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Title: Beyond Rope and Fence
Author: Grew, David
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Beyond Rope and Fence" ***
BEYOND ROPE
AND FENCE
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
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Beyond Rope
and Fence
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_DAVID GREW_
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[Illustration]
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_Boni and Liveright_
_Publishers ~ New York_
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_Copyright, 1922, by_
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
───────
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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_To you, dear old Dora, who inspired this book, I dedicate it. I regret
most poignantly that life has ordained that you may never know, despite
my caresses and my quart measures filled to overflowing with oats, how
deeply I have sympathised with you in those moments when you stood
motionless before me and I could see by the strange, sad light in your
eyes that you were dreaming of long departed, happy years of freedom on
the plains._
D. G.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD i
I. FOR THE LOVE OF HER FOAL 1
II. TO THE NORTH! 25
III. DEATH IN THE HOWL OF COYOTES 35
IV. A SEEKING THAT FOUND 48
V. MAN, THE USURPER 59
VI. HOW MAN BREAKS THE SPIRIT AND 75
THE BODY
VII. THE CONSPIRACY OF MAN AND 87
COYOTE
VIII. RETRIBUTION 116
IX. SLOWLY MAN CREPT NORTHWARD 123
X. THE DOORS OF THE TRAP SHUT 133
XI. ROPE, IRON AND FIRE 163
XII. THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK 178
XIII. LABOUR WITHOUT LOVE OR WAGE 195
XIV. ONLY JUSTICE HAD BEEN DONE 201
XV. THE TRAIL OF THE MOOSE 225
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FOREWORD
In the fall of the year, the farmers and the ranchers of the northwest
prairies of Canada release their horses for the winter. Strange as it
may seem to those of us who shudder at the very thought of raging
blizzards on the open plains, the horses that are left free to roam over
unsheltered space and are obliged to dig down through feet of snow for
their grass, not only survive the severest winters but are generally
found fat and strong the next spring.
If while you are out riding you happen upon a group of these free
horses, they will stare at you curiously until they begin to fear that
you have come to gather them up and to take them back to the farm yard,
then with angry, defiant tossing of heads they will turn and gallop out
of reach, going so fast that you will not see them for snow dust. The
horse you are riding, if he has ever enjoyed a winter of that freedom,
will struggle to get away from you so that he may join them. Because you
will not let him go, he will show his displeasure like a petulant child
and long after you have forced him to abandon the attempt to get loose,
long after the happier group has disappeared, he will keep turning his
head back and calling yearningly to them.
The farmer who releases his horses in the fall rarely loses any of them.
Every farmer knows every horse within a radius of twenty-five miles or
more, knows them by name and colour, knows their histories and
peculiarities. When the farmer is in doubt as to who some distant rider
may be, you can hear him think aloud thus:
“That’s Skinner’s sorrel, Billy. Skinner’s goin’ for his mail.” Or:
“That’s Spicer’s white nag, Madge. I’ll bet Spicer’s comin’ to see about
them oats.”
So in the spring of the year, when the farmers are all out searching for
their horses, they know those they come upon, and if some farmer sees
Skinner’s sorrel, Billy, he will drive him in the direction of Skinner’s
homestead, talking to Billy as he does so, in some such fashion as this:
“Well, Billy, you little devil, you ain’t any the worse for the worst
winter in twenty years. You’re fat as a pig. Go on now, get home! I know
you don’t like the idea of gettin’ back to work, but it’s soon seedin’
time, you know!”
The farmer who works beside his horses daily, who gets to understand
every expression of these beautiful, intelligent creatures, always talks
seriously to them. This sounds strange to us until we have come in
contact with these animals for a short time, when, hardly being
conscious of it, we soon start talking to them ourselves. They certainly
understand many words and I have seen evidences of horses recognising at
once what sort of temper or mood men happen to be in as soon as they
approach them.
Just as they learn to understand us, we learn to understand them. Every
neigh or whinny takes on the meaning of a word, and their scowling or
angry shaking of heads, and their protests against certain discomforts
we impose upon them appear as clearly as the similar expressions of
people. The most amazing fact, however, that slowly dawns upon us, is
the fact that these lovely animals live in a conscious world of their
own, not half so different from ours as we had allowed ourselves to
think.
The rancher is not as intimate with the horses he breeds and rears in
virtual wildness on the vast ranges which he leases from the government
and about which he builds his barbed wire fences. Naturally so. He has
from several hundred to several thousand horses and they are virtually
in a wild state until he sells them, when they are broken-in and most of
the untamed spirit is crushed out of them by heavy labour.
A rancher can rarely tell you how many horses he has. During the spring
when colts are most often born, his stock may double for all he knows.
He does not attempt to find out until the fall, when he rounds them up.
The young colts are separated from their mothers and branded. The poor
young things are tied and thrown and the red hot iron, with the shape of
each rancher’s particular brand, is pressed upon the shoulder till the
insignia is burned through hair and skin, where the mark remains as long
as the creature lives.
The ranch horses are wilder and more spirited than the farm horses, but
when the latter are released for the winter, they often mix with the
former, breaking up into groups of those who seem to feel themselves
more congenial to each other. Every animal has a character and
personality of his own, and while he will get along beautifully with one
horse, he will fight all the time with another. From my observation, it
seems to me that the wild free horse does much less quarrelling than the
horse that has toiled on the farm, which would indicate quite clearly
how much like ours his nature is.
Very few of the great herds that rustle for themselves all winter long
die while they are away. Those that die are horses that either have been
kept in the barn too late in the season or else that were in a starved
condition when they were released. A horse that has been kept in the
barn till after the cold season has set in and has been inured to the
warmth of the barn, when suddenly exposed to the unsheltered open
plains, if the weather happens to be severe, will sometimes die because
it finds it is unable to adjust itself to the change in temperature.
But there is one peculiarity of horse nature which sometimes kills the
best horse, not only in the wilds but in the pasture or barn yard, if no
one is about to come to its assistance. Every horse loves to roll. He
will lie down on a sandy spot or on the snow and roll over from side to
side. It sometimes happens that he selects a spot that has a deep rut,
or that is near a wall, a stone, or a straw-stack. He will roll over and
strike the wall or the straw-stack or get caught in the rut in such a
way that he cannot force himself back. He will remain helpless on his
back till some one comes to his rescue. If he gets no assistance he will
die in a very short time, sometimes within less than an hour.
But I am interested in the horse as a fellow being, subject as we are to
limitations; and, to a degree less perhaps than we are, capable of joy
and sorrow. In so far as these beautiful creatures are able to
communicate to others an indication of the emotions out of which their
lives are built, I have taken my story directly from them. My story,
too, comes fresh from the prairies. I did most of its planning while
riding on horseback over hundreds of miles of rolling Alberta plains,
often coming upon hills from which I could see a perfectly circular
horizon without a sign of human life, save perhaps some telltale
arrangement of stones, laid on the hilltop by Indians whom fate had long
since swept from the plains of their fatherland. At such times my pony,
whose wild and exciting history forms the greater part of this story,
seemed as much moved by the open vastness and the stillness as I; and,
each in his own way, we held communion with the spirit of the
wilderness.
D. G.
Langmark, Alberta, Canada.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEYOND ROPE AND FENCE
CHAPTER I
FOR THE LOVE OF HER FOAL
ROLLING hills and shallow valleys—an ocean of brown waves with fast
drying sloughs, like patches of sunshine on the surface of the sea—such
was the Canadian prairie that autumn day—such were the miles and miles
of Alberta range, bounded by a barbed wire fence that was completely
lost in the unobstructed play of sunshine. It was an open wilderness, so
vast that it seemed to stretch on almost endlessly beyond the horizon,
which lay desolate and unbroken like a rusty, iron ring, girding the
earth. Its immensity, by an inexorable contrast, dwarfed everything that
crept over the surface of the plains into a helpless puniness.
The hundred horses on the range, scattered and grouped by their
predilections for each other, looked, in the distance, like ants
crawling over the surface of a rock. Within sight of each other, bound
by the ties of race, they nevertheless had their loves and their
preferences. Most of the mothers with their little colts grazed in a
group by themselves; while a few mothers, as if they felt that their
children were better than their neighbour’s children, kept themselves
apart from the herd, though always within sight.
Among the latter was a shapely, light-brown or buckskin mare who was
grazing peacefully about her precious, buckskin coloured daughter. The
little one was asleep on the grass. Her graceful little legs were
stretched as far as she could stretch them. Her lovely little head lay
flat on the ground. Her fluffy tail was thrown back on the grass with a
delicious carelessness.
