Wide Courses Part 33

"The bull rolled from side to side on his knees, tried to balance himself there for four, five, six seconds, and then rolled over. He half lifted his head from the sand, he kicked, once, twice, again, and then the head fell back, a quiver, and he lay limp. It was sad in a way.

"A bugle rang out. Two Peruvian boys came galloping in on horses. The bugle sounded again, they took a bridle hitch on the bull and went galloping out of the ring, bugles going and the bull dragging behind.

The noise and whirl of it made Cogan think of a fire-engine coming down the middle of a street up home.

"As the bull was hauled out, Cogan felt a new sorrow for him. Up to that last stroke there was a chance that he would hurt somebody, but he hadn't killed or hurt anybody, and now, when he was dragged out dead, Cogan felt half sad. And he said as much to Ferrero.

"Ferrero looked at him puzzled. 'Such ideas you have in your country?

Why? Leesen now, my friend, I also have a sadness, but consider if you was a bull, or I was a bull. Would you prefair to go to your death in a bull-ring or to be led to a man who demolished you on the temple with an axe, or cut your throat with a long knife--a man in a white garment?

Which?'

"Cogan said that if he was a bull, no doubt he'd prefer the bull-ring, but would the bull?

"'Of a certainty, yes--if he was a blooded bull--yes,' said Ferrero. 'A high cla.s.s bull always. He should be keeled no other way. No. And in the ring there was always a hope to make man pay--but in a slaughter-house--p-ff-f. And some day, my friend, the bull will obtain his revenge. Have no doubt of it. Bull-fighters die one way--all matadors surely. Let them attend to it long enough and no fear--some day the bull shall get heem. View Torellas now. He is strong, brave, agile, superb, triumphant as he stands there, let him continue and some day a slip shall come and he shall go.'

"Cogan said no doubt, at the same time wishing he were in the place of Torellas. The matador--he had had his supreme moment.

"Cogan looked up to the Roca's party. Her father was still wildly cheering Torellas. Her mother and Guavera were applauding, too, but their applause did not have the quality of Senor Roca's. Valera's face was still hidden by her fan. Cogan looked to the matador. He seemed to be limp, apathetic. 'The reaction,' Cogan thought, and Torellas, being so young and such a high-strung fellow, maybe it was only natural, and yet, thinking a moment later, it had come rather soon for an athlete in his fine condition.

"In the sand lay the sword with which he had killed the bull, and while the people were cheering, stamping, hurling words of applause, endearment, love, at Torellas, he picked it up. Already the President of the Republic was standing up in his box with the cloak and hat of the master, to hand them back to him with words of appreciation, and to him and the crowd Torellas was bowing.

"Cogan, with eyes only for Torellas and the Rocas, did not see the beginning of what happened next. He first heard a cry, then a loud voice or two, then a hundred, a thousand voices. He turned. The gate which held the next bull in confinement had been opened or else it had burst out. The gateman was there, but with despairing hands on high, and across the ring the fresh bull was coming. Torellas was standing with his back to the gate, and not twenty feet from it, almost in the spot where he had killed his bull, and wiping the sword blade in a fold of Cogan's cape, which he was now holding loosely. He was looking up at the Rocas and seemed at first not to hear the cries. He turned--slowly, with horrible slowness, Cogan thought, when he recalled how fast he could move when he wanted to.

"He turned too slowly. The bull caught him sideways, and when he came down, it was astraddle of the bull's back, from which he fell to the sand beside the bull, who had wheeled and was waiting. He must have been stunned when he landed, for the sword and cape had fallen from him, and he lay motionless. The bull lunged like lightning. The horn went into the left thigh, just above the knee, and, not done then, the bull ripped on upward with that same horn until it came out under the matador's left breast.

"The white tights turned red. The bull was lowering his head to gore him again, but Ferrero had leaped from his place of refuge. Cogan was with him. Ferrero picked up the cape and flouted it in the bull's eyes. The bull lifted his head from Torellas, looked at the cape, and charged. And as he did, Cogan s.n.a.t.c.hed up the matador's sword and waited. The bull charged past Ferrero, then, wheeling quickly, made again for Torellas, and his head was lowered to gore again. Ferrero got desperate and threw the cape from him, and it caught on the horns, and while the bull was entangled and enraged afresh, Cogan stepped close, picked out the little spot the size of a fifty-cent piece at the head of the spine, stood on his toes and came down with all his force. It wasn't any approved matador's stroke, for Cogan, standing behind instead of in front of the bull's horns, drove home in just the reverse fashion, but it wasn't a bad stroke at that. The knife went home. The bull rolled over, and Cogan stood there and looked and looked. n.o.body was more surprised than he.

Not once in ten times he was saying to himself could he have done it in cold blood. Only when Ferrero pulled him by the arm did he think to turn and bow with the banderillero to the cheering audience, especially to some blue-jackets who had now recognized him as an old shipmate and were calling him by name--hundreds of them.

"In the middle of the excitement he looked up to see how Valera was taking it. She and her father were both leaning far over the rail toward him--he with both arms extended and yelling, she with her handkerchief pressed to her lips. Her eyes met Cogan's, and Cogan was satisfied. His little Valera of the beach was on deck again. No matter about the rest.

That must have been a full minute after it happened and after the surgeon had called out 'It is well. Torellas will live!'

