CHAPTER XVI

END OF THE FIGHT

The ring was in a furor when Bess clutched Nan's arm. "Look, Nan, look," she said. "It's she. It's Linda. Look, Nan."

Nan's eyes were riveted on the ring, where the bullfighter with his spear was waiting for a propitious moment to plunge it into the mad bleeding animal that was lunging at him.

"Just a minute, Bess," Nan hadn't heard what her friend had said. The horror and cruelty and yet the excitement of the scene before her was holding all her attention.

Down there before her the bullfighter was fighting a championship fight. He was playing with the bull, teasing him toward him and then skillfully dancing away. The end was imminent. The fighter was waiting only for an opportunity to make the clean, quick plunge that would finish the fight with one stroke.

Now, the moment seemed near and everyone, Nan and her friends, and the more than twenty thousand other people in the great ring stood up, cheering for the finish.

The fighter closed in and then drew back to make the lunge, but there was blood on the ground beneath his feet and he slipped. The bull gave a mighty roar and went toward him, his horns lowered. The fight had turned. There could be only one possible end now. Death for the fighter.

But wait. That fighter is clever. He gracefully pulls aside so the menacing horns glance across his arm. He jumps up from the ground, pulls his arm back, and before the bull has had a chance to recover from his surprise, that fighter is, with one mighty thrust, plunging the spear straight through the bull's heart.

There, it's over now. The fighter has fought the fight that will surely bring him the trophy, a pair of little gold ears. The throng, wild with excitement, throws hats, scarfs, pillows, everything loose that it can lay its hands on into the ring as the hero of the hour slowly walks around and bows with arms thrown out wide as though to embrace the whole cheering multitude.

Everything is gay and happy now. Even the man that follows after the hero and picks up the hats, scarfs, and pillows that litter the ground and tosses them lightly back to the owners above is laughing. Yes, even the man that pushed the wheelbarrow in the grand opening procession is happy, basking in reflected glory, as he trundles his burden around the ring, sprinkling sawdust over the blood spots.

It was not until the monosabios, "wise monkeys", came to drag out the bull, destined now for food for a nearby hospital, that Bess again tried to attract Nan's attention.

"Nan, I tell you that that's Linda Riggs down there below us," she said insistently this time. "Look at the way she's tossing her head and talking to that man that's next to her. You would think that he was a prince, a handsome prince, the way she is acting."

"Why, Bess, you're right. That is Linda." Nan at last drew her eyes away from the ring and looked at the girl Bess was pointing to.

"Yes, and I'm sure she saw us a while ago," Laura contributed. She too had been watching the girl that the Lakeview crowd had grown to dislike so cordially. "You know the way she always looks around her to see whether there is anyone she really ought to be decent to, anyone that might be able to do something for her. Well, she did that when she first came in. I saw her, but I wasn't going to say anything because I didn't want to spoil the fun we were having."

"I'll bet she sneered when she saw us," Bess said. "She's always hated us and especially since we had the laugh on her on the boat last summer."

"Oh, Bess, that wasn't exactly a laugh," Nan protested. "The girl almost drowned."

"Yes, and you went and saved her. And what thanks did you get?" Bess could always be indignant when she thought of Linda Riggs. "You should have let her alone. I would have. I would have enjoyed seeing the waves wash her over-board. I would have looked over the rail and laughed when I saw her screaming and waving her arms and trying to keep herself from going under."

"You little fiend!" Nan exclaimed. "How can you say such things?"

"Because they are true," Bess retorted. "People like her shouldn't be allowed to clutter up things. She makes everybody that knows her unhappy, so what good is she anyway? Her father is always trying to get her out of trouble. Look at her down there now. You can see by the way she's holding her head that she's mean and proud and deceitful."

"Bess, be quiet!" Nan warned. "You'll have everyone looking at you. Linda is a little prig and she does make trouble and I don't like her any more than you do, but there's no use making things unpleasant because she's happened to turn up here where we are. Forget her."