She was only six months old, but already the very image of her mother.
From the white strip on her forehead and the heavy black mane down to
the unequal white spots on her two hind fetlocks, she was like her. Only
her wiry, delicately wrought little legs seemed somewhat too long for
her.
Suddenly the old mare’s head went up high in the air; her grinding teeth
ceased grinding as a broken machine comes to a dead stop; and the round,
dilated, knowing eyes pierced the slight haze in the atmosphere. The
little head on the grass raised just a bit, looked inquiringly at her
beloved mother—quite near; then with the innocent confidence of
childhood, dropped back again, rubbing the soft fragrant grass in an
ecstasy of contentment.
But the old mare continued to gaze intently, standing motionless as a
stone. She saw that all the other horses were gazing just as intently as
she was. Small moving objects—two men on horseback—had broken over the
line of shadow along the southern horizon. One of them was loping away
to the right and the other to the left. The old buckskin mare had
already lived more than twenty years. Not only had she herself suffered
at the hands of man, but she had had so many of her babies taken from
her and cruelly abused—often before her very eyes. Her mother’s heart
began beating fast and apprehensively.
The other mares, not far from her, also showed signs of extreme
nervousness. The buckskin saw them run off for a short distance as if in
panic, then stop and gaze anxiously at the approaching riders. It was
time to act. She looked questioningly a moment toward the north; but she
realised that that direction would soon be closed to her, for she could
tell that the riders, loping straight north, meant to turn in time and
come back upon them.
She called nervously to her little one. The little thing sprang to its
feet, sidled up to her and gazed at the dark specks that were coming
together in the north, with fear glowing moist in her large, round eyes.
Until she had seen a group of horsemen dismount, one day, she had
thought that man was a monstrous sort of horse with a frightful hump on
its back. What little she had been able to learn about him since that
time had served only to intensify her fear of him; and despite her
abiding confidence in her mother, she trembled timorously as she heard
the ominous hoof-beats in the distance.
The animals instinctively gathered into a bunch and started away at full
speed. While one of the horsemen remained some distance behind, ready to
prevent the group from going off to either side, the other plunged into
the midst of them and deftly separated the mothers and their colts from
the rest of the bunch. Then they allowed the single horses to run off to
the north at their will; while they came together behind the mothers and
their colts and drove them southward toward the long line of shadow that
lay like a black elongated reptile, below the horizon and parallel to
it.
That long line of shadow, which widened as they neared it, was a great
canyon which the Red Deer River had cut out of the level plains. From
the jaws of the mouth of the canyon, which were a mile or so apart, the
floor of the prairies fell away sheer in places, to a depth of a
thousand feet. In many spots there were several parallel cuts in the
edge of that floor. Where, during the ages, the elements had been unable
to remove the loose earth, it lay along the bank in steep hills which
rose up from the bottom of the canyon like gigantic teeth, all crumbling
more or less, all dotted with stones and covered here and there with
blotches of sagebrush and cacti.
In the centre of the flat-bottomed canyon, as if an ancient torrential
flood had spent itself and narrowed down at last to a small, shining
stream, a quarter of a mile in width, ran the Red Deer River. In the
middle of the half-mile wide space between the river and the hills that
made the wall of the canyon, stood the buildings of the ranch. The
house, a small shingled structure, stood on the east end of the
spacious, sandy yard; while opposite and facing it was the long, red
barn with its open door below and the gaping window space in the loft
above. North of the barn and against its blind wall there was a big
corral, divided into two parts by a partition. The corral walls as well
as the partition were made of logs laid horizontally, a foot apart and
rising to a height of some eight feet. Each of these two sections had
huge swinging gates which opened inward.
As helplessly as the waters of Niagara, the frantic mothers, stealing
side glances at their little ones and feeling them at their sides,
poured down the steep incline, between the giant teeth, into the mouth
of the canyon, slipping, sliding, and leaping downward riskily, in haste
and fear. On the level bottom of the canyon, the buckskin mare made an
attempt to turn from the path which led to the rancher’s buildings in
the hope of getting to the river beyond; but one of the horsemen divined
her rebellious intention and shot by her like a flash of light, heading
her off and forcing her back. She realised the futility of baffling
their superior wills; but went back with an angry shake of her wise old
head and a deliberate scowl of hatred for the tormenting man and the
servile horse under him who was betraying his kind.
However the old mare happened to feel, the little buckskin, since the
forces of evil had as yet made no attempt to separate her from her
mother, shook the fear from her heart and took all the delight there was
to take in this unexpected excitement of the day. Healthy to the last
cell in her body, the race had merely accelerated the circulation of her
blood; and the ease with which she was able to keep up with her mother
made her conscious of a great and thrilling power. Her eyes and nostrils
dilated, her mane bristling and her tail unfurled, her springy legs
carrying her with ease, there was an expression of boundless joy in the
motion of her graceful body.
The gates of the corral stood wide open. Being so driven that they could
not swerve from the path, half the group poured into one section of the
corral and the other half into the other. When they turned at the
opposite walls realising that there, there was no way out again, and
came back toward the gates, they saw the men closing them.
Only the soul that has been trapped knows the crushing torment of four
relentless walls. Round and round they went, madly and stupidly, and
clouds of beaten earth rose from under their feet and choked them.
Finally becoming aware of the fact that the men were not pursuing them
any longer, they packed into a corner of the corral and, looking over
the corral walls and between the logs, sought to learn what they were
doing. They saw one man building a fire in the open, but a few paces
from the corral; while the other was calmly and portentously making
preparations that were only too familiar to the old mares.
The little buckskin, beside her mother, always beside her mother,
clinging to that big beloved body as the soul clings to life, was wedged
into the very corner and right against the logs of the wall, so that her
frightened eye, in the middle of the open space between two logs, could
see the rancher’s house some four rods away.
Her sides were still throbbing violently when she saw the house door
open. A little girl appeared. The little filly did not know what kind of
animal that was except that she guessed that it was some sort of man.
She perceived with renewed trepidation that the little girl was hopping
and skipping directly toward her. In her fright she pressed tight
against her mother, but her mother, much more concerned with the men and
apparently indifferent to the little girl, would not move an inch. When
suddenly the little buckskin felt the touch of the little girl’s hand on
her back, she called out frantically to her mother. But the old mare
bent down her long neck, touched the little head with her soft, warm
lips, murmured reassuringly and then looked away again. By that time the
filly realised, uncomfortable though she was, that the little hand was
not going to hurt her.
The little girl climbed up two of the logs, moved slowly toward the
little buckskin’s head, talking softly and coaxingly as she moved. The
filly listened with ears pricked high. In the stream of meaningless
prattle, the foal became aware of the existence of the combination of
sounds, “Queen,” as one becomes aware of a constantly repeated melody in
a piece of music. By the time the little girl had carefully pushed her
head through the space between two logs, directly in front of the
filly’s muzzle, the little buckskin, though frightened again, became
exceedingly curious. There was something very disarming about that soft
voice and the soothing repetition of the word, “Queen.” She cautiously
stretched her muzzle, sniffing at the little mouth, moving it closer and
closer and just when she touched the little girl’s face, with a cry of
delight the little girl kissed her fervently on the nose.
She drew her muzzle away quickly and looked with a frightened eye. It
had interrupted her attempt to sniff, however, and once more assured
that there was nothing harmful about the little girl, she made a second
attempt. The little girl continued calling her, “Queen,” coaxingly, till
the little muzzle touched her lips again and once more she kissed her,
crying out again with delight.
This sweet, unofficial christening might have resulted in a beautiful,
enduring friendship, but a sudden, terrific patter of feet in the next
corral came through the air accompanied by a nauseating cloud of smoke,
and all was confusion again. Round and round their section of the corral
they swept again till they realised that the men were not yet molesting
them. When they stopped to investigate, little Queen saw a man in the
other section of the corral rush toward a mare with a long hideous
stick. She saw him strike the colt that tried to follow her and saw the
colt run back into the corral while the mother had run out. She could
not quite understand what he was doing; but she experienced an
overwhelming fear of losing her mother, and clung to her beloved sides
with more tenacity than ever.
The other section of the corral was finally cleared of all the mares
who, standing on the outside, would not go away; but in concert rent the
air with their cries of protest. Queen was so curious that, despite her
beating heart, she moved to where she could see what was going on. She
saw ropes flash through the air and immediately after, a little colt
fell to the dusty ground. The cry from the little one’s mother was
answered by a stifled cry from the ground and as Queen, unable to stand
still for fear, listened to that cry, there suddenly began coming to her
the odour of blood and burning flesh. Madness seized upon them once more
and the dizzying whirl round the choking corral gave them some relief.
