You creep along the dusty road more cautiously, and ascending a small hilltop perceive…well, gadzooks, you scarcely know what you're looking at.
There are three players in the unfolding comedy: a slim mule, weathered with age, attached to a ramshackle cart loaded with woven bags; a ruddy-faced woman of middle age, strongly built, gripping a hunting knife in terror; and a marvelously large specimen of a black bear (a third again as big as the mule) sitting on its rump in the road and looking longingly at the cart.
"Back, devil, back," the woman calls in a deep, quavering voice. The bear growls back at her, more question than threat, but she staggers back on her heels as if struck. The uneasy mule pulls away from the bear, and the beast lifts itself up to follow.
The woman moans in fear and bends down, her whole body tensing up. Hang me, you think, she's about to slice at that bear with her knitting needle there. There's no way this turns out well for anyone.