Nan Sherwood on the Mexican Border Part 14

"Things went along quite perfectly until one night--this was after we had been in the camp for a couple of weeks--there was a radio call 'Plane carrying doctor and infantile paralysis serum to Canadian outpost in Northwest down. Position approximately'--Oh, I've forgotten what it was now, but it was not far from our camp.

"The next morning we were up at daybreak and by the next afternoon we had located the plane. The pilot was dead, but the doctor, though suffering from a broken leg and shock, was still living. After we had fixed him up, we spent the night trying to get the plane's radio to the point where it would function, so that we could get the news back to civilization.

"But things were so radically wrong with it, that my pal finally decided that he would set out for the nearest outpost, traveling as we had when we came, walking and by canoe. In the meantime, the doctor was fretting and stewing because he couldn't get to the station that was in such urgent need of medical aid, so partly on this insistence, partly because I'm a stubborn fool when I start out to do anything, I kept tinkering around with the radio.

"Finally, the thing came to life, and we were able to get in touch with the outside world. You know as well as I what happens in such cases. It wasn't long before I was up to my neck, sending exclusive stories back to my old sheet and then, when another plane came to take the doctor and brought with it a whole flock of reporters, I was swamped with work.

"I grumbled, but I loved it, and when the story died down and I was called back to work on an a.s.signment that I was more than proud to accept I was like a kid with a new toy. Never so glad to get back into harness in my life.

"I feel now, a little the way I did then. Mexico and the land of manana spelled romance and rest to me in the city room where I do my daily stint. But now I want neither of them. I smell a story."

With this, he sniffed the air as though he was actually trying to get the direction of the scent. Alice laughed and held her hand on the handle of the door. "Maybe you do," she said, "but you're not leaving us today, at least not this minute. Walker Jamieson, we're headed for a bullfight and you're going along with us whether you want to or not."

There was no protest, and Walker was glad afterwards when he pieced the little sections of the plot together that he hadn't struck out on the trail of the story before that memorable bull-fight.

"And what's the man with the wheelbarrow doing in the parade?" Nan asked the question of Walker Jamieson.

They were all sitting now in the huge arena, "Plaza de Toros," the most important bull-fighting ring in all Mexico. The place was packed and Nan thought as she looked out over the people that she had never in her life seen such a gay colorful crowd, nor one in such an excited mood.

They were sitting on the shady side of the ring, "Sombra" it was called, the seats of which cost twice the price of those on the sunny side, or "Sol."

It was four o'clock exactly and the cuadrilla or parade that precedes every bull-fight had just entered the arena. Everyone was standing up shouting, waving his sombrero, and cheering for his favorite.

"That's a secret, not to be divulged until later," Walker answered Nan's question.

"I didn't know it would be like this," Grace, generally so quiet and shy, said. Her face was all alight and she was waving the pillow that had been bought for her to sit on, as were all the rest of the girls and women in the place. Laura was waving hers too, and so were Bess and Nan and Amelia.

Down in the ring below them the parade was marching around. First came a man on a spirited horse that pranced and danced and bowed its head to the ground again and again as the rider circled the ring. Then followed the matadores or bullfighters themselves in brilliant costumes that proclaimed to everyone that they were the heroes of the hour. It was for them that pillows were waved and cheers echoed back and forth across the ring.

"Oh, they're gorgeous, simply gorgeous," Nan was carried away with the excitement. "What are they called?" she pointed her finger to a number of men now riding on horseback and directed her question to Walker.

"And look, what are they?" Laura turned to him at the same time. She was pointing to men in white suits, red sashes, and caps who came in on mules.

"One at a time, please," Walker laughed at their excitement. "Nan's first. Those men on horseback are the picadores. Watch them later. And you, Senorita," he turned to Laura, "you asked about the wise monkeys, 'monosabios' we Mexicans call them. When the fight's over they'll drag out the dead bull."

"Oh!" The exclamation was Grace's. She had forgotten that a bullfight meant that there would be blood and killing.

Walker looked at her questioningly and then at Alice. "Here was a girl,"

the glances they exchanged said, "that would have to be watched at the killing."

Now, below them, the horseman leading the procession bowed before the judge of the bullfight, the formation disbanded, and the ring cleared for the entrance of the first bull.

It came in, charging from a door that was opened below the ring, went bellowing madly across the arena, and charged straight into a target that maddened it further.

Now the prettiest, most graceful part of the whole spectacle began.

