Perhaps in that
reflection he was not mistaken. He meant mischief from the
beginning; and he pressed Jarocho so close that he leaped the
barrier for safety. As he leaped, Saint Jago leaped also.
Imagine now the terror of the spectators! The screams! The
rush! The lowered horns within an inch of Jarocho, and Fray
Joseph Maria running with the consecrated wafer to the doomed
man! At that precise moment there was a rifle-shot, and
the bellowing brute rolled backward into the arena--dead."
"Oh, Maria Purissima! How grand! In such moments one really
lives, Senor. And but for this absurd rebellion I and my
daughters could have had the emotion. It is indeed cruel."
"You said the shot was fired by an American?"
"Senorita Antonia, it was, indeed. I saw him. He was in the
last row. He had stood up when Saint Jago came in, and he was
watching the man and the animal with his soul in his eyes. He
had a face, fine and thin as a woman's--a very gentle face,
also. But at one instant it became stern and fierce,
the lips hard set, the eyes half shut, then the rifle at the
shoulder like a flash of light, and the bull was dead between
the beginning and the end of the leap! The sight was
wonderful, and the ladies turned to him with smiles and cries
of thankfulness, and the better part of the men bowed to him;
for the Mexican gentleman is always just to a great deed.
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