They finally stopped to rest a while, only to have another colt thrown
and his cries and the smell of burning flesh set them through the
frenzied motion round the corral, all over again.
Most of the afternoon it took before all the colts in the first section
had been branded and mutilated. It was a noisy, dusty, cruel process;
and the men, perspiring heavily, their faces wet and black with the dust
that settled on them, looked like tormenting imps of hell; but they were
no more to be blamed for the cruelty that was theirs to do than were
their helpless victims.
All that clamour of pain and struggle could not disturb the mist-like
loneliness that brooded over the far-reaching distance. On the other
side of the river, visible beyond less rugged banks, stretched a
lifeless country of hills and plains, so desolate and so motionless that
the very stones that dotted them seemed with their feeble reflections to
be futilely protesting against their destitution.
A pause came to the torturous struggle. The gate of the first corral was
opened and the sickened little colts shambled out into the open where
their frantic mothers caressed them, then led them away to the east. The
men walked off and disappeared in the house. Taking advantage of the
silence and the respite, the still captive colts, one after another,
took to sucking. It was not very long, however, before they were
interrupted by the reappearance of the men. The skin on every captive
began to tremble and the eight mothers with their eight colts packed
into one corner.
One man, carrying a long stick, entered the section and advanced to the
middle while the other stationed himself at the gate. First the man with
the stick forced the group to move into the opposite corner, then, after
a long struggle, he singled out the buckskin mare. He had driven her
toward the gate but a few feet, when little Queen, bending so low that
she passed under the stick, rushed out of reach of it and gained her
mother’s side. Had it not been for the vigilance of the man at the gate
they would have both escaped. It was getting to be late in the afternoon
and the man was tired and impatient. As with most impatient people, his
common sense gave way to his impatience. He was not only determined to
get the buckskin mare out first, but he was even more anxious to punish
her. He singled her out again and reaching her, struck her with his
stick. In pain and fright, the mare rushed for the gate. It was
partially opened and she was half way out when a cry from little Queen,
who saw her leaving her, brought her to her senses.
Rebelliously, she reared and fell with full force upon the gate. It
swung violently backward, striking the man who held it so severely that
it knocked him off his feet and sent him rolling to the wall. The second
man who was trying to prevent Queen from following her mother was away
over at the other end of the corral. The gateman’s cry and the image of
him on the dusty ground, so confused the other that for a few moments he
stood still, unable to move a muscle. When he saw his partner pick
himself up, he realised that he should have hurried to the gate and
closed it; but by that time the whole group had escaped and were racing
for the hills, the buckskin mare in the lead and her precious Queen
eagerly behind her.
With a majestic toss of her head, conscious of having scored a victory,
and determined to keep it, the buckskin mare fled across the flats. It
was now not only the overwhelming desire to get away. Vaguely she
realised that she had crossed the man’s will and that that was a
punishable offence.
The mothers whose foals had been branded were off on a field at the foot
of the hills. The field had yielded a crop of oats and the oats had been
reaped and taken from the field; but there was still enough grain left
to make it worth their while to remain there. If, when they followed the
fugitives with their eyes, they had any desire to go along, they knew
that their sickened colts would not go with them.
The buckskin mare gave them hardly a glance. She struck up the steep
incline with risky speed, bent upon getting out of the men’s reach, as
soon as was possible. The men, on the other hand, were at a
disadvantage. Before they could saddle their ponies, the mares, they
knew, would be off somewhere at the other end of the range. They
realised, too, that the mares were now so excited that they would have
very great difficulty in rounding them up. They were angry at the
rebellious mare, but these animals were their property and they did not
want to hurt them. Another struggle at that time, they felt, might even
endanger their own lives. The man who had been knocked over was not only
as tired as the other fellow was, but he was aching from head to foot.
Besides, the afternoon was rapidly giving way to early evening. They
decided to finish the branding on the following day.
But to the buckskin mare the spaces behind her seemed peopled with
imaginary pursuers, and she struggled up the slippery incline as if her
very life depended upon getting to the top and away. The rest of the
mares that fled with her and their little ones seemed to find greater
difficulty in getting to the top, but they followed as eagerly. Rocks
and sand rolled thunderously down behind them and the dust rose from the
mouth of the canyon like volcanic smoke.
When they finally reached the level plains above, the old mare was white
with foam. They had that afternoon been rounded up in a hollow toward
the northeast of where they now were and fear of being rounded up again
sent the buckskin mare to the west. Her usual fear of man, many times
intensified by the feeling that now she would be severely punished for
breaking loose, aroused in her old head the instinctive desire of the
animal that is pursued, to get under cover. Though there was neither
sight nor sound of any one behind her, she ran with might and main for
the coulee that she knew was a mile and a half to the west, and until
she had turned over the lip of the coulee and had reached the very end
of its slope, she did not slacken her pace, several times almost
breaking a leg in badger holes that she avoided by only a hair’s
breadth. Down in the gulch there was a path, made by the water of the
melted snow in spring as it had wound its way to the river. Along this
path, which led northward, they trotted without stopping till they came
to where the range fence forced them to halt.
Here at last they rested, though the buckskin mare kept anxious vigil
for the first sign of any one pursuing them. The mothers began grazing
slowly while their young, moving with them, strove to get the milk they
felt belonged to them. As soon as the colts had had all the milk there
was for them they went leisurely in search of tender grasses and soon
all were grazing as if nothing had ever happened.
But the buckskin mare was still worried. She walked to the two wires
that barred her way and with her head above the upper wire she gazed to
the north. A quarter of a mile away, the coulee ended. Its floor curved
upward like the bottom of a ship. Where it ended and the prairie floor
began there was a cluster of sagebrush. The evening was rapidly turning
the sage into a silhouette against the bright background of the sky.
Fear of pursuit came back with the coming of the night and the old mare
roused herself. With a sudden impulse she backed away from the wires and
dropped to her knees. Pushing her head under the lower wire she moved
cautiously forward, an inch at a time. Slowly she felt the wire move
backward over her body and each time the barb dug through her skin she
stopped and tried to crouch lower. With a sharp scratch it rolled over
her withers and stuck painfully into her back. She tried again to crouch
down lower, but failing to rid herself of the barb, she rested a moment.
The barb hurt her considerably and she made a strenuous effort to lower
herself out of its reach, and in so doing pressed her outstretched
muzzle right into a rosebush. While the pain of thorns still pricked her
lips there was a sudden flash of white right before her eyes and a thump
on the ground as if a rock had been thrown at her. With all the strength
in her body, forgetting in her fright the wire on her back, she sprang
backward to her feet, snapping the lower wire and stretching the upper
one as if it had been a string.
Her frightened jump, the momentary struggle with the upper wire that had
caught in her mane, and the cry that escaped her, set the group into a
stampede, and she herself, when finally freed from the entangling wire,
dashed off to the rear for a dozen rods. The slopes of the coulee were
dotted with the mares and colts who had fled in every direction. Outside
the range and on the rim of the coulee lay a silly rabbit, stretching
himself and gazing down with foolish eyes.
There was nothing dangerous visible and nothing in the air to worry her,
so the old mare started slowly and cautiously back again toward the one
wire now hanging limply, and, in one place, less than two feet from the
ground. There she sniffed about carefully and suddenly raising her head,
she caught sight of the rabbit, as he was bounding away.
There were many things that the old buckskin was afraid of, but a rabbit
was not one of them. Realising that she had allowed herself to become
alarmed at nothing, she went at her task with greater determination. She
was about to get down to her knees again when she realised that the
remaining wire was now low enough for her to step over it. Carefully
lifting each leg, her skin quivering with her excitement, the buckskin
mare stepped over the wire into freedom; and little Queen, frightened to
see her mother beyond the fence, made it with a single leap.
The old buckskin was for running now as fast as she could for the north,
but she wanted the rest of the mares to go with her. She turned to look
at them. There they were grazing at various points with absolute
indifference to the great achievement she had consummated. She called to
them to follow, but beyond a busy reply they paid no heed to her. When,
however, they heard the sound of her tearing the more abundant grass
outside the range, they awoke to the fact that they were not getting all
they might get. Whereas the ideal of liberty had been an abstraction to
them, the fact of abundant grass was a reality, and it was not many
minutes before, one by one, they had all made their way over the hanging
wire.
The late autumn nights had steadily grown colder and, since hollows are
colder than the higher portions of the prairie at night, they moved
rapidly to the plains above. Round about them lay the silent night, dark
and infinite, and the stars looked down upon its hidden desolation.
