ring, with raised head, looking at the faces of the thousands
that hissed him, that threw orange-peel at him and called him
names. But the smell of blood decided him, and he charged a
capador, so without warning that the man just escaped. He
dropped his cape and dodged into the shelter. The bull struck
the wall of the ring with a crash. And John Harned said, in a
quiet voice, as though he talked to himself:

"I will give one thousand sucres to the lazar-house of Quito if
a bull kills a man this day."

"You like bulls?" said Maria Valenzuela with a smile.

"I like such men less," said John Harned. "A toreador is not a
brave man. He surely cannot be a brave man. See, the bull's
tongue is already out. He is tired and he has not yet begun."

"It is the water," said Luis Cervallos.

"Yes, it is the water," said John Harned. "Would it not be
safer to hamstring the bull before he comes on?"

Maria Valenzuela was made angry by this sneer in John Harned's
words. But Luis Cervallos smiled so that only I could see him,
and then it broke upon my mind surely the game he was playing.
He and I were to be banderilleros. The big American bull was
there in the box with us. We were to stick the darts in him
till he became angry, and then there might be no marriage with
Maria Valenzuela. It was a good sport. And the spirit of
bull-fighters was in our blood.