Toro! Toro! Read Online Free PDF

no one could help me.
    Then, as my thoughts gathered themselves, I wondered if I might have given them up too quickly. I should have searched for them back at home. They could have got out alive. Others had.
    I rode home as fast as Chica would carry me, scouring the fields around me as I went. As I came into the farmyard I called out, but only the goats answered me. I looked in every barn, in every shed. I rode out over the fields, calling for them, calling for them, till my throat was raw, and I knew it was hopeless to go on.
    I was sitting on the steps to the barn, my head in my hands, when I heard voices. I stood up. Soldiers. Hundreds of them were moving up the valley towardsthe farm, towards the village – not our soldiers, but other soldiers in different uniforms. If I ran for it, I would be seen before I reached the trees. The barn was my only chance.
    I darted inside, and looked for somewhere to hide, anywhere. The voices were coming closer. I climbed the ladder to the hayloft, burrowed myself deep into the hay, curled myself up and was still. They were outside in the yard now, and laughing. I heard Chica whinnying and go galloping off. They were firing, whether at Chica or not I did not know. I curled myself up tighter and gritted my teeth to stop myself crying out loud.
    I heard heavy footsteps in the barn below me, and a soldier’s voice: “Let’s burn the place down.”
    “Later,” came the reply, “we’ve more important work in Sauceda. Let’s go.”
    I lay where I was until I was quite sure it was safe. When at last I ventured out from under the hay, I found the whole farm deserted, except for Chica who was grazing contentedly with the pigs. I was down the ladder in a trice, and haring out across the yard. I scrambled under the fence and ran across the field towards Chica, scattering the pigs as I came. She stood still for me to mount her, and then we were away, galloping towards the hills and safety.
    I rode up the same track I had taken the night before, but Chica was tired now and finding the going hard. She was breathing heavily, so after an hour or so I decided I must let her rest. I dismounted by a spring so that Chica could rest andhave a drink at the same time. As she drank I looked down into the valley below, and saw the smoking ruins of Sauceda.
    That was the moment the shooting began. I stood there and hid my face in my hands as the people of Sauceda were massacred. The sound of that shooting still echoes in my head all these years later. There was a terrible evil done that day. I didn’t understand the nature of evil as a young boy, but I understood the loss. I understood that now I had no mother, no father, no sister, no family, no friends, no home. All were gone from me in one day. But I still had Paco. I had Chica, too. I wasn’t entirely alone.
    It was dusk before we reached the clearing and the stone corral again. I called for Paco as I rode up to the gate, but he didnot come. He did not come because he was not there. I discovered a gaping hole in the stone wall. Paco had burst his way through and was gone. I was neither sad nor glad. Certainly Paco had been saved from the
corrida.
But all that had suddenly become very unimportant.
    Exhausted, I lay down to sleep in the ruined shepherd’s hut with Chica beside me for warmth. Like Chica, I had drunk from the stream nearby, but I ached with hunger, and with the pain of my loss. When I closed my eyes I saw Mother’s face, and Father’s and Maria’s, and our home burning. I heard the shooting and the crackling of flames. I slept only fitfully, fearful of my nightmares, so that I was relieved to wake and find it was morning. But hunger was still gnawing at my stomach.
    Looking back, I think perhaps it was the hunger that saved me in my early days in the hills, for it drove all other thoughts from my mind. I
had
to find food. I knew where to look – I had been out often enough with Mother or Maria picking the wild asparagus or mushrooms