Closely together they grazed, lips fairly touching lips, without protest
or impatience. As they grazed, they moved on to the north, and the
rhythmic _tear-tear_ of grass interspersed with rhythmic footfalls was
the accompanying cadence of their half-unconscious flight.
Some four miles from the range, they slept for the night on a low round
hill and when dawn came they found the earth covered white with frost.
The sun rose, putting a slight tinge of red into the whiteness, and
Queen was so curious about it she went looking for the spots where it
was thickest and licked it off the sage or rosebushes.
To warm up they raced for half an hour, following the old buckskin to
the north, then spent the rest of the morning grazing and moving
leisurely. It was well on toward the middle of the day when an open
triangle of honking geese, high in the air, made them look up. The old
mare watched the geese move across the sky till they were lost in the
south and was just about to return to her grazing when she saw two small
objects appear on the horizon. They were so far away that they were
indiscernible, but she did not wait to make certain what they were. With
a call that frightened the little herd she turned north and fled.
For several hours they raced on toward the heart of the wilderness; then
complaint on the part of the little ones, who did not like this endless
running, stopped them. But they had rested only a few minutes when they
discovered the rancher and his assistant rounding a hill about two miles
behind them. The frantic mothers, remembering yesterday’s struggle, fled
at top speed, never slackening for a moment till, nearly twelve miles
farther north, the little ones deliberately hung back. When, however,
half an hour later, their pursuers surprised them by coming up on top of
a hill only half a mile to their rear, the colts fully realised the
danger and from that time on they sped along without a murmur.
The afternoon wore along toward evening and though, as the shadows began
lengthening, they felt that their pursuers had abandoned the pursuit,
they did not cease running until the thickening darkness gave them a
greater feeling of security. Even then their rest was a nervous one.
They grazed with ears pricked and when they felt that their little ones
would follow they started off again, going at a steady trot.
They came, late in the night, to a hollow in the middle of which was a
huge shadow, which they recognised was a stack of hay. There were no
lights about anywhere, nor was there the slightest trace of man in the
air. A cold wind had blown up from the west and their wet bodies were
made uncomfortably cold. Lying down on the open plains in that
condition, they knew, would not give them much rest. They felt the need
of rest even more strongly than that of food and the haystack offered
protection against the wind. So they approached very cautiously.
Something white at its base seemed to have moved as they neared it, and
the whole herd stopped to look and to sniff. The old buckskin mare, who
was now, as she had been all the time, in the lead, took a few steps
farther and sniffed again. She smelled rotten hay and with that smell
came the smell of warm bodies of horses. She called out inquiringly.
In answer to her call, the white object at the base of the stack, raised
itself laboriously from the ground and replied with a lazy, sleepy
whinny. Immediately the little herd started toward the stack. She found
the white object to be a white mare and in the rotten hay lay her jet
black colt, complaining impatiently because his mother had disturbed him
by getting up, and he felt disagreeably cold.
The hay was very old and very rotten, but they had not come there to
feast. What they wanted was shelter from the hard wind and each one went
looking for a good place to rest in. The buckskin mare almost stepped on
the leg of an old work-horse. In spite of her annoying him, he whinnied
so good-naturedly that she decided to stay right there near him. Queen
pushed herself into the hay beside the old work-horse and her mother lay
down in front of her. Protected against the wind on all sides she was
soon very comfortable and cosy and fell fast asleep.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
TO THE NORTH!
IT was in the very early hours of the morning when little Queen was
rudely awakened by the sudden rising of her mother, upon whose warm
flank her little head was lying. As her consciousness lighted up, she
became aware of a most disturbing odour in the air. Forms of restless
horses moved about in the semi-darkness and the rhythmic sound of
hoof-beats told of threatening danger. Her mother was standing next to
the white mare in a group that seemed transfixed by a reddish light
which came from the southwest. In the distance, on the horizon, was a
low crescent of fire. Far away as the fire was, Queen could see the
flames creeping. It looked very much like a vast herd of glowing
creatures, among which, now and then, one leaped high above the others.
Terrified so that the very muscles in her body quivered, she sprang
toward her mother and pushed her way in between the two mares. Fire had
been part of the horrible process in the corral, but that fire had been
as nothing to this. She was afraid! She wanted to run, and she worried
about their standing still.
The black colt on the other side of his white mother was not the least
bit frightened. He had as yet met with nothing baneful in fires and they
only interested him. At that moment, having slept well and fed well and
feeling unusually good, he wanted very much to frisk about and play. He
trotted over to Queen and mischievously butted her from behind, pushing
her half way out from between the two mares. Queen was much too nervous
to tolerate his playfulness. With an impatient toss of her head she
moved back against her mother and called for help. The old buckskin
herself was in no mood for trifling and drove the black colt away with
an angry threat. The white mare, who was as indulgent a mother as the
buckskin, took the matter so seriously that there would have been
trouble but for a sudden blast of wind, loaded with smoke.
There was a hurried clatter of hoofs and the herd started away as with
one impulse. Down slopes, through wide hollows, up hills, leaping over
badger holes and stones, they ran, half enjoying the excitement.
Occasionally they stopped to look back with glaring eyes upon the flames
that swept along in their wake, still far, but unmistakably nearer every
time they stopped.
With the coming of full daylight the flames lost their brilliance and
the colts, tired of running, would stop every once in a while and
noisily protest to their mothers, who kept a short distance ahead of
them. They would then walk slowly and whinny till a new gust of wind
with a new offensive cloud of smoke would frighten them and send them on
again with renewed energy.
But their endurance was rapidly giving out and toward the middle of the
day they refused to run any more. Their mothers, a few paces ahead of
them, called to them solicitously, ran on as if they meant to desert
them, then seeing that that did not move them, they came back calling
coaxingly and tried to encourage them. A step at a time, their heads
bobbing wearily, their sides wet, they lumbered along complainingly.
The prairie fire kept gaining upon them. The mothers’ anxiety turned
into desperation. They came back to them and getting behind them fairly
pushed them along. Suddenly a blazing thistle, driven by the gale,
rolled into their midst. All weariness, all aches and pains were at once
forgotten. As if they were controlled by a single mind, they bounded
forward, re-entering the race for life with an energy which they
themselves did not know they had.
The sun with smiling indifference moved rapidly down the lower half of
its diurnal arc. The wind tore along behind them with irregular force
and with a constant changing of direction. The smoke it had borne all
day had grown less and less perceptible. The weight of Queen’s body
dragged more and more irresistibly downward. Her head began swimming in
waves of weariness that were inundating the whole of her body; but she
struggled on bravely, though she vaguely felt that it would not be long
before she would be forced to give up the struggle. Then, as she reached
the top of a hill, she beheld through the film of moisture on her eyes,
the mares and the stronger colts who had gone on ahead, now grazing on
the other side of a long, black, dried mud spot down in the hollow.
That the wind had veered decidedly, taking smell and smoke and fire off
to the east, they had not even noticed. They had been running
unnecessarily for some time, impelled by the fear of the burning
thistle. The sight of the herd grazing with apparent fearlessness
reassured them. Most of the stragglers walked on ahead to join them, but
Queen selected a soft spot on the grass and dropped to the ground with a
sigh.
Hunger had no power over her now. She stretched out her legs and her
head and relaxed, sinking willingly into the stupor that swept over her.
Her mother near her cropped the delicious grass with avidity; but the
long-drawn sighs that came from her little one and the rapid sinking and
swelling of her wet sides, worried her. She walked over to Queen,
whinnied softly and licked the perspiration from her little body. Little
Queen continued to breathe heavily but a note of relief entered the
sound of her breathing, and now more comfortable she fell asleep.
But if Queen had gone to sleep thinking that her exhausting journey was
over, she was doomed to disappointment. She woke shortly after she had
fallen asleep, with a most intense desire to drink. On the hill above
the hollow she saw the greater part of the herd already moving on. Some
of the mares and their colts near Queen were starting away and her
mother was calling her, very evidently moved by the same urge. There was
nothing behind them forcing them to go. There was no discussion of any
sort to make clear the need for going. In the mind of each of them there
was the image of a slough. It was a sort of composite image of all the
sloughs they had ever drunk from and with that image like a mirage on
the prairie distance before them, they doggedly hit once more the
unbroken trail to the north.
All day and most of the evening they continued the discouraging advance
without coming even to the bed of a dried-up slough. That night they
grazed a little and slept a little, but the thirst for water, somewhat
weakened by the coldness of the early night, soon reasserted itself and
sent them restlessly going again. The morning brought some relief. The
ground was covered with a thick frost and the grass they ate partially
quenched their thirst. But by the time the sun was quite high on its arc
they were as thirsty as ever and soon commenced the weary march once
more.
