dobe corral. Through the barred ceiling of the pen
they prodded the bear from her sulking and sent her, malevolent and
sullen, into the arena. (Senoras tucked vivid skirts closer about stocky
ankles and sent murmurous appeals to their patron saints, and senoritas
squealed in trepidation that was at least half sincere. It was a very
big bear, and she truly looked very fierce and as if she would think
nothing of climbing the adobe wall and devouring a whole front seat full
of fluttering femininity! Rosa screamed and was immediately reassured,
when Teresita reminded her that those fierce gringos across the corral
had many guns.)

The bear did not give more than one look of hatred at the flutter above.
Loose-skinned and loose-jointed she shambled across the corral; lifted
her pointed nose to sniff disgustedly the air tainted with the odor of
enemies whom she could not reach with her huge paws, and went on. Clear
around the corral she walked, her great, hand-like feet falling as
silently as the leaf shadows that splashed one whole corner and danced
all over her back when she passed that way; back to the pen where her
two cubs whimpered against the bars, and watched her wishfully with pert
little tiltings of their heads. (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