Thy Rocks and Rills Page 5

  GRAND FINALE

  Slowly, Moe came through the doorway. Above, on a platform inside thebarrier, stood a gray-haired man who stuck identifying, streamered dartsinto bovine shoulders. His hand swept down, carrying Stonecypher'schosen colors, black.

  Moe's walk upset the man's timing. His arm moved too soon. Moe's fronthooves left the ground. Horns hooked. The gray-haired man screamed anddropped the dart. With a spike of horn through his arm, between bone andbiceps, he gyrated across the barrier. He screamed a second time beforecloven hooves slashed across his body.

  The crowd inhaled, then cheered the unprecedented entrance. KillerFergus's team stood rigid, not comprehending. Then men dashed throughshielded openings in the barrier, yelling and waving pink and yellowcapes to draw the bull from his victim.

  Moe ignored the distraction, trotted nonchalantly to the center of thering, and turned his bulging head to examine the spectators jabbering athis strange appearance. The short horns, the round skull, thewhite-banded eyes, the mane that seemed slightly purple under the cloudysky, and the exaggerated slope from neck to rump that made the hind legstoo short--together they amounted to a ton of muscle almost like a bull."Where'd you trap it, Oswell?" someone near the ringmaster's box yelled.

  Forgetting the mess Illard had made with the previous bull, the crowdcommented. "It's the last of the bison!"

  "He's poiple! Lookit! Poiple!"

  "The bull of the woods!"

  "Howya like 'im, Fergus?"

  Killer Fergus posed behind the barrier and studied his specialty, an oddbull. Two stickers, Neel and Tomas, flourished capes to test the bull'scharge, with Neel chanting, "Come on, bull! Come on, bull! Come on!Bull, bull, bull!"

  Moe did not charge. He moved, in a speculative walk, toward the chantingNeel who tantalized with the cape and retreated with shuffling steps.The charge, when it came, occurred almost too fast for sight. Neelwriggled on the horns, struck the sand, and the horns lifted him again.He smashed against the barrier. Tomas threw his cape over the bull'sface. The left horn pinned the cape to Tomas's naked chest over theheart.

  Moe retired to the center of the ring and bellowed at the crowd, which,delirious from seeing human blood, applauded. Blood covered Moe's horns,dripped through the long hair on his neck, and trickled down between hiseyes.

  Quavering helpers removed the bodies. The first lancer, livid andtrembling, rode a blindfolded horse into the ring. "He'll fix thishorse!" the crowd slavered. "We'll see guts this time!"

  Moe charged. The lancer backed his mount against the barrier and grippedhis weapon, a stout pike. Sand sprayed like water as Moe swerved. On theleft side of the horse, away from the menacing pike, Moe reared. Thelancer left the saddle. A tangle of naked limbs thrashed across thewooden fence and thudded against the wall of the stands.

  Twenty-five thousand people held their breaths. The blindfolded horsewaited with dilated nostrils and every muscle vibrating in terror. Moeproduced a long red tongue and licked the horse's jaw.

  Fergus dispersed the tableau. Red-haired, lean, and scarred with manypast gorings, the popular killer stalked across the sand dragging hiscape and roaring incomprehensible challenges. In the stands, the cheerleaders of the Fergus Fanclub lead a welcoming yell. "Yeaaaa, Fergus!Fergus! Fergus! Rah, rah, rah!"

  Moe wandered through the helpers trying to distract him from the horseand looked at the killer. Fergus stamped his foot, shook the cape, andcalled, "Bull! Come on! Charge!" Moe completely circled the killer, whoretired in disgust when another lancer rode into the ring. "Stick himgood!" Fergus directed.

  The pike pointed at the great muscles of Moe's back, as the bullcharged. Moe's head twisted in a blur of violence. Teeth clamped on theshaft behind the point. Too surprised to let go, the lancer followed hisweapon from the saddle. He released his hold when Moe walked on him.

  Like some fantastic dog stealing a fresh bone, the bull trotted aroundthe ring, tail high and pike in mouth. The crowd laughed. Wild-eyed mencarried out the trampled lancer.

  A third, and extremely reluctant, lancer reined his horse through thegate. A pike in the mouth of a ton of beef utterly unnerved the man. Hestood in the saddle and jumped over the barrier where a rain of rotteneggs from the booing fans spattered him thoroughly.

  * * * * *

  An uninjured bull pawed alone in the sand when the trumpet recordingannounced the end of the lancers' period. The crowd noises softened to abuzz of speculation, questions, and comment, as the realization thatweird events had been witnessed slowly penetrated that collective mind.The bull had not touched a horse, no pike had jabbed the bull, and fivemen had been killed or injured.

