With a light upward bound,
as the bull lowered his head to gore him, Torellas stepped between the
horns, and when the great head came up, with the spring of his leap to
the toss of the bull's head, away he went sailing, twenty feet beyond
the bull and landing like a breath of air on his feet.
"While the people were still making the air explode with their applause,
Cogan saw Torellas look wistfully up to where Valera and her people sat.
Cogan looked too. She, leaning back between her mother and Senor
Guavera, with her face cloaked, was almost hidden. Her mother and
Guavera were talking across her as if all this bull-fighting was of all
in the world the thing least interesting to them. Cogan looked back to
the matador. He was bowing, even smiling, to the audience, but Cogan,
who was close enough to mark every line of his face, saw that he was
getting no great joy of his triumph.
"Torellas left the ring, and the banderilleros took possession. These
were the men with the wooden stakes of the length of a man's arm and
the thickness of a thumb, and wrapped around in gay colored paper
ribbon streamers, and at one end a thin iron spike about as long as a
man's little finger. The banderilleros had to stand in front of the
bull, with a stake in each hand, and, as he charged, to step in between
his horns and reach over and plant a stake on each side of his neck.
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