Bears as Predators ~

[brotherbear]

Continued from post #119... First Bull.
"By the time the bear had stormed around long enough to get well limbered up after being tied all night, the signal was given, the horseman affected his disappearance, and in dashed a bull through an open gate. He was of the old longhorn breed but of great weight and power. He had been roaming the hills all summer, living like a deer in the chaparral of the rough mountains and was quick and wild as any deer. He too, like old Bruin, had been captured with the noosed lasso in a sudden dash of horsemen on a little flat he had to cross to go to a spring at daylight, and felt no more in love with mankind than did the bear. As he dashed across the arena it looked as if the fight was going to be an unequaled one, but the bear gave a glance that intimated that no one need waste sympathy on him. 
"No creature is so ready for immediate business than is the bull turned loose in an amphitheater of human faces. He seems to know they are there to see him fight and he wants them to get their money's worth. So, as soon as the gate admits him, he goes for everything in sight with the dash of a cyclone. Things that outside he would fly from or not notice, he darts at as eagerly as a terrier for a rat the instant he sees them in the ring. 
"This bull came from the same mountains as the bear and they were old acquaintances, though the acquaintance had been cultivated on the run as the bull tore with thundering hoofs through the tough manzanita and went plunging down the steep hillside as the evening breeze wafted the strong scent of the bear to his keen nose. But now, in the arena, he spent no time looking for a way of escape but, at a pace that seemed impossible for even the great weight of the bear to resist, he rushed across the ring directly at the enemy as if he had been looking for him all of his life. 
"With wonderful quickness for so large an animal the bear rose on his legs and coolly waited until the long sharp horns were within a yard of his breast. Then up went the great paws, one on each side of the bull's head, and the sharp points of the horns whirled up from horizontal to perpendicular, then almost to horizontal again as bull and bear went rolling over together. In a twinkling the bear was on his feet again, but the bull lay limp as a rag, his neck broken. Reply