“Tomorrow will be time enough, Henry. He is in pasture.”

“We have a good hour before dark,” Henry suggested. “Wouldn’t it give us enough time?”

Again Alec thought he perceived the nervous tic just below the eye and directly above the deep running scar.

“It will take more than an hour to make you comfortable in my home,” González said graciously but with great finality. He glanced across the fields. “However, you can see him in his paddock from here. Look beyond where the bulls graze.”

Far in the distance and separated from the herd by another stone wall Alec could just make out the figure of a running horse and his band of mares and colts. He watched the horse until the car started again and then he turned back to González. The man’s hat cord was drawn tight, cutting into the flesh of his heavy jowls.

Alec waited until an immense house rose into view behind a towering white wall before asking, “Did you breed and raise El Dorado?”

There was a moment’s hesitation and this time there was no doubt of the nervous tic high on González’ right cheek. The muscular contraction almost closed the man’s eye.

“No,” González said finally, “he was the gift of an old school friend who does not live in Spain.”

“Would you mind telling me the name of the country?” Alec asked cautiously, for it was apparent that his host was not pleased with his prying.

The golden sombrero dipped forward. “Arabia. El Dorado is desert bred.” The man’s words came sharply and it was plain this particular conversation had come to an end.

Alec didn’t care. He’d found out what he wanted to know. He tried to still his mounting excitement. Was it possible that the sire of the Black was alive and that he had just seen him?

BLACK BULLS
4

Don Angel Rafael González did not bring the car to a stop before the arched courtyard entrance of the big house. Instead he drove around it, going very slowly and carefully avoiding the crowd that suddenly emerged from nowhere.

Several old women carrying huge clay bowls of food moved among big-hatted men. From a building that must have been the kitchen came the smell of wood smoke and sizzling hot beef. The men doffed their straw hats to González and shouted at the children and barking dogs to clear the way for the moving car.

González said, “First we shall see your horse rubbed down and fed and bedded safe in a stall with clean straw.”

“Do you have any enclosure in which we could turn him loose for a few minutes?” Alec asked. “I like to turn him out while he’s still tired from traveling. That way he gets used to his new surroundings without being too playful.”

González nodded. “I have one such ring big enough for him to run in without getting hurt.”

They drove past the stables, leaving behind the smell of wood smoke. In its place the balmy air became heavy with the sour fermented odor of silage and grain. They passed the small, dark huts of the ranch hands and then before them rose a high whitewashed wall. A ranch hand rode by, hurrying to his supper and singing while his heels hit his horse’s flanks in a soft rhythm. His eyes moved over Alec and Henry in a bold stare but suddenly his tobacco-stained teeth showed in a broad grin of welcome.

As González drove through a gate in the high stone wall the grunt of a bull could be heard. The Black echoed the grunt with a shrill snort.

González said, “There is no reason for concern. The bulls here are penned.” The car was moving slowly through a tunnel in the wall.

“Where are we?” Henry asked.

“In my big bull corral,” their host explained. “It is here that I train my horses and prepare my bulls for shipment.” He continued on through the tunnel and they emerged into a large open ring encircled by four or five ascending rows of concrete seats. He turned the car in the center of the sand ring and then drove back into the tunnel, stopping when the rear door of the trailer was just within the ring.

“There,” he said, “now you can turn him loose.”

“But how about the bulls?” Alec asked with concern. He could hear their grunts, louder now than before.

“They are in the back pens and feeding,” González replied. “I shall show them to you if you like.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Alec said.