(Teresita was confiding to Rosa, beside
her, that they would each have a cub for a pet when the mother bear was
killed).
Valencia and Pancho and one other were straining to shift the gate of
another pen. It was awkward, since they must work from the top; for the
adobe corral was as the jaws of a lion while the bear circled watchfully
there, and the pen they were striving to open was no safer, with the
big, black bull rolling bloodshot eyes at them from below. He had been
teased with clods of dirt and small stones flung at him. He had shaken
the very posts in their sockets with the impact of his huge body while
he tried to reach his tormentors, until they desisted in the fear that
he would break his horns off in his rage and so would cheat them of the
sight of the good, red blood of the she-bear. Now he was in a fine,
fighting mood, and he had both horns with which to fight. From his
muzzle dribbled the froth of his anger, as he stiffened his great neck
and rumbled a challenge to all the world. Twice, when the gate moved an
inch or two and creaked with straining, he came at it so viciously that
it jammed again; indeed, it was the batterings of the bull that had made
it so hard to open.
Valencia, catching a timbered crosspiece, gave it a lift and a heave.
The gate came suddenly free and slid back as they strained at the
crosspiece. The bull, from the far side of the pen where he had backed
for another rush, shot clear through the opening and half-way across the
adobe corral before he realized that he was free.
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