It was in the early evening that they came at last upon a half-dried
slough toward one end of which there was a good sized hole full of
water. The surface of the water was covered with a layer of ice. With
her hoof one of the mares made a large hole in the ice and as many as
could squeeze into the first circle around it, drank till some of the
others began to fear that there would be no water left for them. Some
pushed the drinkers greedily and even nipped at them but the others just
waited patiently.
Her mother was one of the first to drink, but little Queen waited till
she saw two of the horses—strangers to her—turn away. The old work-horse
whose good nature had impressed itself upon her at the haystack, and who
by daylight seemed even more kindly disposed, his sorrel coat somehow
intensifying his harmlessness, took half the space they left and Queen
walked up beside him. The old fellow’s upper lip trembled in soft
assurance of his friendship. Very grateful to him Queen bent down and
drank, a few inches away from his head, keeping her eyes on the
reflections in the water, raising her head hastily just as soon as one
of the reflections moved.
The world seemed altogether different to her after that drink. It seemed
as if every wish of her little soul had been gratified. She was still
tired but it was not a very painful tiredness and not strong enough to
keep her from preferring the tender grasses in the old slough to
resting.
Night came again. The wind completely changed. It blew strong and cold
now from the southeast. The sky was very clear and in the north just
above the horizon many lights quivered. The old buckskin mare settled
down comfortably in the midst of the other mares and little Queen
nestled up against her warm body. With her head upon her mother’s flank
she delighted in her comfort and gazed at the northern lights, whose
brilliant display did not seem to worry the older horses. Yet so long as
Queen’s eyes were open they were fastened upon those lights; and so long
as the little brain was awake it kept wondering with a bit of fear what
they might mean, for they were different from fire yet moved as fire
did.
She had slept a long time when she was awakened by the sound of anxious
neighing that seemed far away and yet filled the air above the little
valley. Upon opening her eyes she beheld the northern lights so clear
and so near that she trembled for fear of them, and was certain that the
disorderly running about that she heard was due to the same fear. But
when her mother jumped up and she followed, she discovered that the
frightful odour of fire was coming on the wind from the south, where she
had last seen the flames creeping behind her.
The same confusion, the same bewildering excitement and again the
wearing race for life began. That they ran directly toward the northern
lights convinced her that these were as harmless as the moon and stars.
With very few differences this flight was like the first. Though the
discomfort of it was even more hateful to her, Queen felt no impending
breakdown and without realising it, she was stronger now.
Dawn came and soon gave way to a somewhat dull day. The wind changed
several times and finally for a while died down altogether. There was no
trace of smoke in the air; but the south was now established as a region
of horror and they continued their flight northward till late in the
afternoon.
They ran down a steep hillside dotted with many knolls and stones and
came into an elongated, bowl-like valley toward one end of which there
was a small spring lake. There they stopped to drink, to graze and to
rest.
Just as the air in that valley bore no trace of smoke, the plains that
stretched away from that valley bore no trace of man. A few
grass-overgrown buffalo trails led from the lands above to the deepest
part of the ancient lake and a bleached buffalo skull beside the main
trail told the story of a day and its life that had passed.
A coyote den at the opposite end of the bowl and half way up the slope
gave the only evidence of life about the lake. The rim of the bowl shut
away the barrenness of the prairies above. The very dome of heaven
rested upon the rim of that bowl and vast primordial spaces interposed
protection against man’s greedy intrusions.
Little Queen drank some water at the ice hole, drank the milk that
nature had prepared for her with all the care and concern of her
mother’s love, then slept away another night at her beloved mother’s
side, never even dreaming that this night was shutting fast forever the
doors behind which lay the closed first period of her life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
DEATH IN THE HOWL OF COYOTES
LITTLE QUEEN was awake at the very first peep of dawn. With her soft
muzzle pressed against her mother’s warm flank, she watched the
beautiful unfolding of morning. Red streaks appeared above the
southeastern horizon and tinted the heavy clouds that were slowly and
ominously coming out of the north and packing the centre of the sky. The
air was clear and cold. The earth and all things on it were covered with
a thick layer of frost. Every blade of grass was dressed in fanciful and
luxuriant whiteness. Every hair on her mother’s body had turned white
and thick save on a small spot on her flank where the warmth of her
little head had driven the frost away.
All around her lay the still forms of mares and colts and horses. Many
of the strangers had already distinguished themselves from the others in
her mind. The whiteness that covered them all interested little Queen.
She had seen that whiteness on them before, but never had she seen them
so completely covered with it.
She turned her little head to see whether her own body was covered with
it. The discovery that it was rather pleased her; but the lifting of her
head resulted in a slight annoyance. Her lip touched the frost and
became wet and cold. She began to rub the wet lip on the warm spot of
her mother’s flank. Her mother called sleepily to her as if the movement
bothered her, so she pressed the lip tight against the warm spot,
delighting in its comfort. In that position she watched the details of
the world about her as they appeared in the growing light.
A short distance before her, beyond two mares’ backs in front and nearer
to her, she spied the black head of the mischievous colt only partially
covered with frost. He was apparently still sound asleep. She was gazing
at the two frost-covered ears with uneasiness and irritation, when
suddenly as she raised her eyes a bit, she saw a coyote come out of his
den way off on the other slope of the valley. She watched him with fear
and absorbed attention. She remembered having seen one, once before,
somewhere. She remembered too that her mother had become alarmed at
sight of him and she began to worry as she watched. She saw that he was
interested in the forms lying about her. She saw him stretch lazily,
yawn and gaze down at them. He trotted away up to the very rim of the
bowl and there he sat down on his haunches and continued looking at
them.
Little Queen lowered her head not to be conspicuous and continued from
that position to watch his every move. She had been looking so intently
at him that she did not notice a second coyote only a few paces from the
first. When she did notice it, one of the horses jumped to his feet,
shook the frost from his body and began running about to warm up.
Another of the horses followed the first and when little Queen turned to
look at them, she lost sight of the coyotes. She searched for them on
the whiteness, for some time, then discovered them sitting so still that
she had mistaken them for stones; but the horses that had got up ran off
in their direction and she saw the two coyotes take to their heels.
The manner in which they loped away, continually looking back as they
went, showing that they were afraid that the horses meant to run after
them, lessened Queen’s fear of them slightly; and, tired of lying there,
she too, rose to her feet and shook the frost from her body. Like the
big horses she felt that she wanted exercise so she frisked about her
mother, keeping an eye all the while upon the black colt who had by this
time awakened and who was now sleepily watching her.
But as her blood began to circulate rapidly, her delight in motion grew
apace and in her delight she forgot the black colt and the coyotes. The
circle about her mother was altogether too small for the expression of
her joy and she undertook to make a circuit about the lake with the two
other horses that were running. She had gone only half way when she
became aware of the black colt, racing after her.
She did not see him till she had turned and as soon as she spied him she
sent an urgent call for help to her mother, and bounded away with eyes
aglow. Her call brought her mother to her feet. The old mare galloped
away in the opposite direction, intending to meet her before the black
colt got to her. The excitement roused the last of the sleepers and soon
the air was filled with the thumping of lively hoofs. Only the old
sorrel work-horse got safely out of the way and went on, indifferent to
the racket, to eat his breakfast.
The buckskin mare got to her daughter in time to prevent the colt from
fleeing and nipped him savagely on the hip. In the meantime his white
mother had reached him and quite naturally interceded in his behalf. She
made an attempt to nip the buckskin mare, but backed away in time to
avoid two buckskin legs which had shot into the air. The white mare then
turned quickly around and with her hind legs replied in kind.
The rest of the horses seemed to think it just the proper fun to
accompany morning exercises and after a few moments of exhilarating
kicking there followed a joyous stampede resulting at last in their
division into smaller groups, each group in its own corner grazing away
peacefully as if nothing had ever happened.
After a preliminary breakfast of milk, little Queen joined her mother in
a profitable search for the sweetest blades of grass, and grazing side
by side they wandered from the lake shore, up the slope and away over a
level bit of prairie to another hollow where a slough had completely
dried up, leaving a small, barren, muddy bottom exposed. The grass was
exceptionally good around that spot and when little Queen had eaten all
she could eat, she stretched out on the ground in the early afternoon
and slept a long while.
