could kill them in a minute, but I don't want to."

The screaming fiends above him yelled and cursed and tore pieces of
wood from the seats to throw at him. Insults and invectives were
showered on the picadors, until at last one of them, stung by the
filthy abuse of the mob, drove his spurs so deep into his horse that
the animal reared a little; the picador then, with spur and knee,
almost lifted him on to the long pointed horns of the bull, who,
forced back against the hoarding, had lowered his head in anger as the
blood streamed from the lance wounds in his neck.

Then there was the horrid, low sound of grating horn against the ribs
of the horse, the ripping of the hide; the animal was lifted into the
air a moment, then fell. There was a gush of blood on the sand, blood
and entrails; with a groan it staggered quivering to its feet, made a
step forwards, trod on its own trailing, bleeding insides, fell again,
groaning with anguish, quivering convulsively.

The people were delighted. They shouted and screamed and stood up on
their seats and waved their kerchiefs, especially the women!

The picador, who picked himself up unhurt--indeed, cased in armour, he
could not well be otherwise--was cheered and cheered, and bowed and
smiled and took off his cap and swept it to the ground. And the band
crashed loudly to drown the terrible groaning of the dying horse,
struggling in agony on the sand. The bull, sorry rather than otherwise
apparently, walked away to another part of the ring, tossing his head
in pain as the blood dripped from it.

The people clapped delightedly. Suzee seeing all the women about her
doing so, put up her little hands and clapped too.

I bent towards her and caught them and held them down in her lap.

"Be quiet," I said; "I won't have you clap such a disgusting sight."

She stopped at once. A Mexican woman on my other hand, looked daggers
at me for an instant, divining my words, but she was too eager to see
all the blood and the anguish in the arena, not to miss a throe of the
dying horse, to turn her eyes away for more than a moment.

So, after a scowl at me, she directed them again, bulging with
satisfaction, on the scene before her.

From then on, for about an hour, the same hideous thing went on; horse
after horse was brought forward, pushed on the horns of the bull, torn
and mangled beneath its cowardly rider, and then, if completely ripped
open, dragged dead or dying from the ring; if its