But she did not.
She stood there and waited, her forepaws outspread as if for an embrace.
Like a bullet sent true to the target, the head of the bull met the
gaunt, ungainly, gray shape; met and went down, the tip of one sharp
horn showing in the rough hair of her back, her body collapsing limply
across the neck she had broken with one tremendous side-blow as he
struck. A moment she struggled and clawed futilely to free herself, then
lay as quiet as the bull himself. And so that spectacle ended swiftly
and suddenly.
In the reaction which followed that ten-seconds' suspense, men grumbled
because it had ended so soon. But, upon second thoughts, its very
brevity brought the duel just that much closer, and so they heaved great
sighs of relaxation and began craning and looking for the two to enter
who would fight to the death with riatas.
Instead, entered the gringo whom Don Andres had foolishly chosen for
majordomo, and stood in the middle of the corral, quietly waiting while
the vaqueros with their horses and riatas dragged away the carcasses of
the bull and the bear.
When the main gate slammed shut behind them Dade lifted his eyes to that
side of the corral where the Californians were massed clannishly
together, and raised his hands for silence; got it by degrees, as a
clamoring breaker subsides and dwindles to little, whispering ripple
sounds; and straightway began in the sonorous melody of the Castilian
tongue which had been brought, pure and undefiled, from Spain and had
not yet been greatly corrupted into the dialect spoken to-day among the
descendants and called Spanish.
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