“But that isn’t—”
“It has horns,” Vail pointed out. “Two of ’em. You can see ’em from here. Just arranged tandem, instead of sideways like a bull. That might even make it easier. But it fits the terms of the dare. Of course, if Elías is scared to take it on...”
The matador stood looking at it, as immobile as the monster itself. The moonlight could not have shown any change of color, and his thin hawk’s face was like a mask of graven metal in which the eyes gleamed like moist stones.
Then he climbed carefully over the barrier and began to walk slowly forward, opening his cape.
In the stillness, Simon could hear the breathing of his companions.
The rhinoceros allowed Usebio to advance several yards, with its glinting porcine stare turned directly towards him. Simon thought he had read somewhere that rhinos were nearsighted, but if so this one had certainly caught a scent that told it which way to look. Yet it stood for seconds like a grotesque prehistoric relic, with no movement except a stiffening of its absurdly disproportionate little piggy tail.”
Usebio stopped with his feet together, turned partly sideways, and spread the cape, holding it up by the shoulders, in the classic position of citing a bull.
And with a snort the rhino exploded into motion.
Its short chunky legs seemed to achieve no more than an ungainly trot, but the appearance was deceptive. There was barely time to realize what an acceleration it generated before it was right on top of Usebio. And Usebio stood his ground, turning harmoniously with the cape and leading the brute past him, gracefully but a little wide. Iantha gasped, almost inaudibly.
The rhino blundered on a little way, turning in an astonishingly tight circle, and charged again. And again Usebio led it past him, a trifle closer, as if its nose were magnetized to the cloth, in a formal verónica.
The rhino scrambled around again, it seemed even faster, and launched itself at the lure a third time without a pause.
And suddenly Iantha Lamb screamed, a small sharp cry as if something clammy had touched her.
It may have been that Usebio started to turn his head at the sound, or that it only divided his concentration for a fractional instant; certainly he was trying to work still closer to his animal, and he had not yet perfectly judged or adapted himself to the dimensions of a three-ton beast that was as broad as a boat. He carried the horns and the head safely past him, but it caught him solidly with its shoulder and flung him aside much as the fender of a speeding truck might have done. He fell eight feet away and lay still with his face in the dirt.
There are things that happen in decimals of the time that it takes to report or read them. Like this:
Simon looked at Vail and said, “Your cue?”
Vail showed his teeth and said, “Not me, old boy. I only bet I’d take on claws.”
Simon grabbed the spear with one hand and smashed Vail’s lips against his teeth with the other. Vail stumbled back, falling. Iantha’s face was enraptured. Simon vaulted the rails, and came down running. And all that had happened while the rhinoceros hesitated imperceptibly over renewing its assault on an object that had become limp and prostrate.
Then it caught sight of the Saint racing towards it, yelling insanely, and found a more interesting target for its fury. With a slobbery whroosh! it veered to meet him.
Simon tried the trick that he had seen banderilleros use when planting their darts in a bull during their phase of the fight. He swerved a little to his right, Usebio and the fallen cape being to his left, and then at the last moment that he dared he dug in his heels and broke back diagonally to the left, at the same time hurling the spear towards the oncoming rhino’s left jowl. The point could have made no more than a pinprick in the pachyderm’s vulcanized hide, but it added its distraction to the surprise of the Saint’s change of course, and the behemoth thundered by him with a momentum that even its own colossal power needed time to check.
In that dreadfully evanescent respite the Saint reached the cape, snatched it up, and spread it as he had been taught to do by friendly toreros at the testing of calves. In the one sideways glance that he could spare, he saw Usebio rolling over and struggling to rise up on his hands and knees.
“A la barrera!” Simon shouted, and went on in Spanish, which would most clearly penetrate Usebio’s daze, “I will keep him off. But hurry!”
Then the rhino was bearing down on him like an express train. He would not have apologized for the cliché. It seemed to shake the earth like the biggest locomotive that ever ran on rails. But somehow he led it past him with the cape, not stylishly, but as best he recalled the movement.
It lurched and grunted and skidded around and came again. And again he made it follow the cloth instead of his body.
If Iantha Lamb had screamed again he would have laughed without a flicker of his eyes.
But he did get a glimpse of Usebio crawling painfully but with increasing strength towards the fence, and knew that he hadn’t misinterpreted the collision which had felled the matador. Usebio had only been winded by a glancing blow, perhaps with a couple of cracked ribs, but nothing worse. If he could only get out of the corral.
Three, four, five, six more times the Saint gave his best simulated verónicas to a rampaging homicidal quadruped which whirled and came back for more with a terrifying swiftness and relentless persistence that even the bravest Andalusian bull never matched. But neither would his technique and configurations have brought olés from the captious critics in the Plaza de toros at Seville. This was a reproach that Simon had no leisure to fret about. He was busy enough keeping the most mean-tempered Diceros africanus that ever had the privilege of an introduction to European culture from eviscerating him with one of its anachronistic horns.
Somehow he was able to keep the performance going until Usebio had rolled under the low bar of the stockade, safely to one side of the segment towards which Simon was baiting the rhino, until he knew everything was all right and he shamelessly dropped the cape over its head and sprawled over the top banister just as his paleolithic playmate crashed into the posts like a berserk baby tank.
There were many more people outside than he had left there — men in uniforms and parts of uniforms and other clothes. He had been distantly aware of their arrival during his last passes but had been far too occupied to take much note of it.
“What d’you think you’re doing?” demanded the ranking one unnecessarily.
“Settling a silly bet,” Simon replied placatingly. “I know it was naughty of us, but there’s no harm done.”
The keeper turned his flashlight from Usebio who was now standing up brushing off his clothes, to Vail, who was dabbing his mouth with a red-stained handkerchief.
“Oh, no? What about him?”
“He slipped trying to get over the fence first, when he saw the other fellow in trouble. It’s nothing serious.”
The beam swung on to Iantha Lamb and rested there, and someone sucked in his breath sharply.
“Why, isn’t that—”
“Yes, it is,” said the Saint. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to get her a lot of bad publicity. Now if we made up to you for the trouble we’ve given you, couldn’t we forget the whole thing?”
There was no conversation whatever on the way back to town, after Simon had walked down the hill and brought the car around to the main entrance. Iantha drove, again with the Saint beside her, though he had tried to offer the seat to Usebio.
“No,” said the matador. “I shall be quite comfortable. The front is better for you, with your long legs.”