Manolo Martinez of the barrio of Ruzafa in Valencia, slight, with his round eyes, his twisted-crooked face, his thin smile, looks as though he belonged around a race track or like one of the best of the tough citizens you knew around the poolrooms when you were a boy. Many critics deny he is a great killer because he has never had any luck in Madrid and the editors of the French bullfight paper, he Toril, a very good periodical, deny him all merit because he has sense enough not to risk his life when fighting in the south of France where any sword that disappears into the bull, no matter how placed, or how trickily inserted, is universally applauded. Martinez is as brave as Fortuna and he is never bored. He loves to kill and he is not conceited as Villalta is; when it comes out well he is pleased, seemingly as much for you as for himself. He has been greatly punished by the bulls and I saw him get a terrible cornada one year in Valencia. His work with cape and muleta is unsound, but if the bull is a frank, fast charger Martinez works as close as any man can pass bulls. This day he had a bull that hooked to the right and he seemingly did not notice the defect. The bull bumped him once in passing with the cape and the next time Martinez passed him on the same side and did not give him room he caught him with the horn and tossed him. He was unwounded, the horn had slid along the skin without catching and had only torn his trousers, but he had come down on his head and was groggy and on his next turn with the cape he took the bull all the way out into the centre of the ring and there, alone, tried to pass him closely on the right side again. Of course the bull caught him, his defect had been accentuated by his success at getting the man before, and this time the horn went in, and Martinez went into the air on the horn, the bull tossed him clear, and as he lay still on the ground, gored at him again and again before the other bullfighters running to the centre of the ring could attract the bull away. As Manolo rose to his feet he saw the blood pumping from his groin and knowing the femoral artery was severed he put both hands over it to try to contain the hemorrhage and ran as fast as he could for the infirmary. He knew his life was going out in that stream that spurted between his fingers and he could not wait to be carried. They tried to grab him, but he shook his head. Dr. Serra came running down the passageway and Martinez shouted to him, "Don Paco, I've got a big cornada!" and with Dr. Serra pressing with his thumb to stop the artery they went into the infirmary together. The horn had passed almost completely through his thigh, his loss of blood was so tremendous and he was so weak and prostrated no one believed he would live and at one time, being unable to get any pulse, they announced he was dead. The destruction in the muscle was so great no one thought he would be able to fight again if he lived, but being gored on the 31st of July he was well enough to fight in Mexico on the 18th of October due to his constitution and the skill of Dr. Paco Serra. Martinez has suffered terrible horn wounds, rarely when killing; but usually from his desire to work close to bulls that will not permit it and his fundamental unsoundness in handling the cape and muleta and desire to keep his feet absolutely together when letting the bull pass; but his horn wounds only seem to refresh his valor. He is a local fighter. I have never seen him really good except in Valencia, but in 1927 in a fair that was built around Juan Belmonte and Marcial Lalanda and for which Martinez was not even contracted, when Belmonte and Marcial were gored he came in to substitute and fought three fights in which he was superb; doing everything with cape and muleta so closely and dangerously and taking such chances you could not believe it possible the bulls would not kill him, and then, when it was time to kill, profiling closely, arrogantly, rocking a little back on his heels to plant himself solidly, his left knee a little bent, settling his weight on the other foot, then going in and killing in a way no living man could better. In 1931 he was dangerously gored in Madrid and was still unrecovered when he fought in Valencia. The critics all say he is finished now, but he has made his living proving them wrong from the start and I believe as soon as his nerves and muscles will obey his heart again he will be the same as ever until a bull destroys him. With his unsoundness and inability to dominate a difficult bull coupled to his great bravery that seems inevitable. His valor is almost humorous. It is a sort of cockney bravery, while Villalta's is conceited, Fortuna's is dumb, and Zurito's is mystic.

The valor of Luis Freg, he has no art, except with the sword, is the strangest that I know. It is as indestructible as the sea, but there is no salt in it unless it is the salt of his own blood and human blood has a sweet and sickly taste in spite of its saline quality. If Luis Freg had died in any of the four times that I remember him being given up as dead I could write more freely of his character. He is a Mexican Indian, heavy-set now, soft-voiced, soft-handed, nose rather hooked, slant-eyed, full mouth, very black hair, the only matador who still wears the pigtail plaited on his head and he has been a full matador in Mexico since Johnson fought Jeffries at Reno, Nevada, in 1910 and in Spain since the year after that fight. In the twenty-one years he has fought as a matador the bulls have given him seventy-two severe horn wounds. No bullfighter who ever lived has been so punished by the bulls as he has. He has received extreme unction five different times when he was believed certain to die. His legs are as gnarled and twisted by scars as the branches of an old oak tree and his chest and his abdomen are covered with scars of wounds that should have killed him. Most of them have come from his heaviness on his feet and his inability to control the bulls with cape and muleta. He was a great killer though; slow, secure and straight and the few times, few in proportion to his other gorings, that he was wounded when killing were due to his lack of speed of foot to come out from between the horns and along the flank after he had the sword in rather than to any defects in his technique. His terrible gorings, his months in the hospitals, which used up all his money, had no effect on his valor at all. But it was a strange valor. It never fired you; it was not contagious. You saw it, appreciated it and knew the man was brave, but somehow it was as though courage was a syrup rather than a wine or the taste of salt and ashes in your mouth. If qualities have odors the odor of courage to me is the smell of smoked leather or the smell of a frozen road or the smell of the sea when the wind rips the top from a wave, but the valor of Luis Freg did not have that odor. It was clotted and heavy and there was a thin part underneath that was unpleasant and oozy and when he is dead I will tell you about him and it is a strange-enough story.

The last time he was given up for dead at Barcelona, torn open terribly, the wound full of pus, delirious and dying, every one believed, he said, "I see death. I see it clearly. Ayee. Ayee. It is an ugly thing." He saw death clearly, but it did not come. He is broke now and giving a final series of farewell performances. He was marked for death for twenty years and death never took him.

There you have portraits of five killers. If we can synthesize from studying good killers you might say that a great killer needs honor, courage, a good physique, a good style, a great left hand and much luck. Then he needs a good press and plenty of contracts. The location, and the effect, of estocadas and the various manners of killing are described in the glossary.

If the people of Spain have one common trait it is pride and if they have another it is common sense and if they have a third it is impracticality. Because they have pride they do not mind killing; feeling that they are worthy to give this gift. As they have common sense they are interested in death and do not spend their lives avoiding the thought of it and hoping it does not exist only to discover it when they come to die. This common sense that they possess is as hard and dry as the plains and mesas of Castille and it diminishes in hardness and dryness as it goes away from Castille. At its best it is combined with a complete impracticality. In the south it becomes picturesque; along the littoral it becomes mannerless and Mediterranean; in the north in Navarra and Aragon there is such a tradition of bravery that it becomes romantic, and along the Atlantic coast, as in all countries bounded by a cold sea, life is so practical there is no time for common sense. Death, to people who fish in the cold parts of the Atlantic ocean is something that may come at any time, that comes often and is to be avoided as an industrial accident; so that they are not preoccupied with it and it has no fascination for them.