She awoke suddenly. She was very cold and felt that she had been cold
for a long time. A gloomy heaviness hung in the air and the sky was
thick with threatening clouds. All the desires in her little soul merged
into the one great desire to get to her mother. She jumped to her feet
intending to stretch and rid the joints of the sleepy feeling, when
there came upon her the fear that she was alone. She looked anxiously
and rapidly in several directions and then sprang off into space. A
great wave of uneasiness reached up from her heart and confused her.
She had been running around for some time when she discovered four
buckskin legs sticking up out of a trough-like hollow in the dried mud.
She rushed with fear to her mother who lay motionless upon her back,
either unable to get up or strangely unwilling to. She was very glad to
see her and much of the fear that she had just experienced left her at
the very sight of her beloved mother; but she slowly became conscious of
something incomprehensibly dreadful in the situation.
Queen looked at her curiously and called half anxiously, half
admonishingly, as if to say, “Why do you lie there like that when I want
you, and want you standing up straight as one ought to stand?” Receiving
no answer to her calling Queen ceased and gazed at her with growing
terror. There was something so frightfully unusual about her. Queen
began to shake herself as if she hoped to shake off the something that
seemed to cling to her and dim and blur everything for her. She sniffed
at the dear old head and sprang away in terror. There was a pool of
blood near the open mouth and the beloved lips, always so warm and so
soft, were cold and strangely hard. She became more and more alarmed and
confused. But in her little soul there was still hope. Her beloved
mother, so capable of solving the hardest problems, would solve this
one. She approached again and sniffed and sniffed and called and called.
But the more she sniffed and called in vain, the more intense grew her
fear.
She raised her little head high and gazed anxiously away through the
thickening gloom. A last flock of geese was flying south and the
familiar honking which before this had only aroused her curiosity, now
filled her with foreboding and loneliness. Loneliness was a state of
mind heretofore unknown to her; but now it brooded over the plains like
a nebulous dragon dropped from some other world, waiting for an
opportunity to devour her.
She walked off slowly and listlessly to where she had been asleep,
intending to while away the time by grazing until her mother should wake
up; but she could not eat. It was not many minutes before she was
walking right back again, calling more loudly than ever. Getting no
response, she stood still, and looked at the body she loved, trying very
hard to understand.
All the while the day waned. The sky grew blacker. The wind blew
stronger and in the air the something that had been threatening all day
seemed to have come nearer. Grass blades and rosebushes nodded
mournfully over all the lonely earth, and little Queen imagined, as she
turned round and round to look into every gloomy direction, that the
prairie had become peopled with dangerous forms who always fled from
sight just as she turned her eyes toward them.
She made several attempts to graze; but she could not eat. A sickening
feeling like a lump in her throat barred the way for food and she had
strangely lost all desire to eat. At her mother’s side she remained as
the long, fearful moments dragged, sniffing at her occasionally, calling
to her at times in the tone of one who expects no response and looking
off into the desolate wastes with a half-formed wish that something
would arrive to help her, yet fearfully worried of what might come.
Darkness began lowering more rapidly and the wind swept over the plains
moaning with disturbing sadness. Little Queen became desperate. She
pushed at her mother with her nose in passion born of fear, then
realising how useless that effort was, called with all her strength and
ran about her without plan or purpose.
Flakes of snow had been falling now and then for some time. They began
to fall more rapidly and to choke up the atmosphere, whirling through it
with a sort of light indifference and cruelly, boastingly foreshadowing
the approach of a more heartless blizzard. Queen decided at last that
there was nothing for her to do but to lie down beside her cold mother
and to wait for morning. She was whimperingly lowering herself to the
ground when she caught sight of the skulking form of a coyote in the
gloom to her side and sprang back upon her feet.
Again she began to urge her mother to get up. She pushed the rock-like
side with her little nose, but she stopped very soon with the conviction
that it was useless and that she had better keep her eyes on the coyote.
She centred her attention now upon the form that moved about in the dark
grey gloom and discovered a second form behind the first. In an effort
to move nearer to her mother, she stepped on the hard side, tripped and
fell; and as she got up to her feet again, there came out of the
boundless horror of the wind-swept night a blood-curdling howl. Leaping
clearly over her mother’s body she fled from it, and loped away in the
direction of the bowl-like valley and the lake.
Some of the horses were still grazing near the lake, as if they realised
that a blizzard was coming and desired to store away in their bodies all
the food they could gather. They cropped the grass most rapidly as the
wind tore at their tails and manes. Most of the mares were lying down
with their colts and one horse was drinking at a hole in the ice; while
the old sorrel work-horse stood near him patiently waiting for his turn
at the water. With an anxious whimper she sidled up to the old sorrel
who replied at once with his soft, tremulous whinny of good will. When
at last he drank, she cautiously lowered her head too, and seeing that
he had no objections, she drank as if there were fires in her little
heart that she would quench. When he raised his head and started away,
she pulled her head out of the water and ran after him as if it had been
her mother that had started away and was about to leave her behind.
The old sorrel lumbered off to the spot where he had slept the night
before and Queen forlornly followed him, stopping several times as she
went to look into the darkness where she had left her mother and where
she still hoped to find her when the day came again.
The old fellow painfully lowered his body, groaning like a rheumatic old
man. Many years had he toiled in the harness and his limbs were stiff.
Queen waited till he was at rest, then she approached him humbly and
whinnied questioningly. From the ugly old head came a soft, barely
audible neigh which was different from that of any horse she had ever
heard. It encouraged and consoled her little heart with a friendliness
without which she might have died that stormy night.
She whimpered like a baby that was cold and lay down beside him. Then as
the wind annoyed her she moved as near to him as she could get. There
came upon the cold, stinging, moaning wind another coyote howl,
long-drawn, shrill, mad, and lustful. It seemed far away but
inexpressibly terrifying. Little Queen raised her trembling head. The
old sorrel pricked his ears. But she saw the big pointed ears go back
into place again and the big shadowy head take its former sleepy
position. He was not afraid, she was glad of that; but she was afraid.
Strange images, visions she sought to drive from her mind by closing her
eyes, tormented her.
She was lying right against his back. Slowly she lowered her head upon
his neck, testing his willingness by degrees. When her head was finally
resting fully on his neck, he only whinnied softly, and Queen tried her
best to reply gratefully. A feeling of ineffable gratitude swept over
her with the warmth of his body.
All through the night she thought of her mother, when awake, and dreamed
of her when asleep. A thousand times she broke from her light snatches
of slumber, from her horrible dreams of coyotes, to pierce the
storm-filled gloom with her terrified eyes, expecting hopefully to find
her mother standing over her and looking down upon her; but only the
emptiness of the night, obliterating the world she had known, shrieked
with an uncertainty that filled up her soul.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV
A SEEKING THAT FOUND
IT is only the foolish who bewail the inevitable with wasting passion;
it is after all the wise who accept it and make the most of things.
Because the inevitable is so much more the ruling force in animal life,
animals adjust themselves more quickly to new conditions. Conceited man
attributes that early adjustment to a lack of feeling. Yet when little
Queen awoke on the first morning of her orphanage, there had already
come into her eyes and upon her head a perceptible sadness, the sadness
of resignation.
A great change had come over the world in that single night and so
different did it seem from what she had known it to be, that as far as
she could think, the night might have been a space of years; that years
might have elapsed since her mother, who hitherto had always warmed and
fed and protected her, now had ceased to warm and feed and protect her.
How white the world was! The little white flakes that had fluttered
about in the air at nightfall had covered up all things with a heavier
whiteness than that of any frosty morning in her experience. And she
expected that with the coming of the warmth of day it would all
disappear. Yesterday it had taken the forms of the things it had
covered, this morning only the heads of the horses stuck up out of the
drifts of it; while stones and coyote dens had been completely wiped out
of existence. Her own feet were out of sight. She jumped up to see
whether it would interfere with her jumping up, and was glad to note how
easily it was shaken from her body. She took a few steps, discovered
that it was disagreeable to wade through and stopped. On the white rim
of the bowl stood a flock of prairie chickens as if they had been
discussing the great change. She watched them half interestedly. They
were birds, and birds were not to be feared. She looked over them and
beyond them. There, somewhere, she felt was her mother. She took a hasty
step in that direction and stopped again. She was afraid to go.
She lowered her head and listlessly tasted some of the snow. It was not
food, she knew that at once; and it turned into water in her mouth. One
wants water badly when one wants it, but one cannot live on water. How
was one to eat when there was no grass in sight and no mother about with
the more substantial milk? She looked and looked away over the whiteness
till her eyes, taxed by its reflection, ceased seeing altogether for a
few minutes. But as soon as she could see once more, Queen began to
search for her mother and this search, each succeeding day with less
hope and enthusiasm, she never wholly abandoned. She sniffed at every
mare about her, calling plaintively and knowing her mistake in the
indifference with which some of them listened to her appeal or the
annoyance which others were too ready to show.
