A loud applause broke out within the ring. Orders were issued in the courtyard with imperious voice. The first bull had just died. The barricade at the end of the passage that communicated with the ring was opened and the noises of the multitude and the echoes of the music were borne in with more intensity.
The mules were in the plaza; one team to collect the dead horses, another to drag out the bull's carcass.
Carmen saw her brother-in-law coming along the arcades. He was still tremulous with enthusiasm over what he had seen.
"Juan—colossal! This afternoon as he never was before! Fear not. Why, that boy eats the bulls up alive!"
Then he glanced at her uneasily, fearful that she would make him lose so interesting an afternoon. What did she decide? Did she think she had the courage to peep into the plaza?
"Take me away!" she said with an agonized accent. "Get me out of here quickly. I am sick. Leave me in the first church we can find."
The leather-worker made a wry face. By the life of Roger—! Leave such a magnificent bull-fight! And as they walked toward the door he was calculating where he could abandon Carmen so as to immediately return to the plaza.
When the second bull came in, Gallardo, still leaning against the barrier, was receiving felicitations from his admirers. What courage that boy had—"when he wished." The whole plaza had applauded the first bull, forgetting their anger at the former corridas. When a picador fell and lay senseless from the terrible shock, Gallardo had rushed up with his cape, drawing the wild beast into the centre of the ring. He made some bold verónicas that at last held the bull motionless and exhausted, after turning from the lure of the red rag. The bull-fighter, taking advantage of the animal's stupefaction, stood erect within a few steps of his muzzle, thrusting his body forward as if in challenge. He felt the heart-throbbing, that happy precursor of his great daring. He must conquer the public with a dash of audacity, and he knelt before the horns with a certain precaution, ready to arise at the slightest sign of charging.
The bull stood quiet. Gallardo reached out a hand until he touched the drivelling muzzle and the animal made no movement whatever. Then he dared something that held the public in palpitating silence. Slowly he laid himself down on the sand, with the cape between his arms serving as a pillow, and thus he remained some seconds lying beneath the nose of the bull who sniffed him with a kind of fear, as if he suspected danger in this body that audaciously placed itself beneath his horns.
When the bull, recovering his aggressive fierceness, lowered his horns, the bull-fighter rolled toward his feet, in this way putting himself out of his reach, and the animal passed over him, vainly seeking in his ferocious blindness the bulk that attacked him.