(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.