Imperial Valley press., 1909-05-22
Bull Butchers, BunCo Artists and ChickennFighters
 Make Holiday
rormented Toro Turns Upon Torrea- dor and, Puts Him Out of the Game --Reggariy Attendance at the Last of the Mexlcali Slaughter House Matlnees.

ADuuL tWO OI luISG PCO- pie, and but few of them Americans, paid to see two bulls slowly tor tured to death in the plaza de toros" at Mexicali last Sunday. The spec tacle was bestial and revolting. It was made horrible by the goring nearly unto death of one of the play CTS of the bloody game, an unskill- full fellow who failed to dodge the charge of the bull.
 More hideous than the gorlng of the prostrate man was the indiffer- ence of the spectators and of the mans comrades. Not sign of com passion was given when the man, ash en gray of face and dripping blood, was borne through the crowd. There was a delay of five minutes, and the sport went on.
 To the men in the ring, the mis- hap was all in the days work. To the spectators 1t was an additional qualification of the blood-lust that explains the bull fight as an institu- tion established and regulated in all its details by law and presided over by the highest public officials in Spain and Spanish America.
 There are bullfighters who do their killing with skill and celerity, deliv- ering the deadly sword-thrust with precision The "matador" at Mexi- cali Is bungling butcher, who would be hissed from the ring in the City of Mexico. He is agile and skilled in lodging and doubtless has been one z of a company of bullfighters, but he Is no matador. He made a bloody bungle of his work and lost his sword many times, and the spectators jeer- ed him in Spanish. After many at tempts, he managed to slaughter two lean, weak legged bulls that did their best to get away from him and ran bawling about the ring, their tongues lolling and their eyes showing their terror.
 A third bull was let into the ring. It was an active, alert animanl, en- tirely willing to fight, and the vali- ant toreadors gave it plenty of room. The men played tag with the bull for few minutes, and then the ex- alted officials, whose presence is in dispensible and who direct the sport, arose from their seats in the official box and left the arena. Their de- parture was the curtain-cue and the show was over. It was explained that the gate-receipts, most of which go into official pockets, were not suffi- cient to pay for any more bulls. What needed no explanation was the evil dent relief of the valiant bullflghters when the active and belligerent bull was returned to the corral.
 Not one of the advertised prom ises, by which dollars were lured from private pockets to official hands, was fulfilled. There was no wrestling match, no burlesque bullfight, but one attempt to pole-vault over a charg- ing bull, and but two were butcher ed From the view point of an Am erican the affair was an exhibition of squalid brutality; from the Mexican point of view it was a sordid fake.
 Before and after the play, "an hour in a slaughter pen" another bunco game was played on the street in Mexicali. One of Poker Davis's bunch of grafters set up layout and trimmed suckers" with an old game of the circus days. He had cappers, who won at the right times to en- courage greedy green horns and fur lively handed back the winning. The American grafter's loot exceeded that of the bullfight bunco artists, but he may not have taken any more away. What percentage of the plunder he gave up to exalted officials for the privilege of robbing fools is not pub iicly advertised, but 1t Is a cinch that If he had neglected to obtain official sanction of his game by agreeing to cut up the plunder on a satisfactory basis he would not have made more than one throw of the dice. This grafter's victims were not all simple paisanos. Ranchers and clerks from the American side supplied him with his richest pickings. and the deluded fools kept OH borrowing money to