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“That’s an old one,” Manuel said. “You line up your cuadrilla, so I can see what I’ve got.”

“You’ve got some good kids,” Hernandez said. He was very cheerful. He had been on twice before in nocturnals and was beginning to get a following in Madrid. He was happy the fight would start in a few minutes.

“Where are the pics?” Manuel asked.

“They’re back in the corrals fighting about who gets the beautiful horses,” Hernandez grinned.

The mules came through the gate in a rush, the whips snapping, bells jangling and the young bull ploughing a furrow of sand.

They formed up for the paseo as soon as the bull had gone through.

Manuel and Hernandez stood in front. The youths of the cuadrillas were behind, their heavy capes furled over their arms. In back, the four picadors, mounted, holding their steel-tipped push-poles erect in the half-dark of the corral.

“It’s a wonder Retana wouldn’t give us enough light to see the horses by,” one picador said.

He knows we’ll be happier if we don’t get too good a look at these skins,” another pic answered.

“This thing I’m on barely keeps me off the ground,” the first picador said.

“Well, they’re horses.”

“Sure, they’re horses.”

They talked, sitting their gaunt horses in the dark.

Zurito said nothing. He had the only steady horse of the lot. He had tried him, wheeling him in the corrals and he responded to the bit and the spurs. He had taken the bandage off his right eye and cut the strings where they had tied his ears tight shut at the base. He was a good, solid horse, solid on his legs. That was all he needed. He intended to ride him all through the corrida. He had already, since he had mounted, sitting in the half-dark in the big, quilted saddle, waiting for the paseo, pic-ed through the whole corrida in his mind. The other picadors went on talking on both sides of him. He did not hear them.

The two matadors stood together in front of their three peones, their capes furled over their left arms in the same fashion. Manuel was thinking about the three lads in back of him. They were all three Madrileños, like Hernandez, boys about nineteen. One of them, a gypsy, serious, aloof, and dark-faced, he liked the look of. He turned.

“What’s your name, kid?” he asked the gypsy.

“Fuentes,” the gypsy said.

“That’s a good name,” Manuel said.

The gypsy smiled, showing his teeth.

“You take the bull and give him a little run when he comes out,” Manuel said.

“All right,” the gypsy said. His face was serious. He began to think about just what he would do.

“Here she goes,” Manuel said to Hernandez.

“All right. We’ll go.”

Heads up, swinging with the music, their right arms swinging free, they stepped out, crossing the sanded arena under the arc-lights, the cuadrillas opening out behind, the picadors riding after, behind came the bull-ring servants and the jingling mules. The crowd applauded Hernandez as they marched across the arena. Arrogant, swinging, they looked straight ahead as they marched.

They bowed before the president, and the procession broke up into its component parts. The bull-fighters went over to the barrera and changed their heavy mantles for the light fighting capes. The mules went out. The picadors galloped jerkily around the ring, and two rode out the gate they had come in by. The servants swept the sand smooth.

Manuel drank a glass of water poured for him by one of Retana’s deputies, who was acting as his manager and sword-handler. Hernandez came over from speaking with his own manager.

“You got a good hand, kid,” Manuel complimented him.

“They like me,” Hernandez said happily.

“How did the paseo go?” Manuel asked Retana’s man.

“Like a wedding,” said the handler. “Fine. You came out like Joselito and Belmonte.”

Zurito rode by, a bulky equestrian statue. He wheeled his horse and faced him toward the toril on the far side of the ring where the bull would come out. It was strange under the arc-light. He pic-ed in the hot afternoon sun for big money. He didn’t like this arc-light business. He wished they would get started.

Manuel went up to