Montes the Matador | Page 3

of an anything but flattering
reception I returned again and again to the house. One day his niece
told me that Montes was in bed, and from her description I inferred that
he was suffering from an attack of malarial fever. The doctor who
attended him, and whom I knew, confirmed this. Naturally enough I did
what I could for the sufferer, and so it came about that after his
recovery he received me with kindness, and at last made up his mind to
tell me the story of his life.
"I may as well begin at the beginning," Montes went on. "I was born
near here about sixty years ago. You thought I was older. Don't deny it.
I saw the surprise in your face. But it's true: in fact, I am not yet, I think,
quite sixty. My father was a peasant with a few acres of land of his own
and a cottage."

"I know it," I said. "I saw it the other day."
"Then you may have seen on the further side of the hill the
pasture-ground for cattle which was my father's chief possession. It was
good pasture; very good... My mother was of a better class than my
father; she was the daughter of the chemist in Ronda; she could read
and write, and she did read, I remember, whenever she could get the
chance, which wasn't often, with her four children to take care of--three
girls and a boy--and the house to look after. We all loved her, she was
so gentle; besides, she told us wonderful stories; but I think I was her
favourite. You see I was the youngest and a boy, and women are like
that. My father was hard--at least, I thought him so, and feared rather
than loved him; but the girls got on better with him. He never talked to
me as he did to them. My mother wanted me to go to school and
become a priest; she had taught me to read and write by the time I was
six. But my father would not hear of it.
'If you had had three boys and one girl,' I remember him saying to her
once, 'you could have done what you liked with this one. But as there is
only one boy, he must work and help me.' So by the time I was nine I
used to go off down to the pasture and watch the bulls all day long. For
though the herd was a small one--only about twenty head--it required to
be constantly watched. The cows were attended to in an enclosure close
to the house. It was my task to mind the bulls in the lower pasture. Of
course I had a pony, for such bulls in Spain are seldom approached, and
cannot be driven by a man on foot. I see you don't understand.
But it's simple enough. My father's bulls were of good stock, savage
and strong; they were always taken for the ring, and he got high prices
for them. He generally managed to sell three novillos and two bulls of
four years old each year. And there was no bargaining, no trouble; the
money was always ready for that class of animal. All day long I sat on
my pony, or stood near it, minding the bulls. If any of them strayed too
far, I had to go and get him back again.
But in the heat of the day they never moved about much, and that time I
turned to use by learning the lessons my mother gave me. So a couple
of years passed.

Of course in that time I got to know our bulls pretty well; but it was a
remark of my father which first taught me that each bull had an
individual character and first set me to watch them closely. I must have
been then about twelve years old; and in that summer I learned more
than in the two previous years. My father, though he said nothing to me,
must have noticed that I had gained confidence in dealing with the bulls;
for one night, when I was in bed, I heard him say to my mother--'The
little fellow is as good as a man now.' I was proud of his praise, and
from that time on, I set to work to learn everything I could about the
bulls.
"By degrees I came to know every one of them --better far than I ever
got to know men or women later. Bulls, I found, were just like men,
only simpler and kinder; some were good-tempered and honest, others
were sulky and cunning. There was a black one which was wild and
hot-tempered, but at bottom good, while there was one almost as black,