The old sorrel got up at last and shook the snow from his back. She
watched it falling in showers of white dust and through the sides of her
eyes she saw a number of other horses do as he had done. She saw him
take big bites of snow and shake his head quickly as he did so, so she
too ate some more of it and shook her head up and down. When he lumbered
away, sinking into the deep drifts as he went, she followed him.
Off on the slope horses were energetically pawing the snow and Queen
wondered what they were doing. When the old sorrel, somewhat clumsily,
beat the snow with his heavy front foot, she watched him curiously. She
saw him laboriously expose the brown grass underneath and the sight of
the grass relieved her, for she had been worrying about its
disappearance. Though the snow was still packed in between the blades,
he cropped up the grass just as soon as it appeared. She then watched
for the next bit to appear and tried to get a bite before he had it all.
She succeeded in getting only a few blades and since he did not seem to
mind it, she tried to be quicker next time. She did get a mouthful
occasionally but it was not enough for her appetite and it finally
dawned on her that she ought to work for herself. She pawed the snow
very close to him and as soon as she spied him eating, she would seize
as much of the grass he had uncovered as she could, then quickly go back
to her own.
A hundred times that morning she wearied of pawing snow, and each time
her head would raise and she would look wistfully off into space with
the irrepressible impulse to go looking for her mother; but she did not
know which way to go. In every respect, in every aspect, her life and
the earth had changed in the night. When, as she looked, it seemed to
her that a certain direction was the right one, she would think of the
coyotes and fear would extinguish the impulse. She made several attempts
to get the old sorrel to go with her. She would start off in what
appeared to her the right direction, and walking a few paces would stop
and call to him. He would pay no attention to her for a while; then as
if to stop her calling, he would walk over to where she was and begin to
paw the snow there. But it took so much energy and so much time to get
him over each bit of space, that she made little headway; and when
darkness began dulling the whiteness, her fear of the coyotes who seemed
to people the shadows became so intense, she did not dare to leave the
sorrel even to the extent of a few paces.
Several very sad, dull days went by. Then came a day during which the
sun shone for a while and made her feel better. But it melted the
surface of the snow and the cold evening froze it into ice. The struggle
for grass became harder and her constant slipping made life very
disagreeable.
She saw the black colt now and then. Though he was livelier and far more
happy than she, he made no attempts to molest her. Tolerance
characterised every move of every member of the herd. The rigours of the
sudden winter seemed to strengthen the racial bonds of these
good-natured creatures. Each one went his plodding way, thankful for the
silent companionship of the herd and showing his appreciation by
refraining from any offence to his neighbour.
Queen clung to the old sorrel though she did not thrive on his passive
fosterage. She was losing weight rapidly. Her eyes dulled, her head
began hanging low and even her long winter hair could not fill in the
hollows between her ribs.
In pawing snow she found that her strength was not equal to the desire
for food; and, resting often, she was almost always hungry. As she
became weaker from day to day, she became more and more unhappy, and
longed more and more intensely for her mother, who was nevertheless
growing dimmer and more distant in her mind.
There came a grey day. A north wind whistled over the hard crust on the
snow and loaded, black clouds dropped more white flakes with listless
irregularity. Something pervaded the air of this day which was so
similar to the day when she had lost her mother that she became
irresistibly restless. All day this restlessness made it hard for her to
dig. Late in the afternoon she started away with a suddenness that she
herself could not understand. Up the slope and over the plains she went,
sinking into deep drifts, pulling out again and going on without a
pause, pursuing the image of her beautiful mother that had suddenly
lighted up in her soul and as suddenly gone out again, before she could
touch it. Somewhere in the dismal swirl it was and she struggled bravely
but blindly after it, calling in vain as she went.
For fully an hour she plodded through snows that were piling up a foot
above the harder crust, slipping, bruising herself on the jagged ice,
resting when she could not go on any farther and coming at last to an
understanding that she had been madly pursuing nothing, that she was
lost, and that she wanted the protection of the old sorrel. She called
to him again and again before she stopped to listen for a reply and
suddenly became aware of an agreeable sound floating on the wind.
She called again striking out meanwhile in the direction from which she
instinctively felt the sound had come. Night was close at hand. The
light that was still left was weakened by the showers of snow flakes
that now fell rapidly and without interruption. Again it seemed to her
she heard a reply. She spent more energy in calling than she did in
pushing on, occasionally falling into a deep drift and remaining there
for some time before she made an effort to extricate herself. Who it was
answering her in the fast darkening night, she did not know. All she
knew and felt with every living cell of her being was that in the cold
desolation that was submerging her, the thing that was answering her
could save her from the unthinkable horror of being alone.
Her strength ebbed fast from her limbs, only the steadily nearing whinny
made her last efforts possible. Then suddenly, much sooner than she
expected it, a black object appeared in the darkened snows before her.
The last whinny was more distinct than any of the others. Before her,
struggling toward her as she had been struggling toward him, was the
black colt. If Queen had had any strength left, she would have bounded
off to the side; but she could not move.
It did not take her long, however, to learn that the black colt had not
come to molest her. Where he had been, how he came there, or that he
might all this time have been following her, did not concern her. His
whinny was most conciliating and in the warmth of his body was comfort
and salvation. He was almost as completely worn out as she was. She
rallied enough strength to kick the snow from her legs so that she could
lie down. Whinnying all the while, he cleared a space beside her and
there they spent the howling night.
It was somewhere about the middle of the next day before the cutting
wind subsided and the snow ceased falling. The black colt who was
completely covered with snow, broke out first and Queen followed him at
once. They had not gone more than a few yards when they saw the head of
the white mare rise above the rim of the bowl-like valley. As soon as
she spied her colt the white mare began to neigh eagerly, her piercing
call echoing from the hills and bringing her the baby response that
thrilled her out of patience. Snorting and puffing she plowed the deep
snow which fell away from her like spray from the keel of a ship.
When she reached him at last, she caressed him with tremulous lips,
running them along his little forehead, between the two small ears, and
down his mane and back. Caresses make life worth while, but they have
their time and their use and the black colt was hungry. He struck out at
once for his milk. But his mother had whinnied for him all through the
long dark night and her excitement at having found him again was so
great she hardly knew what she was doing. He slipped from her caresses.
Her lips craved the touch of him. Little Queen had come with him out of
the unknown where she had feared he had been swallowed up. So it
happened that her exuberant caresses fell partly upon little Queen.
It was like having refound her mother to Queen. Changed, yes; but life
is all change! She switched her little tail and danced about the white
mare, finally sliding along her other side and reaching out and seizing
the second dug. The black colt, little Queen’s erstwhile tormentor,
touched noses with her as she drank, and shared his milk with her
without the slightest sign of objection.
No figures affected his philanthropy. Fractions, division, these
abstractions never entered the sphere of his mind. The philosophy of
that period of his life may be summed up in the precept: “Drink all
there is to drink, all you happen to find, and if still hungry, eat
grass and try again later.”
Every time he went for his milk, Queen took the other side as if she had
never known another mother. Though the white mare often showed a natural
predilection for her son, she adopted little Queen because no thought
presented itself to her mind against tolerating her, especially since
she and her little son had become inseparable.
They played together, rested side by side, drank and thrived together;
and so over little Queen’s grievous orphanage rose the sun of a happier
youth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V
MAN, THE USURPER
THE winter was a hard one. The skies were persistently and monotonously
dull. A few moments of sunshine were invariably followed by days of
howling winds and leaden skies. Blizzard succeeded blizzard and the
hollows filled so full of snow that it became dangerous for colts to
wander off alone and they clung to their mothers’ sides.
During the short periods of daylight, the horses, the mares, and the
colts broke up into groups and wandered away as far as the deeps allowed
or hunger urged; but each night they congregated in the same corner of
the valley. This nightly congregating kept the snow in one big spot
firmly trodden to the ground and raised two walls with the rest of it,
in the lee of which they obtained the comforts of an airy barn.
Many a night when the shrieking wind overhead poured shower after shower
of dry snow over them, covering them as with a blanket, little Queen,
lying close to the black colt and his white mother, indulged in a happy
gratefulness for the comforts she experienced. Where man thinks and
knows, animals feel. Experience had taught her in sensations and
emotions, which she had not forgotten, what discomfort and
disagreeableness were. The change in conditions which she now
experienced brought into her mind sensations of a gratefulness which
expressed itself in an ardent love for the colt and the white mare, a
love which slowly overflowed toward and encompassed all the horses of
the herd.
