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.

The bear, at pause in her circlings while she snuffed at the bars that
now separated her from her cubs, whirled and lifted herself awkwardly
upon her haunches, her narrow head thrust forward sinisterly as she
faced this fresh annoyance. Midway, the bull stopped with two or three
stiff-legged jumps and glared at her, a little chagrined, perhaps, at
the sudden transformation from human foe to this grizzled hill-giant
whom instinct had taught him to fear. In his calf-hood he had fled many
times before the menace of grizzly, and perhaps he remembered. At any
rate he stiffened his forelegs, stopped short, and glared.

Up above, the breaths that had been held came in a shout together.
Everyone who saw the pause yelled to the bull to go on and prove his
courage. And the bull, when the first shock of surprise and distaste had
passed, backed ominously, head lowered, tail switching in spasmodic
jerks from side to side. The bear stood a little straighter in her
defiance; her head went forward an inch; beyond that she did not move,
for her tactics were not to rush but to wait, and to put every ounce of
her terrible strength into the meeting.

The neck of the bull swelled and curved, his eyeballs showed glassy.
His back humped; like a bowlder hurled down a mountain slope he made his
rush, and nothing could swerve him.

The bear might have dodged, and sent him crashing against the wall. Men
hoped that she would, and so prolong the excitement. But she did not.
She stood there and waited, her forepaws outspread as if for an embrace.

Like a bullet sent true to the target, the head of the bull met the
gaunt, ungainly, gray shape; met and went down, the tip of one sharp
horn showing in the rough hair of her back, her body collapsing limply
across the neck she had broken with one tremendous side-blow as he
struck. A moment she struggled and clawed futilely to free herself, then
lay as quiet as the bull himself. And so that spectacle ended swiftly
and suddenly.

In the reaction which followed that ten-seconds' suspense, men grumbled
because it had ended so soon. But, upon second thoughts, its very
brevity brought the duel just