Terrifying news circulated along Sierpes Street exaggerated by Southern hyperbolic commentary. Poor Gallardo had just died. He who gave the sad news had seen him in a bed in the infirmary of the plaza, white as paper, a cross in his hands. Another presented himself with less lugubrious news. He was not dead yet, but he would die any moment.
"He has lost everything! Everything! Disembowelled! The brute has left the poor fellow punctured like a sieve."
Guards had been placed at the entrances to the plaza so that the people, anxious for news, should not invade the infirmary. The multitude surged outside the ring asking news of the master's condition from those who came and went.
Nacional, still dressed in his fighting costume, peered out several times, ill-humored and frowning, blustering and angry, because arrangements for moving the maestro to his house had not been made. The people seeing the banderillero forgot the injured man and congratulated him.
"Señor Sebastián, you have done very well. If it hadn't been for you—!"
But what mattered it to him what he had done? All—liquid. The only thing of importance was poor Juan who lay in the infirmary fighting death.
"And how is he, Señor Sebastián?"
"Very bad. He has just regained his senses. He has one leg ground to dust; a horn-stab under the arm; and what more I know not! The poor boy is as dear to me as my patron-saint. We are going to carry him home."
When night fell Gallardo was taken from the ring on a stretcher. The multitude marched silently after him. The journey was long. Every moment Nacional, who walked with his cape hanging over his arm, mingling in his glittering bull-fighter's dress with the vulgar crowd, bent over the rubber cover of the litter and ordered the bearers to halt.
The doctors from the plaza walked behind and with them the Marquis of Moraima and Don José, who seemed ready to faint and fall into the arms of companions from the Forty-five, who were all jumbled together and mixed in with the ragged mob that followed the bull-fighter.