"But the bull-fighters in the ring did not believe that all was well.

'Torellas! Oh, Torellas!' they were saying, and some were shedding tears, as they carried him to the dressing-room. Torellas was now conscious. He smiled at Ferrero, and he was smiling while they were undressing him, and he took Cogan's hand and held it while the others were telling him how it was. Not until the surgeon said, 'You will live, but your bull-fighting days are done,' did he lose his nerve. He had been pale, but he went paler then. The globes of sweat collected on his forehead. 'Oh, no, no, doctor!' he cried and fainted.

"That night Cogan slipped away from a party of American blue-jackets who wanted to paint Lima in high colors for him, and went down to see Torellas, who had been taken to his home, a fine, large house on a wide street. A crowd was in the street, waiting for word of his condition.

"Ferrero met him at the door. 'They wait for you, good friend.'

"'They? Who?'

"'Oh, you shall see.' And he led Cogan to the second floor, to where a fine suite of rooms opened from the wide hall. Her father and Juan were in the outer room.

"These two clasped him to their bosoms. 'You brave one,' said her father--and 'Bueno Americano!'--said Uncle Juan, and patted him on the head as if he were a son. 'He will live--Oh, be sure of that. But never will he fight bulls again. Never, never. And that is sad. But we have him. Let us not mourn. And you'--Juan raised both hands high--'you and Torellas--I love you both.'

"Cogan thought he heard her voice, the voice which never in his life he had heard, and hesitated. 'Proceed,' said her father, and pushed him toward the door of the middle room. 'She is there. And Tina--you remember Tina--that night in Colon? She is also there. The senora'--he looked at Juan and Juan smiled back at him--'she is too fatigued to come, but Tina came.'

"Cogan softly crossed the second room, but paused on the threshold of the inner room. He saw a great, stout woman back to. He knew her--Tina.

He looked further, and under the half light saw the face of the matador.

She was beside the bed. He could not see her face, but he heard her voice, and it was over her shoulder that he saw the matador's face.

"There were murmured words in Spanish which he did not understand, and then a phrase at which he could guess, then words which there was no mistaking, and which were not for him or any other man to hear. He backed out.

"Juan, Ferrero, and her father were still at the outer door of the outer room. They were not looking. He saw that from this middle room a window led on to a balcony. He stepped through the window, found a post, dropped to the ground, made his way through the garden in the rear, and so on to a back street. He ran on--one street, another, a dozen, and then uphill to a wall which he seemed to know. He looked about, and saw that near by was the monastery where he had been given his first breakfast in Lima. It was the same old wall.

"He climbed the wall and sat there. He had been sitting so that morning when the pretty flower girl had tossed him the blue flower--blue as the sky. Only now it was night and no one to see and smile. He looked up to the sky, the night sky of the tropics. The twisted Southern Cross shone on him. He turned and faced the north.

"Somewhere he could hear a band playing. In one of the parks probably, and there would be leaves rustling there, and the scent of flowers, and the senoritas walking with their mothers, while the young men hung around the edges, striving to get a word, a look. And there would be the arched jets of a fountain playing under colored lights, and back in Portland, Oregon, by this time was perhaps Tommie Jones married to his plump waitress.

"It was a good band--playing something he had never heard before, but something very soothing. He looked toward the Pacific. He knew where the harbor of Callao should lie, and in the middle of the harbor he could see them, one great cl.u.s.ter of lights, the lights of the battle fleet.

And there were the fleet's search-lights playing on the great stone pier.

"The band was playing again--something fine.

"And then the monastery bell tolled. And presently he heard a chanting--a slow sad chanting! And then the chanting also died away.

"He had been lying on the wall with his hat in his hand and staring up at the sky. Now he sat up, put on his hat, took another look to the lights in the harbor, and hummed softly the Philippine service song--

"It's home, boy, home, it's home you ought to be."

"And you've no kick coming. Dreams dreams, always dreams, but you've had your hour, too.' He took another look at the lights of the fleet--another to the lights of the city below him--'Good night, Lima,'

he whispered, and dropped off the wall."

The pump-man had begun his story this evening while sitting with back to the rail and feet stretched out on the deck before him. He finished while lying on his back, hands clasped under the back of his head, and wide eyes on the sky.

The pa.s.senger leaned on the rail, studied the stem of the ship, and listened to the surge of back wash against the ship's bow as she drove on. Abeam, the young moon drooped.

Kieran said nothing more. The pa.s.senger nothing for a long time. Then it was:

"And they were married?"

"I don't know--Cogan didn't wait to see--but of course."

"Of course," echoed the pa.s.senger, and in silence resumed his study of the ship's bow cutting through the little seas.

The pa.s.senger turned inboard. "But Cogan--where is he?"

"There was no Cogan."

"No Cogan."

"No, no Cogan."

"And no bull-fight, and no Valera, and no Torellas, nor Juan, and it never happened?"

"Why, of course it happened, and just as I've told it. But not to anybody named Cogan. There was no Cogan, or rather"--Kieran rolled over on his side and rested his head on his elbow--"I'm Cogan."

"Oh-h-h. Oh-h-h. And you're Campbell, the old champion athlete?"

"Yes, I'm Campbell. And I'm Cogan. And I'm Kieran, pump-man on this wall-sided oil-tanker at fifty-five per month."