Whereupon he threw the dagger violently from him and gave an angry kick at the animal, as if he would kill it that way.
"Savage!" cried Teresita, hysterically shrill.

"Brute! Leave the poor thing alone! It has done nothing, that you should beat it while it cannot fight back." Jack, lifting his spurred foot for another kick, set it down and turned to her dazedly.
In her way as shaken by her narrow escape as he was himself, she straightway called him brute and savage again, and sentimentally pitied the bull because he lay upon his back with his front feet in the air, and because the gash on his head was bleeding.
Jack's rage passed as quickly as it came; but it left him stubborn under her recriminations.
"You are very soft-hearted, all of a sudden, senorita," he said, with a fairly well-defined sneer, when he could bear no more.

"You won't enjoy the bull-fighting, then, to-morrow--for all you have been looking forward to it so anxiously, and have robbed yourself of ribbons to decorate the darts.

It's not half so brutal to kill a bull that tries to kill you, as it is to fill it with flag-trimmed arrows for fun, and only put it out of its misery when you're tired of seeing it suffer! This bull came near killing you! That's why I'm going to kill it." "You are not! Santa Maria, what a savage beast you are! Let him go instantly! Let him go, I say!" If she had been on the ground, she would have stamped her foot.

As it was, she shook an adorably tiny fist at Jack, and blinked her long lashes upon the tears of real, sincere anger that stood in her black eyes, and gritted her teeth at him; for the senorita had a temper quite as hot as Jack's, when it was roused, and all her life she had been given her own way in everything.
"Let him go this moment, or I shall never speak to you again!" she threatened rashly.
For answer, Jack walked deliberately past her to where Surry stood with his feet braced still against the pull of the riata and his neck arched knowingly, while he rolled the little wheel in the bit with his tongue.
Jack made himself a cigarette, lay down in the shade of his horse, and smoked just as calmly as though his heart was not thumping so that he could hear it quite plainly.