Page:A La California.djvu/173

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COMBAT AND VICTORY.
141

feet upon the sidewalk, announce the presence of physical danger and the commencement of a general stampede. Out of Pacific Street into Kearney, with head erect, glaring eyes, and nostrils wide distended with rage, terror and fatigue, rushes a wild, longhorned, Spanish steer, which has broken away from a drove being landed at North Beach, and, Malaylike, is running a muck through the city, to the imminent peril of life and limb of every person he meets on his way. The frightened and infuriated animal dashes madly at every living object which attracts his attention, knocks down and tramples upon several persons not fleet enough to escape him, and is only prevented from goring them to death with his long, sharp horns, by the shouts and execrations of his pursuers, two swarthy, Mexican vaqueros, mounted and equipped like the poundmaster's assistant, who are all the time close upon him, endeavoring to head him off and turn him back or capture him at the first opportunity. Dashing full tilt at a passing vehicle, the steer recoils half-stunned from the shock, and in an instant the lasso, hurled by one of the vaqueros, is around his head under the horns, and the other has caught him in a similar manner by one of the hind legs. One of the vaqueros, with a deep-drawn "C-a-r-a-j-o!" swings his excited pony-steed sharply half around in one direction, the other swings his in the opposite; there is a sharp thud as each rieta straightens like a bowstring, and the steer goes down heavily in the dust. He struggles madly in the toils for an instant, but in less time than it takes to write this, or to read it,