  "Great Government!" a clear voice swore, "That ain't no bull, it's amonster!" This opinion came from a sticker in Illard's team. Fergusattempted to persuade the man to help, since both of Fergus's stickerswere dead. Part of the crowd agreed with the sticker's thought, forpeople began moving furtively to the exits with cautious glances at theanimal in the ring. They, of course, could not know that the bull hadbeen trained, with rubber-tipped pikes and dummies, in every phase ofthe bullfight; that he knew the first, and only, law of staying alive inthe ring, "Charge the man and not the cloth."

  The clouds that had obscured the sky all day formed darker masses tintedwith pink to the east, and the black dot of a turkey buzzard wheeledsoaring in the gloom. Carrying, in either hand, a barbed stick sparklingwith plastic streamers, Fergus walked into the ring. His assistantscautiously flanked him with capes.

  Moe dropped the pike and charged in the approved manner of a bull.Fergus raised the sticks high and brought them down on the humped back,although the back was not there. The sticks dropped in the sand.

  As the killer leaped aside in the completion of a reflex action, a hornpenetrated the seat of his trunks. The Fergus Fanclub screamed whiletheir hero dangled in ignominy from the horn. Moe ignored the flapping,frantic capes. The killer gingerly gripped a horn in either hand andtried to lift himself off. Gently, Moe lowered his head and depositedthe man beside an opening. Fergus scrabbled to safety like a rat to ahole.

  Four helpers with capes occupied the ring. When they saw deathapproaching on cloven hooves, two of them cleared the fence. The thirdreceived a horn beside his backbone and tumbled into the fourth. A dualscream, terrible enough to insure future nightmares, echoed above thescreeching of the crowd. Moe tossed the bodies again and again acrossthe bloody sand.

  Silence slithered over the Highland Bullring and over a scenereminiscent of the ring's bloody parent, the Roman Arena. Men sprawledgored, crushed, and dead across the sand. A section of the blood-speckedbarrier leaned splintered and cracked, almost touching the concretewall. Unharmed, Fergus stood on one side of the battleground, Illard onthe other.

  Fergus reached over the wooden fence for red flag and sword. Turning hisback on the heaving Moe, who stood but ten feet behind, the killer facedthe quaking flesh that was Ringmaster Oswell, high up in the officialbox. The killer's voice shook, but the bitter satire came through thesound of departing boats and aircraft. Fergus said, "I dedicate thisbull to Ringmaster Oswell who has provided for us this great DependenceDay Bullfight in honor of the Great Government on which we all depend."He turned and faced the bull.

  Moe, for once, rushed the red flag, the only thing that made bullfightspossible. His great shoulders presented a fair target for the sword.

  Fergus, perhaps the only bull-fighter ever to be gored in the brain,died silently. The sword raked a shallow gash long Moe's loin.

  In the sixth tier of the stands, saliva drooled from the slack mouth ofthe little man seated beside Stonecypher. "Now's your chance, Illard!"the man squalled. "Be a hero! The last of the bullfighters! Kill him,Illard!"

  Illard walked on shaking legs over bodies he did not see. He was short,for a killer, and growing bald. He picked up the sword Fergus haddropped, looked into the gory face of the bull, and toppled in thesticky sand. The sword quivered point-first beside his body.

  RECES
SIONAL

  A wind whipped down into Highland Bullring. Riding the wind, blackerthan the clouds, the inquisitive turkey buzzard glided over the rim ofthe stands with air whistling through the spatulate feathers of rigidwings. The buzzard swooped a foot above Moe's horns and soared swiftlyover the opposite side of the ring.

  That started the panic, although Moe's charge accentuated it. He crashedinto the sagging section of the barrier. Cloven hooves scraped thewooden inclined plane, and Moe stopped with front feet in the first tierof the stands. He bellowed.

  The bull killed only one spectator, a man on whom he stepped. Thehundreds who died killed themselves or each other. They leaped from thetowering rim of the ring, and they jammed the exits in writhing heaps.

  Moe's precarious stance slipped. Slowly, he slid back into the ring,where Ringmaster Oswell, quivering in a red toga, gestured from thedarkness under the stands. The fat man squeaked and waved. Moe's chargeembodied the genuine fighting rage of a maddened bull. The scarlet doorclosed behind him.

  Stonecypher, with fists bloody and a heap of unconscious fear-crazedspectators piled before him, sat down. "Well, Moe," he whispered, "Ireckon you got even for a few of the bulls that's been tortured to deathto amuse a bunch of nuts. Maybe it wasn't the right way to do it. Idon't know. If I'd only had the gun--"

  Catriona turned a white mask of a face up to Stonecypher. "They killedhim, in theah?"

  "Sure. Bullfightin' never was a sport. The bull can't win. If he's notkilled in the ring, he's slaughtered under the stands."

  "You have moah smart-bulls, Stony."

  The black copter came in with the sunset and hovered over the sand. Theface of Duelmaster Smith peered out under his black tam, while a hoodedman, with pistols tattooed on his hand, aimed an automatic rifle. Theduelmaster smiled at Stonecypher and cried, "You really should havewaited until you were farther out in the Lake, before you dropped thatlittle buzzer in the water."