it when the bull, by a supreme effort, lifted itself on three legs, half
turned, and faced him.
These events had passed too quickly for the inexperienced boy to
have felt any active fear, or indeed anything but wild excitement and
confusion. But the spectacle of that shaggy and enormous front, that
seemed to fill the whole gully, rising with awful deliberation between
him and escape, sent a thrill of terror through his frame. The great,
dull, bloodshot eyes glared at him with a dumb, wondering fury; the
large wet nostrils were so near that their first snort of inarticulate
rage made him reel backwards as from a blow. The gully was only a
narrow and short fissure or subsidence of the plain; a few paces more of
retreat and he would be at its end, against an almost perpendicular
bank fifteen feet high. If he attempted to climb its crumbling sides and
fell, there would be those short but terrible horns waiting to impale
him! It seemed too terrible, too cruel! He was so small beside this
overgrown monster. It wasn't fair! The tears started to his eyes, and
then, in a rage at the injustice of Fate, he stood doggedly still with
clenched fists. He fixed his gaze with half-hysterical, childish fury on
those lurid eyes; he did not know that, owing to the strange magnifying
power of the bull's convex pupils, he, Clarence, appeared much bigger
than he really was to the brute's heavy consciousness, the distance from
him most deceptive, and that it was to this fact that hunters so often
owed their escape. He only thought of some desperate means of attack.
Ah! the six-shooter. It was still in his pocket. He drew it nervously,
hopelessly--it looked so small compared with his large enemy!
He presented it with flashing eyes, and pulled the trigger. A feeble
click followed, another, and again! Even THIS had mocked him. He
pulled the trigger once more, wildly; there was a sudden explosion, and
another. He stepped back; the balls had apparently flattened themselves
harmlessly on the bull's forehead. He pulled again, hopelessly; there
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