Sometimes things go wrong, a bull will be detached from the herd as they pile through
into the pen and with his crest up, a ton of speed and viciousness, his needle-sharp
horns lowered, will charge again and again into the packed mass of men and boys in the
bull ring. It is too jammed for them to climb over the barrera or red fence that rims the
field. They have to stay in and take it. Eventually the steers get the bull out of the
ring and into the pen. He may wound or kill thirty men before they can get him out. No
armed men are allowed to oppose him. That is the chance the Pamplona bull fight fans take
every morning during the Feria. It is the Pamplona tradition of giving the bulls a final
shot at everyone in town before they enter the pens. They will not leave until they come
out into the glare of the arena to die in the afternoon.
Consequently Pamplona is the toughest bull fight town in the world. The amateur fight
that comes immediately after the bulls have entered the pens proves that. Every seat in
the great amiphitheatre is packed. About three hundred men, with capes, odd pieces of
cloth, old shirts, anything that will imitate a bull fighter's cape, are singing and
dancing in the arena. There is a shout, and the bull pen opens. Out comes a young bull
just as fast as he can come. On his horns are leather knobs to prevent his goring anyone.
He charges and hits a man. Tosses him high in the air, and the crowd roars. The man comes
down on the ground, and the bull goes for him, bumping him with his head. Worrying him
with his horns. Several amateur bull fighters are flopping their capes in his face to
make the bull charge and leave the man on the ground. Then the bull charges and bags
another man. The crowd roars with delight.
Then the bull will turn like a cat and get somebody who has been acting very brave about
ten feet behind him. Then he will toss a man over the fence. Then he picks out one man
and follows him in a wild twisting charge through the entire crowd until he bags him. The
barrera is packed with men and boys sitting along the top, and the bull decides to clear
them all off. He goes along, hooking carefully with his horn and dropping them off with a
toss of his horns like a man pitching hay.
Each time the bull bags someone the crowd roars with joy. Most of it is home talent
stuff. The braver the man has been or the more elegant pass he has attempted with his
cape before the bull gets him the more the crowd roars. No one is armed. No one hurts or
plagues the bull in any way. A man who grabbed the bull by the tail and tried to hang on
was hissed and booed by the crowd and the next time he tried it was knocked down by
another man in the bull ring. No one enjoys it all more than the bull.
As soon as he shows signs of tiring from his charges, the two old steers, one brown and
the other looking like a big Holstein, come trotting in and alongside the young bull who
falls in behind them like a dog and follows them meekly on a tour of the arena and then
out.