Which was what they wanted, evidently. He felt a cold something suddenly thrust between his teeth. It was hard as well as cold. He tasted it, rolled it over his tongue, and found it not painful. Then came something else. His head was being hurriedly fitted with a leathery contrivance. But neither was this painful, save only as it touched his twisted ears, and he therefore experienced no increasing alarm. Then, with this adjusted, he was introduced to something else--a something held close under his nose. He smelled this carefully; noted that it reeked with odors of the stable; smelled it again. Next he knew it was being placed gently upon his back. It was soft, and quite hairy, and though it irritated him a little, he accepted it without loss of composure. But when it was followed, as it was directly, by a heavier something, a something fitting his back snug and hard, he instantly determined to rebel, despite his twisted ears. But he could not withstand the increased pain, and he permitted the thing to be made secure with straps around his body. And now came a heavier something, a free and loose weight, something with spring and give to it, and which had flung up from the ground. And suddenly, flaying his pained senses, understanding flashed upon him. This was a man. There was a tormentor upon his back, gripping the thing in his mouth, holding him solidly to the ground. He-- "Go!" It was a word of command. With the word Pat felt his ears released. As he thrilled with relief the cloth was jerked off his eyes. For a time the fierce daylight blinded him. Then the pupils of his eyes contracted and all objects stood out clearly again--the men in the corral, the spectators on the fence, his mistress outside the fence. Also he saw the sunlit stable, and Miguel in the doorway, and the house in the trees. All had come back to him, and he stood gazing about him blinkingly, trying to understand, conscious of straps binding his body and restraining his breathing. Then suddenly he understood--remembered--remembered that he had been abused, had been tortured as never before. And he awoke to the fact that he was still being tortured. There was this thing in his mouth. There was this contraption on his head. There was that thing on his back, and the weight upon the thing. Also, there was that binding of his belly, and the irritation due to the prickly something pressing his back and sides. All these facts stung him, and under the whip of them he awoke to a mighty urging within. It was his fighting spirit rekindling--the thing that was his birthright, the thing come down to him from his ancestors, the thing that told him to rebel against the unnatural. And heeding this, voice, heeding it because he knew no other, he decided to give decisive battle.