The Wolf Cub. Terence Casey

silk breeches, waistcoat, and jacket, a white ruffled shirt, a crimson tie, and a black cap. He wore the black rosette and ribbons of the matador in his coleta, his queue—that long, thick, and sacred lock of hair all bullfighters wear as the time-honored insignia of their ancient profession.

      He was not yet thirty. He was a little below the middle height. He had a long body and short muscular legs. He was all iron and strength. And his brown Andalusian face was the typical young bull fighter's face, boyish, almost effeminate with its mild contours; a face made expressive and pleasing by eyes soft, dark, thick-lashed and very brave; a face that was the easily read table-of-contents of an honest, simple-souled, intrepid man.

      Jacinto Quesada's eyes smiled, and his whole face beamed, as he looked at him, for he recognized in this man whom he had long admired because of his splendid courage in the bull ring a kindred spirit.

      "And how are the wife and the children, Manuel?" he asked.

      "Most excellent in health, thank you, Jacinto! And you? And your family?"

      "Superb! But ah, Morales, what would I not give to be watching you killing your bulls in the Seville bull ring at this moment, instead of doing what I am—setting my dogs of ladrones upon you to rob you of your hard-earned money! Say but the word, and you will be exempted from this indignity!"

      "A thousand thanks; but no, I would rather not! It is too much honor!"

      "Too much honor for you, one of the three bravest men in Spain? You, whom I have ridden fifty miles many times to see give the suerte de matar, the stroke of death! Why, to sit in the sun and watch you perform, I have ventured into Seville in disguise when the men of the Guardia Civil were as thick about the bull ring as flea-bitten curs about a camp of Gitanos; and I have counted the risk nothing!"

      "But if I am one of the three bravest men in Spain, as you say, who are the others? Who is the second? Who is the third?"

      "The second! Can you not guess?"

      "Ah, chispas! yes. Yourself, Jacinto Quesada, of course!"

      "And the third?"

      The brow of the matador darkened with professional jealousy. Tentatively he asked, "You do not mean the espada, Lagartijo, do you?"

      "No; I do not like Lagartijo's ceremoniousness and caution; I like only diestros of the good old charge-and-take-a-chance Sevillian school. I mean that Yanqui traveler over there. He is like us two; he is an iron-boweled man!"

      The bullfighter turned around and took a good look at the lone American. Then he slapped his breeches and jacket and invited the bearded salteadores to continue with the search.

      After the cuadrilla of bullfighters came a fat gray parish priest; then several tourists from Central and South America; then a pretty flight of rosy and demure young convent girls, bound northward under the vigilant watch of two prim sallow duennas; and then a tall blond man with a straw-colored mustache darkened and stiff with wax.

      It was palpable this man was no Spaniard. He was dressed with neatness, even elegance. Strangely, his face looked much older than his lithe athletic body. It was a sharp, clever face, but a peculiar ashy pallor overspread it and, about the mouth, there were hard grim lines. The nose was long, high-bridged, predatory. The eyes were slate-colored, small and bright and furtive. They had a peculiar trick of drooping at the outer corners, a trick that gave him a calculating and rather sinister look.

      He had been traveling with his young wife, a very lovely slip of a girl. Her turn was to come next. She stood at the edge of the muster of people, looking after her foreign-looking husband with blue eyes oddly eager rather than anxious. She was a golden-haired girl of the rare Castilian blond type. She seemed made all of gold, ivory, and rose petals. Among all those frightened people, she alone was without fear. As she stood there, looking calmly about her, she seemed altogether the innocent and trustful child; to all appearances she should have been still in some Spanish convent, sequestered and secure—not abroad in the world where there are bandoleros and even men of worse sorts.

      Her husband, the foreign-looking man, was about to be put to the search when, aroused by something more than curiosity, Jacinto Quesada stepped forward and asked brusquely, "You are a Frenchman?"

      "I am a Frenchman, monseñor."

      "And why, Frenchman, do you make signs with your hands to me?"

      With good reason Jacinto Quesada asked that question. Ever since he had been singled out for the search, the Frenchman, looking everywhere but at his hands, had been persistently making covert signals with those hands. First he drew two fingers down across his left cheek; then he made certain finger movements very like the word-spelling finger movements of the deaf and dumb; and finally he stroked his throat and Adam's apple with a certain lingering wistful care!