The bull Zaragoza, raised by the Lesireas ranch, while being taken to the ring at Moetia, Portugal, on the 2nd of October, 1898, broke out of his cage and pursued and wounded many people. He pursued a boy who ran into the town hall, and the bull, pursuing the boy, climbed the stairs to the first floor, where, according to the book, he caused great destruction. He probably did.
Comisario, of the ranch of Don Victoriano Ripamilan, a red bull with the eye of a partridge and wide horns, was the third bull fought in Barcelona on the 14th of April, 1895. He jumped the barrera and got into the grandstand, and, driving through the spectators, the book says, produced the imagined disorder and damage. The civil-guard, Isidro Silva, drove his sabre into him and the corporal of the civil-guards, Ubaldo Vigueres, shot at him with his carbine, the bullet passing through the neck muscles of the bull and lodging in the left breast of the bull ring servant, Juan Recaseus, who died on the spot. Comisario was finally lassoed and killed with dagger strokes.
None of these occurrences belong to the realm of pure bullfighting except the first, nor does the case of Huron, a bull of the ranch of Don Antonio Lopez Plata, which fought a Bengal tiger on the 24th of July, 1904, in the Plaza of San Sebastian. They fought in a steel cage and the bull whipped the tiger, but in one of his charges broke the cage apart and the two animals came out into the ring in the midst of the spectators. The police, attempting to finish the dying tiger and the very live bull, fired several volleys which «caused grave wounds to many spectators.» From the history of these various encounters between bulls and other animals I should say they were spectacles to stay away from, or at least to view from one of the higher boxes.
The bull Oficial, from the ranch of the Arribas brothers, fought in Cadiz the 5th of October, 1884, caught and gored a banderillero, jumped the barrera and gored the picador Chato three times, gored a civil-guard, broke the leg and three ribs of a municipal guard, and the arm of a night watchman. He would have been an ideal animal to turn loose when the police are clubbing manifestants in front of the city hall. Had he not been killed a strain of police-hating bulls might have been bred which would give the populace the advantage they lost in street fighting with the disappearance of the paving stone. A paving stone at short range is more effective than a club or sabre. The disappearance of cobble and paving stones has been more of a deterrent to the overthrowing of governments than machine guns, tear bombs and automatic pistols. For it is in the clashes when the government does not want to kill its citizens but to club, ride down and beat them into submission with the flat of a sabre that a government is overthrown. Any government that uses machine guns once too often on its citizens will fall automatically. Régimes are kept in with the club and the blackjack, not the machine gun or bayonet, and while there were paving stones there was never an unarmed mob to club.
The type of bull the aficionados of bullfighting rather than police-fighting would remember is Hechicero, whose feats were performed in the ring against trained bullfighters and in the face of punishment. It is the difference between street fights which are usually infinitely more exciting, portentous and useful, but out of place here, and the winning of a championship in boxing. Any bull might, on escaping, kill a number of people and smash up much property without taking punishment, but in the confusion and excitement of a bull getting into the grandstand the people who are in his way are in much less danger than a bullfighter is at the moment of killing, for the bull, when confused and in a mob of people, charges blindly and does not aim his horn strokes.
A bull that jumps the barrera, unless he makes the leap while pursuing the man, is not a brave bull. He is a cowardly bull who is simply trying to escape the ring. The really brave bull welcomes the fight, accepts every invitation to fight, does not fight because he is cornered, but because he wants to and this bravery is measured, and can only be measured, by the number of times he freely and willingly, without pawing, threatening, or bluffing, accepts combat with the picador and whether, when the steel point of the pic is sunk in his muscles of neck or shoulder, he insists under the iron and continues his charge after he begins to really receive the punishment, until man and horse are thrown. A brave bull is one that, without any hesitation and in approximately the same part of the ring, will charge the picadors four times, paying no attention to the punishment he receives and each time charging with the steel in him until he has reversed the rider and horse.
It is only by his conduct against the pic that the bravery of a bull can be judged and appreciated, and the bravery of the bull is the primal root of the whole Spanish bullfight. The bravery of a truly brave bull is something unearthly and unbelievable. This bravery is not merely viciousness, ill-temper, and the panic-bred courage of a cornered animal. The bull is a fighting animal and where the fighting strain has been kept pure and all cowardice bred out he becomes often, when not fighting, the quietest and most peaceful acting in repose, of any animal. It is not the bulls that are most difficult to handle that make the best fights. The best of all fighting bulls have a quality, called nobility by the Spanish, which is the most extraordinary part of the whole business. The bull is a wild animal whose greatest pleasure is combat and which will accept combat offered to it in any form, or will take up anything it believes to be an offer of combat; yet the very best fighting bulls of all often recognize and know the mayoral or herder who is in charge of them on the ranch and on their trip to the ring, and will even allow him to stroke and pat them. I have seen a bull which in the corrals allowed the herder to stroke its nose, curry it like a horse, and even mount on its back, go into the ring without any preliminary excitement or goading, charge the picadors again and again, kill five horses, do its best to kill banderilleros and matador and be, in the ring, vicious as a cobra and brave as a charging lioness.
Of course not all bulls are noble, for one that the mayoral can make friends with, there are fifty that will charge even when he is bringing them food if they see any movement which makes them think he is challenging them. Neither are all bulls brave. When they are two years old they are tested for bravery by the breeder, being confronted with a picador on horseback either in a closed corral or on the open range. The year before they were branded, being thrown by men on horseback who tumble them over with a long blunt pole, and when, at two years, they are tested against the steel-tipped lances of the picadors they already have their numbers and names, and the breeder makes a note of the manifestations of bravery given by each one. Those that are not brave, if the bull breeder is scrupulous, are marked for veal. The others are marked in the book according to their bravery shown so that when he makes up a corrida of six bulls to ship away to some ring the breeder may dose the quality as he desires.
Branding is done as it is on ranches in the cattle-raising country of the American west except for the precautions necessary for separating the calves from their mothers, the necessity not to injure their horns or eyes and the complications of the marking. The branding irons are heated in a big fire and consist of the brand of the bull raiser, which is usually a combination of letters or a crest, and ten irons bearing the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. The branding irons have a wooden handle and the points that are in the fire are heated red hot. The calves are in one corral, the fire and the irons in another; the two connected by a swinging door, and when the door is open the vaqueros drive them, one at a time, into the branding corral where they are thrown and held. It takes from four to five men to hold a fighting-bull calf still and they must be careful not to injure the budding horns, for a calf whose horns are injured will never be accepted for a formal bullfight, and
