The Blood of the Arena, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez [mini ebook reader .txt] 📗

The picador, who treated him with rude camaraderie, answered with another shove and the two strong fellows laughed as they pushed back and forth, amusing every one at the table by their horse-play.

"But, damn it!" said the picador. "Get that blunder-bus out from between thy knees. Dost thou not see that it is aiming straight at me? An accident may happen."

The bandit's carbine, resting between his knees, was pointing its black muzzle at the picador.

"Hang that up, malaje!" he insisted. "Dost thou need it to eat with?"

"It's all right where it is. Never fear," answered the bandit shortly, frowning as if he did not like to hear any comments upon his precautions.

He grasped his spoon, scooped up a great piece of bread, and impelled by rural courtesy, glanced at the others to make sure that the moment for eating had arrived.

"Good health, gentlemen!"

He attacked the enormous dish that had been placed in the centre of the table for him and the two bull-fighters. Another like it steamed farther down for the farm hands. Suddenly he seemed ashamed of his voracity, and after a few spoonfuls he stopped, thinking an explanation necessary.

"Since yesterday morning I have tasted nothing but a crumb and a little milk they gave me in a herder's hut. A good appetite!"

He attacked the plate again, winking his eyes and working his jaws steadily. The picador invited him to drink. Intimidated in the master's presence, he gazed wistfully at the bottles of wine placed within reach of his hand.

"Drink, Plumitas. Dry grazing is bad. It should be moistened."

Before the bandit accepted his invitation the picador drank, and drank deeply. Plumitas only occasionally touched his glass after much vacillation. He was afraid of wine; he had lost the habit of drinking it. He did not always get it on the plains. Besides, wine was the worst enemy of a man like him, who must live wide awake and on guard.

"But here thou art among friends," said the picador. "Consider, Plumitas, that thou art in Seville, beneath the very mantle of the Virgin of Macarena. There is no one to touch thee. And if by chance the civil guards should come, I would put myself at thy side, I would grasp a spear, and we wouldn't leave one of those lazy devils alive. A little more and I would be willing to become a free-lance of the mountains! That has always attracted me."

"Potaje!" admonished the maestro from the end of the table, fearing the loquacity of the picador and his proximity to the bottles.

The bandit, in spite of drinking little, was red in the face and his eyes shone with a happy light. He had chosen his place facing the kitchen door, from which the entrance to the plantation could be seen, showing a portion of the solitary road. From time to time, a cow, a hog, a goat, passed along this belt of land, and the shadow of their bodies, outlined by the sun on the yellow ground, was enough to make Plumitas jump, ready to drop his spoon and grasp his rifle. He talked with his companions at the table, but without withdrawing his attention from what might be outside the door. It was his habit to live at all hours ready for resistance or for flight, making it a point of honor never to be taken by surprise.

After he had done eating he accepted one more glass from Potaje, his last, and he sat with a hand beneath his jaw, gazing out of the door, dulled and silent by his heavy meal. His was the digestion of a boa, or a stomach accustomed to irregular nourishment by his prodigious gorgings, and to long periods of fast. Gallardo offered him an Havana.

"Thanks, Señor Juan. I don't smoke, but I will save it for a companion of mine who is in the mountains, and the poor boy will value something to smoke more than a meal itself. He is a young fellow who has had bad luck and he helps me when there is work for two."

He put the cigar in his blouse, and the recollection of this companion, who at this very hour wandered in safety far away, caused him to smile with a ferocious joy. The wine had animated Plumitas. His countenance was changed. His eyes had metallic gleams of shifting light. His puffy face contracted with a grin that seemed to dispel his habitual kindly aspect. He evinced a desire to talk, to boast of his deeds, to pay for the hospitality by astonishing his benefactors.

"You must have heard about what I did last month on the Fregenal highway. Have you really heard nothing about that? I planted myself in the road with my young companion—for we had to stop a diligence and give a message to a rich man, who has had me on his mind for a while. A domineering fellow was this man, accustomed to ordering alcaldes, important persons, and even civil guards at his will—what they call in the papers a cacique. I sent him a message asking him for a hundred duros for a pressing need and what he did was to write to the governor of Seville, raise a row up there in Madrid, and make them chase me worse than ever. It was his fault that I had a gun-fight with the civil guards, and I came out of it shot in the leg; and still not satisfied, he asked them to imprison my wife, as if the poor thing could know where her husband was plundering. That Judas dared not stir out of his town for fear of Plumitas; but about then I disappeared. I went on a trip, one of those trips I've told you about, and my man took courage and went to Seville one day on business and to set the authorities against me."

