ing,
frantic capes. The killer gingerly gripped a horn in either hand and
tried to lift himself off. Gently, Moe lowered his head and deposited
the man beside an opening. Fergus scrabbled to safety like a rat to a
hole.

Four helpers with capes occupied the ring. When they saw death
approaching on cloven hooves, two of them cleared the fence. The third
received a horn beside his backbone and tumbled into the fourth. A dual
scream, terrible enough to insure future nightmares, echoed above the
screeching of the crowd. Moe tossed the bodies again and again across
the bloody sand.

Silence slithered over the Highland Bullring and over a scene
reminiscent of the ring's bloody parent, the Roman Arena. Men sprawled
gored, crushed, and dead across the sand. A section of the blood-specked
barrier leaned splintered and cracked, almost touching the concrete
wall. Unharmed, Fergus stood on one side of the battleground, Illard on
the other.

Fergus reached over the wooden fence for red flag and sword. Turning his
back on the heaving Moe, who stood but ten feet behind, the killer faced
the quaking flesh that was Ringmaster Oswell, high up in the official
box. The killer's voice shook, but the bitter satire came through the
sound of departing boats and aircraft. Fergus said, "I dedicate this
bull to Ringmaster Oswell who has provided for us this great Dependence
Day Bullfight in honor of the Great Government on which we all depend."
He turned and faced the bull.

Moe, for once, rushed the red flag, the only thing that made bullfights
possible. His great shoulders presented a fair target for the sword.

Fergus, perhaps the only bull-fighter ever to be gored in the brain,
died silently. The sword raked a shallow gash long Moe's loin.

In the sixth tier of the stands, saliva drooled from the slack mouth of
the little man seated beside Stonecypher. "Now's your chance, Illard!"
the man squalled. "Be a hero! The last of the bullfighters! Kill him,
Illard!"

Illard walked on shaking legs over bodies he did not see. He was short,
for a killer, and growing bald. He picked up the sword Fergus had
dropped, looked into the gory face of the bull, and toppled in the
sticky sand. The sword quivered point-first beside his body.

RECESSIONAL

A wind whipped down into Highland Bullring. Riding the wind, blacker
than the clouds, the inquisitive turkey buzzard glided over the rim of
the stands with air whistling through the spatulate