"Savage!" cried Teresita, hysterically shrill. "Brute! Leave the poor
thing alone! It has done nothing, that you should beat it while it
cannot fight back."
Jack, lifting his spurred foot for another kick, set it down and turned
to her dazedly.
In her way as shaken by her narrow escape as he was himself, she
straightway called him brute and savage again, and sentimentally pitied
the bull because he lay upon his back with his front feet in the air,
and because the gash on his head was bleeding.
Jack's rage passed as quickly as it came; but it left him stubborn under
her recriminations.
"You are very soft-hearted, all of a sudden, senorita," he said, with a
fairly well-defined sneer, when he could bear no more. "You won't enjoy
the bull-fighting, then, to-morrow--for all you have been looking
forward to it so anxiously, and have robbed yourself of ribbons to
decorate the darts. It's not half so brutal to kill a bull that tries to
kill you, as it is to fill it with flag-trimmed arrows for fun, and only
put it out of its misery when you're tired of seeing it suffer! This
bull came near killing you! That's why I'm going to kill it."
"You are not! Santa Maria, what a savage beast you are! Let him go
instantly! Let him go, I say!"
If she had been on the ground, she would have stamped her foot. As it
was, she shook an adorably tiny fist at Jack, and blinked her long
lashes upon the tears of real, sincere anger that stood in her black
eyes, and gritted her teeth at him; for the senorita had a temper quite
as hot as Jack's, when it was roused, and all her life she had been
given her own way in everything.
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