Velvet Pants shrugged his shoulders.
“But I am a toreador,” he said. “In my country, Andalusia, I keel one, two, t’ree bull every Sunday for fun. Why should I fear bulls? I know bulls.”