"Forget her!" Bess exclaimed. "You can't forget a thorn that's forever sticking in your flesh. Trying to forget her doesn't do any good. She always makes trouble. It's best to watch her so that you will be prepared for what happens."

Perhaps Bess was right. Certainly, if at other times Nan and Bess had been more watchful they might have been able to avoid trouble. But Nan always believed that there was some good in everyone and she was always trustful. She felt often that Linda, because of her wealth and the fact that her mother was dead and her father tried to give her everything she wanted, was not entirely to blame for her actions. And Bess, well, Bess's attitude toward Linda had changed considerably since their first meeting.

Then Bess had thought that the daughter of the railroad magnate would be a nice person to have for a friend, for Bess was decidedly impressed by her wealth, by the way she ordered people around, and the way she dressed. Bess had even written home in the first days at school and told her mother that she didn't have at all the proper kind of clothes to wear, if she was going to chum around with people that amounted to something. She had Linda in mind when she wrote it, Linda's clothes and Linda's social position. But Linda had soon shown Bess that there was no room for her in her world.

Girls that Linda called friend, if there was any such word in her vocabulary, had to bow to all her wishes. She liked them only if they thought everything she did and said was right. No girl could be her friend and have a will of her own. No girl could be her friend and have other friends too. Linda wanted to be the very center of everyone's attention. As a consequence she had no real friends at all.

Bess never analyzed this to herself, but after one or two attempts to go around with Linda, she gave up entirely and grew to dislike her very much, as all the readers of the Nan Sherwood series know. She disliked her particularly because of the mean things she had done to Nan, for if Bess had no other outstanding characteristic, she did have a sense of justice that was almost as strong as Nan's.

This she had although her sympathies were not as deep nor as understanding as Nan's. Bess was apt to accept or reject things and people on account of appearances. Nan never did this. She liked everyone and had always had some sort of sixth sense that made her look beneath surfaces and find the true person. Thus she made friends with all sorts of people.

This was the reason that Nan led such an adventurous life. This was the reason everyone liked her. Everyone called Linda snobbish. A few people called Bess the same. But no one ever thought of applying the word to Nan.

And Nan seldom talked about people. So now, as the girls sat in the arena in Mexico City waiting for the next bullfighter to come into the ring, Nan was doing her best to quiet her friend.

"There's no reason whatsoever to get so excited," she said in an undertone to Bess. "She's sitting way down below us so we won't have to even talk to her when we go out. We'll be up the stairs and out the exit before she does. We'll probably never even see her again while we're here."

"That's right," Laura agreed, talking in a whisper too. "And though you might think that you could prepare yourself for what might happen if you did encounter Linda, you never could. No one ever knows what that girl might do. And, Elizabeth Harley, you're not smart enough to guess." Laura being Laura with her red hair and her love for battle couldn't resist adding this thrust.

"Well, I could try anyway," Bess retorted.

"Say, what are you people all talking about so quietly?" Amelia leaned over and asked now. "Why, you didn't even pay any attention when Mr. Jamieson took Grace out."

"Took Grace out!" Nan exclaimed, noticing now for the first time that two in the party were missing. "Why?"

"She almost fainted when she saw all the blood streaming from the bull, so just before he was killed, Walker Jamieson took her by the arm and said they were going for a walk and would be back soon."

"I don't blame her," Bess said emphatically. "I would have fainted myself--"

"--if you had been watching the bullfight instead of Linda Riggs," Nan supplied the end of the sentence.

"I guess you are right," Bess laughed. "That girl certainly does have a habit of getting in my hair. I'm always on pins and needles whenever she is around."

"There, Bessie," Nan tried to smooth her friend's ruffled feelings. "Just you sit quietly and watch the next fight and you'll feel better. We'll see that Linda doesn't cross your path."

"She hadn't better," Bess replied and then did try to devote herself to watching the next fight on the program.