As they came out of the stables, depressed remnants of equine misery, they betrayed in their trembling legs, their heaving flanks, their starved and miserable appearance, sad signs of human ingratitude, of the forgetfulness of past services. There were hacks of frightful thinness, real skeletons, whose sharp and pointed bones seemed ready to pierce the covering of long and tangled hair. Others holding themselves proudly, with raised heads and bright eyes, pawing restlessly, with sounder legs and shining coats, animals of good stamp, who seemed out of place among their wretched companions, looking as though they had only just been unharnessed from sumptuous carriages, were in reality more dangerous to ride, as they were probably afflicted with vertigo or staggers, and might fall to the ground at any moment, pitching their riders over their heads; and among these sad examples of misery and decrepitude were also invalided workers from mills and factories, agricultural horses, cab horses, all weary with long years of hard work dragging ploughs and carts, unhappy outcasts who were to be sweated up to the last moment of their lives, diverting the spectators by their kicks and bounds of agony when they felt the bull's horns pierce their belly.
It was an interminable defile of bleared and yellow eyes, of galled necks on which were battening bright green flies gorged with blood, of bony heads whose skin was swarming with vermin, of narrow chests and feeble legs, covered down to the hoofs with hair so long and shaggy it looked almost as though they were wearing trousers. To mount these decrepit brutes, shaking with fright and almost ready to drop with weakness, required almost as much courage as to face the bull.
Potaje was very high and mighty in his discussions with the horse contractor, speaking in his own name and that of his comrades as well, making even the "monos sabios" laugh with his gipsy oaths. The other picadors had far better leave him to manage the horse-dealers. No one knew better than he did how to bring those sort of people to terms.
A groom came out leading a horse with hanging head, tangled coat, and staring ribs.
"What are you bringing me out there?" shouted Potaje, facing the contractor. "A crock that no one would dream of mounting."
The phlegmatic contractor replied with calm gravity. "If Potaje did not dare to mount it, it was because picadors now-a-days seemed afraid of everything. With a horse like this, so good and docile, Señor Calderon, or El Trigo, or any fine rider of the good old times would have been able to fight for two successive afternoons without getting a fall, and without the animal receiving a scratch. But now-a-days!... There seemed to him to be plenty of fear and very little dash."
The contractor and the picador abused one another in a friendly fashion, as if the grossest insults had ceased to have the slightest meaning.
"You are an old cheat," roared Potaje, "a bigger rascal than José Maria el Tempraniyo. Get out! Hoist your grandmother up on the old brute; a far better mount for her than the broomstick she rides every Saturday at midnight."
Every one present roared with laughter, while the contractor shrugged his shoulders.
"What's the matter with the horse?" he asked quietly. "Look him over well, old grumbler. He is far better than those that have glanders, or staggers, who have before now pitched you over their heads and planted you up to your ears in the sand, before you could face the bull. He is as sound as an apple. For the five and twenty years he has been in an ærated water factory, doing his work conscientiously, no one has ever found fault with him, and now you come along shouting and abusing him, taking away his character as if he were a bad Christian."