Two helpers carrying lovely bright capes stepped from the side into the arena. One of them waved his cape, attracting the attention of the bull which came rus.h.i.+ng toward the bright moving object. The helper danced gracefully aside. The bull turned and rushed at him again, putting his head down and going for him with his horns. But the man was graceful and daring and teasing and avoided him.

Now the other helper waved his cape and was equally provocative and the bull went for him with the same lack of success.

So they played back and forth, tantalizing the bull, attracting it with one cape and distracting it with another until it was thoroughly maddened.

Then the rider came in on his horse and the rider and the horse teased the bull further. So it went until the climax when the third and most important part of the fight began--the actual killing of the bull.

CHAPTER XVI

END OF THE FIGHT

The ring was in a furor when Bess clutched Nan's arm. "Look, Nan, look,"

she said. "It's she. It's Linda. Look, Nan."

Nan's eyes were riveted on the ring, where the bullfighter with his spear was waiting for a propitious moment to plunge it into the mad bleeding animal that was lunging at him.

"Just a minute, Bess," Nan hadn't heard what her friend had said. The horror and cruelty and yet the excitement of the scene before her was holding all her attention.

Down there before her the bullfighter was fighting a champions.h.i.+p fight.

He was playing with the bull, teasing him toward him and then skillfully dancing away. The end was imminent. The fighter was waiting only for an opportunity to make the clean, quick plunge that would finish the fight with one stroke.

Now, the moment seemed near and everyone, Nan and her friends, and the more than twenty thousand other people in the great ring stood up, cheering for the finish.

The fighter closed in and then drew back to make the lunge, but there was blood on the ground beneath his feet and he slipped. The bull gave a mighty roar and went toward him, his horns lowered. The fight had turned. There could be only one possible end now. Death for the fighter.

But wait. That fighter is clever. He gracefully pulls aside so the menacing horns glance across his arm. He jumps up from the ground, pulls his arm back, and before the bull has had a chance to recover from his surprise, that fighter is, with one mighty thrust, plunging the spear straight through the bull's heart.

There, it's over now. The fighter has fought the fight that will surely bring him the trophy, a pair of little gold ears. The throng, wild with excitement, throws hats, scarfs, pillows, everything loose that it can lay its hands on into the ring as the hero of the hour slowly walks around and bows with arms thrown out wide as though to embrace the whole cheering mult.i.tude.

Everything is gay and happy now. Even the man that follows after the hero and picks up the hats, scarfs, and pillows that litter the ground and tosses them lightly back to the owners above is laughing. Yes, even the man that pushed the wheelbarrow in the grand opening procession is happy, basking in reflected glory, as he trundles his burden around the ring, sprinkling sawdust over the blood spots.

It was not until the monosabios, "wise monkeys", came to drag out the bull, destined now for food for a nearby hospital, that Bess again tried to attract Nan's attention.

"Nan, I tell you that that's Linda Riggs down there below us," she said insistently this time. "Look at the way she's tossing her head and talking to that man that's next to her. You would think that he was a prince, a handsome prince, the way she is acting."

"Why, Bess, you're right. That is Linda." Nan at last drew her eyes away from the ring and looked at the girl Bess was pointing to.

"Yes, and I'm sure she saw us a while ago," Laura contributed. She too had been watching the girl that the Lakeview crowd had grown to dislike so cordially. "You know the way she always looks around her to see whether there is anyone she really ought to be decent to, anyone that might be able to do something for her. Well, she did that when she first came in. I saw her, but I wasn't going to say anything because I didn't want to spoil the fun we were having."

"I'll bet she sneered when she saw us," Bess said. "She's always hated us and especially since we had the laugh on her on the boat last summer."

"Oh, Bess, that wasn't exactly a laugh," Nan protested. "The girl almost drowned."

"Yes, and you went and saved her. And what thanks did you get?" Bess could always be indignant when she thought of Linda Riggs. "You should have let her alone. I would have. I would have enjoyed seeing the waves wash her over-board. I would have looked over the rail and laughed when I saw her screaming and waving her arms and trying to keep herself from going under."

"You little fiend!" Nan exclaimed. "How can you say such things?"

"Because they are true," Bess retorted. "People like her shouldn't be allowed to clutter up things. She makes everybody that knows her unhappy, so what good is she anyway? Her father is always trying to get her out of trouble. Look at her down there now. You can see by the way she's holding her head that she's mean and proud and deceitful."