As the parade passed through town in full blare, spectators converged on the arena. A St. Louis correspondent wrote that, “all over the space between the Arkansas River on the south and the hill crest…on the north, the current of life was running but one way—namely, due west” toward the fairgrounds. Meanwhile, the bulls were herded into the arena’s holding pens from the nearby corrals under the supervision of Stephen Chappell, the track’s official horseman (and competitor in the previous two days’ roping and racing). One by one the beasts’ horn tips were sawed off and the blunted ends smoothed with a rasp, minimizing risk to the matadors. The first attempt at this was “a decided failure”; the horns were trimmed to the quick and bled so badly the animal was sidelined.

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At 2:45 the first spectators were admitted into the freshly-painted grandstands and in short order a beyond-capacity crowd of about 4,000, about three times Dodge’s resident population, jammed the bleachers.  An estimated third of these were women and children. Catcalling and hoorawing ensued as the crowd anxiously awaited the start of the show, most of it from the cowboys whose goals, according to the St. Louis reporter, “seemed to be to get a big fat girl and a high seat at the same time.” Generally, though, the crowd was well-behaved despite stifling 100-degree-plus heat; the presence of several armed marshals and deputy sheriffs no doubt helped keep it so. To one of the latter fell the unenviable task of drawing a demarcation line between the respectable ladies and those “not remarkable for sanctity,” with only his own judgment as to which was which.

At 3:40 the matadors entered to a thunderous ovation. Their working attire was far less American—Gallardo wore his nation’s colors of red, white and green, while Evaristo Rivas wore yellow trimmed in red and a white cap with horns. The other two matadors wore red and blue and the picador was dressed in the simple working duds of a cowboy.

With few preliminaries, the Cowboy Band blew a fanfare, Chappell ushered in the first bull—a huge red monster—and the fight commenced. Maddened by the swishing red cape and the colorfully festooned banderillas—harpoon-like “darts” about 2 feet long —soon protruding from his neck and shoulders, the beast made the matadors hunt their holes time after time, all to the crowd’s wild delight. After a half-hour the bull tired, and Chappell rode in to rope him and haul him away. The cowboy couldn’t resist the crowd’s urging to put on his own show, and tried to throw the the animal. The big brute proved too much for him, though, and kept his feet, and once herded back into the chute decided to show how much too much. He dropped his head and charged, but luckily for Chappell, only grazed his horse.

Despite the lively doings, one of Bergh’s hometown journalists was oddly unimpressed by this first exhibition, his dispatch to The New York Times reporting only “a fair fight” on the bull’s part. Apparently one gent from the sophisticated East had a hankering for bloodshed; by the end of the day, he’d have it.

The next four bulls proved far less game than the first, each more docile than the one before. The second and third were derided as “cowards,” who lost all fight once pincushioned with darts. The next was the one whose horns had been cropped to the quick and, like Samson shorn, was “good for no purpose.” The fifth bull panicked and lodged himself in one of the escape chutes. He was only coaxed out again by a quirting from a cowboy seated in the bottom row.

The interest of the hot, tired assembly began to wane. Some of the onlookers milled toward the exits. Others began shouting for the first bull to return; they’d been promised a fight to the death and were determined to leave satisfied. The astute organizers took action and the big red bull, the clear crowd favorite, was hustled back into the ring. He made a theatrical entrance, dragging Chappell’s lasso behind him, and it took both Chappell and another cowboy to throw the burly brute and recover the rope. Their attention recaptured, the crowd stomped, hooted, and cheered the cowboys on. When they rode out and the bullfighters took over, the spectators were primed for the showdown.

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