Jack’s riata was coiled in his hand and his head was turned towards the girl, his brain busy with his thoughts of her and her wilfulness.  From the tail of his eye he caught the first lunge of the bull, and that automatic mental adjustment to unexpected situations, which we call presence of mind, sent a knee-signal to Surry which that intelligent animal obeyed implicitly.

Surry rushed straight at the bull, but the triangle was a short one, and there was much to do in that quarter of a minute.  Teresita was stubborn and would not turn and run; but she happened to be riding Tejon, who knew something about bulls and was capable of acting upon his knowledge.  He whirled with hind feet for a pivot and ducked away from the horns coming at him, and it was not one second too soon.  The bull swept by, so close that a slaver of foam was flung against Teresita’s skirt as he passed.

He whirled to come back at the girl—­and that time he seemed sure to give that vicious, ripping jab he had so narrowly missed giving before; even the girl saw that he would, and turned a little pale, and Tejon’s eyes glazed with terror.

But Jack had gained the second he needed—­the second that divided adventure from tragedy.  The riata loop shot from his upflung hand and sped whimperingly on its errand, even as Tejon tried to swing away, tripped, and tumbled to his knees.  The riata caught the lifted forefeet of the bull just as he stiffened his neck for the lunge.  Surry braced himself automatically when Jack drew tight the loop, and the bull went down with a thud and lay with his forefeet held high in air, so close to his quarry that the tip of one horn struck Tejon upon the knee and flicked a raw, red spot there.

Then Jack, in the revulsion from deadly fear to relief, was possessed by one of those gusts of nervous rage that seized him sometimes; such a brief fit of rage as made him kill lustfully three men in the space of three heart-beats, almost, and feel regret because he could not keep on killing.

He did not run to Teresita and comfort her for her fright, as a lover ought to have done.  Instead he gave her one look as he went by, and that a look of indignation for her foolishness.  He ran to the bull, drew his knife from his sash and tried to stab it in the brain; but his hand shook so that he missed and only gave it a glancing gash that let much blood flow.  He swore and struck again, snapping the dagger blade short off against the horns.  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.