Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/505

Rh were within the enclosure, with soldiers posted all around the barriers, to keep order, and a special squad within the outer ring, with loaded muskets to shoot the bear if he should escape from the inner ring of heavy, upright timbers, thirty feet across, in which the fight was to take place. It would have been a good joke on them had they ever fired at him.

The first part of the performance—consisting of tumbling, and cross-bar and ring exercises by a party of native artists—was looked upon with impatience by the crowd, and at last, when the cries of "el toro! el toro!" were getting too loud to be longer disregarded, Señor Bueno Core came forward and opened the door of the pen in which the bull was confined. In rushed the bull, and made a pass at old Sampson, who was quietly walking back and forth, looking at the audience.

At the first touch of the bull's horns, old Sampson raised his immense, bulky carcass, took the poor bull lovingly in his brawny arms, and grasping him by the neck with his worn-out teeth proceeded to shake him, as a terrier dog shakes a rat. His teeth were so bad that he could not break the bull's neck, but he held him as a mother might hold her infant, and compressed his neck as if it had been a loaf of bread. This went on until the bull called for help, and the audience began to call out, "give the bull a chance!" when the Señor and his assistants dashed water by the hogshead upon the bear to make him break his hold, and at last succeeded.

Then old Sampson, in a rage, went to the side of the ring, and began to dig a deep hole in the ground. All efforts to drive him from his work were unavailing for half an hour, and, meantime, he had a hole dug in