"We lay in ambush for the coach on its return trip from Seville. My young companion, who has hands of gold for stopping anything on the road, ordered the driver to halt. I stuck my head and my carbine in at the door. Screams of women, cries of children, men who said nothing but seemed made of wax! I said to the travellers: 'Nothing is going to happen to you. Calm yourselves, ladies; greeting, gentlemen, and a good journey. But come, let that fat man step out.' And my man, cringing as if he were going to hide under the women's skirts, got down, as white as if his blood had left him, and lisping as if he were drunk. The coach drove on and we stood in the middle of the road alone. 'Listen; I am Plumitas, and I am going to give thee something that thou shalt not forget.' And I gave it to him. But I didn't kill him right off. I hit him in a place I know, so that he would live twenty-four hours, and so that when the guards gathered him up he could say it was Plumitas that had killed him. Thus there could be no mistake nor could others air themselves with importance."

Doña Sol listened, intensely pale, her lips compressed in terror, and in her eyes the strange glitter that accompanied her mysterious thoughts. Gallardo made a wry face, disturbed at this ferocious tale.

"Every one knows his trade, Señor Juan," said Plumitas, as if he divined his thoughts. "We both live by killing; you kill bulls, and I people. Only you are rich and get the applause and the fine women, while I often go hungry and if I don't take care I will end riddled like a sieve in the open plains for the crows to eat. But you don't beat me in knowing your trade, Señor Juan! You know where to strike the bull so he will fall at once. I know where to hit a Christian so that he will fall doubled up and last a while, or else spend a few weeks remembering Plumitas, who wishes not to mix with anybody, but who knows how to settle with those who meddle with him."

Again Doña Sol felt curiosity to know the number of his crimes.

"And killed? How many people have you killed?"

"You will take a dislike to me, Señora Marquesa; but since you persist.... Understand that I cannot recollect them all, no matter how much I want to remember. They probably amount to thirty or thirty-five; I don't know for sure. In this wandering life, who thinks of keeping accounts? But I am a luckless fellow, Señora Marquesa; an unfortunate fellow. The fault belongs to them that made me bad. That matter of killing is like eating cherries. You pull one and the others come after, by dozens. One must kill to go on living and if one feels pity he is eaten for his pains."

There was a long silence. The lady contemplated the bandit's short thick hands with his uneven finger nails. But Plumitas was not looking at the Señora Marquesa. All his attention was given to the matador in his desire to show him gratitude for having received him at his table and to dispel the bad effect his words seemed to have upon him.

"I respect you, Señor Juan," he said. "The first time I saw you fight bulls, I said to myself, 'That's a brave fellow.' You have many devotees who admire you, but not the way I do! Believe me, that to see you, I have many times disguised myself, and gone into the towns where you were fighting the bulls with the risk of being captured. Is that devotion?"

Gallardo smiled with an affirmative nodding of his head, flattered now in his artistic pride.

"Besides," continued the bandit, "nobody can say I came to La Rincona' to ask even a piece of bread. Many times I have gone hungry or have lacked five duros, riding around near here, and never till to-day has it occurred to me to pass through the wire fence of the plantation. 'Señor Juan is sacred to me,' I said to myself always. 'He earns his money the same as I do, exposing his life. Comradeship must be respected.' For you will not deny, Señor Juan, that although you are a great personage, and I one of the most unfortunate of men, we are alike, we both live by playing with death. We are quietly eating here, but some day, if God tires of us and deserts us, they'll gather me up from the roadside like a mad dog shot to pieces, and you with all your capital will be carried out of a ring foot foremost; and although the papers may talk of your misfortune four weeks or so, damned little you will thank them over there in the other world."

"It is true—it is true," said Gallardo, with sudden pallor at the bandit's words.

The superstitious fear he felt when moments of danger drew near was reflected in his countenance. His destiny seemed similar to that of this terrible vagabond who must necessarily fall some day or other in his unequal struggle.

"But do you believe I think of death?" continued Plumitas. "I repent of nothing and I go on my way. I also have my desires and my little pride, the same as you, when you read in the papers that you did good work on such a bull and that they gave you the ear. Remember that they talk of Plumitas all over Spain, that the newspapers tell the greatest lies about me, and, according to what they say, they are going to bring me out in the theatres. Even in Madrid, in that palace where the deputies meet to hold parley, they talk of me nearly every week.

"On top of all this, the pride of having an army following my steps, of being able, a lone man, to stir the wrath of thousands who live off of the government