The nights were very long. The sun rose and set so far to the south and
the arc it made in its daily course was so small that a drink or two of
her share of the black colt’s milk and the procuring of a single meal on
the deep, hidden grass, spent the day. When the shadows of one night,
driven out by the dawn, came back so soon in the next night and there
was nothing to do but sleep, sleeping became tiresome, and the necessary
shifting from side to side kept the mind awake and active. Impressions
made and forgotten rekindled like embers in the windblown ashes of a
fire. These impressions, varied as they were, and so largely without
order of time or place, were nevertheless as useful to her as experience
is useful to us. It was out of this experience that she built the
individuality of her character, and only those who are totally ignorant
of animalkind can deny that they have character and individuality.
Often the phantom form of the old buckskin mare came to haunt the dreams
of little Queen and always on the following day she pawed the snow less
energetically and gazed wistfully away over the endless prairie snows,
puzzled over the incongruity of her mother’s coming in the dark hours
and never by daylight when she could enjoy her most.
She was comfortable and happy in her second fosterage and thrived well
upon it; yet these persistent dreams of her nights haunted her wakeful
days and in time left on her beautiful head marks of sorrow, vague and
intangible, but unmistakably there, adding a charm to that head that it
never lost.
Then the days began lengthening. The sun climbed higher in the sky and
broke through the spell of winter’s clouds with a smiling kindness that
stirred every cell in Queen’s body. Spring came upon the stern winter as
a rosy dawn breaks upon an unpleasant night. The white-packed hollows
began smiling to cloudless skies with a silent and radiating wetness and
the snows shrank away, exposing brown spots. The earth began to emit
intoxicating odours of growth and the valleys filled with cool,
trembling water. Like living things born in the night these rippling
pools appeared everywhere.
Birds came daily in greater numbers from the south and their songs
augmented the nameless urge that the south winds bore and filled the
desolate wilds with friendliness and goodwill. Before the snows had
completely disappeared, a layer of thick green grass began carpeting the
earth and myriads of delicate crocuses studded the green with
colour-illumined stars.
Long as the days were becoming, the colts found them all too short for
the full expression of the joy that spring was giving them. Nights came
altogether too soon and the vapoury light of early dawn revealed them
already romping over the plains, seeking to rid their joints of the
sleepy feeling that the long winter had given them. In wide circles they
ran, plunging through sloughs, jumping, kicking at the air, pretending
to bite each other in violent anger, stopping only when hunger demanded
it.
Changes met them wherever they looked. The earth itself and all life
upon it seemed to have become an endless play of the forces of change.
Just as each day was in itself a succession of changes, white light
merging into the tinted colours of evening, fading out in night and
breaking again into the colours and the light of a new day, so one day
was different from another and they felt themselves each day changing
from what they had been the day before.
Queen was only vaguely conscious of these changes in herself, and in her
companions, but one change was clearest of all. Most easily perceptible
of all, this change, in a way, represented them all. It was the change
which she one day realised was taking place in the black colt. Something
was very apparently happening to him. His black hair fell rapidly, as
she had realised her own hair was falling; but the black colt was
steadily growing less black, turning white as night turns to day. When
he was white enough to startle her, she realised that henceforth he was
to be white as his mother was. So distracting was this change, however,
that she sometimes looked at him with the feeling that he was another
colt, and in those rare moments she experienced a peculiar depressive
emotion, like the feeling she had experienced when she was standing
before her dead mother, looking confusedly down upon her. Yet she knew
that it was he. There were fortunately other characteristics that
remained unchanged. In time, of course, she got quite used to the change
in his appearance; but she never forgot that he had been black. The
image of him, the picture that rose in her mind when she thought of him
and when he was not immediately before her, was a changeable image which
was black one moment and white the next.
If Queen had been in the habit of applying to every image in her mind
some name, she would have called him, “White-black.” Possibly she might
have added the word or the idea, “big,” for he was much bigger than he
had been; but, since that quality applied to all the colts, she would
probably have left that off.
By the varying degrees of this quality in the many colts, as well as by
the many other qualities she learned belonged to all or to each of them,
Queen knew one from the other. All through the long winter her
companionship had been restricted to the black colt and his mother, but
now, the common desires of youth brought the colts together and led them
in time to abandon the companionship of the mares and the adult horses.
Some of them went back every day to their mothers for milk, but they all
played by themselves and even at night they rested in a group together,
away from their mothers. Though their mothers had their own social life
and activities to occupy them and did not mind the daily absence of
their overgrown foals, their maternal instincts, their anxiety over
their erstwhile babies, was still very great. In spite of this division
of interests, in spite of this habitual grouping, they lived near each
other and at the first sound or sign of danger, they gathered and fled
in concert.
The old desire for her mother, the longing, the urge to go forth and to
seek, had lost what little definiteness it had had and had turned into
an impulse to go, which spasmodically welled up in Queen and sent her
loping over the plains without purpose. Always as soon as he saw her
start away, White-black loped after her and always the rest of the colts
followed. Sometimes the older horses and mares, mistaking the escapade
for a sign of danger, would lope after them.
First happening occasionally, this game began to take place daily and
even several times a day. Just as the colts and other horses got into
the habit of following her, Queen acquired the habitual desire to be
followed.
It happened one morning that the big brown colt led the race. Jealousy
seized at the heart and mind of Queen and she exerted herself to the
very end of her strength to get ahead of him, as if her life depended
upon doing so. She puffed and snorted and pumped away with her thin long
legs, but could not even get abreast of him. Behind her she could hear
the milder snorting of White-black. Suddenly she veered to the left. She
was exhausted and intended getting out of the way of the herd; but she
felt White-black veering with her and knew that the others were
following him.
Quickly she seized the opportunity. She exerted herself with renewed
hope and sped on harder than ever and soon the brown colt found himself
alone. To the left was the whole herd racing madly after Queen, in an
ecstasy of motion. He turned and followed them, trying hard to catch up,
but realising that he had lost. On the other hand Queen had discovered a
trick whereby the newly acquired leadership could be kept, and she meant
to keep it.
Their food grew in abundance wherever they turned. The grass was rich
and juicy; wild plants, sweet and delightful to the taste, grew
abundantly on the hillsides; and water, cool and refreshing, trembled in
every hollow.
Plenty to eat and a great deal of exercise to sharpen the appetite
filled out all the depressions in Queen’s body and because she was too
active to be fat, she became delightfully plump. Her hair now shorter
was sleek and its gloss flashed in the sunlight. Her mane was
luxuriantly thick and wavy. Part of it came down between her ears and
over the white spot on her forehead, down to her eyes, giving her
magnificent head, with the imprint of sadness upon it, a touch of
queenliness that few queens possess.
We all love beauty without being able to say just what it is. The colts
felt a something about her which aroused in them a sort of homage,
spontaneous and unquestioned. White-black, strong and good-natured, kept
the other colts at a safe distance; but they availed themselves of every
chance to touch her, to graze where she was grazing or to run alongside
of her. Sometimes White-black resented the attention some big fellow
offered and started a quarrel which resulted in his defeat. At such
times he would assume the attitude of one who had been convinced of
being wrong. After all he was yet too young to be serious in his love
affairs and his affection for Queen was due more to their having been
reared together than to anything else.
Queen loved them all, but she loved White-black most and every colt knew
it. Many a quarrel ended in his victory because of her attitude rather
than his strength, but he did not know that. Next to him Queen favoured
the white mare and next to her, the old sorrel work-horse. White-black
understood her love for his mother; but he could not fathom her
predilection for the old horse. For a long time, when the old sorrel out
of pure reminiscent fondness approached Queen, White-black would lose
his temper, kick at the old horse and attempt to bite him; but where
Queen sometimes allowed the colts to fight it out between themselves,
she invariably interfered in any attempt to wrangle with the sorrel by
taking part in it on his side. In time, White-black learned to let him
alone.
The lull of the summer began to creep into the long days, and mosquitoes
and nose-flies in vast numbers came to blight the sweetness of the
spring wilds. The mosquitoes, annoying as these bloody little pests
were, were not half so bad as the nose-flies. The very sight of their
long beaks and yellow backs would drive the colts frantic. Grazing
quietly, they would suddenly begin bobbing their heads up and down and
then start away over the plains as if something frightful were after
them.
This murderous pest always started an attack by buzzing around the nose
like a bee, then landing on the breast it would creep up the neck till
it reached the muzzle, where it would quietly settle down. Puncturing a
hole in the tender nose, it would insert its beak and drink freely and
unshakeably, then fly away leaving a hurt that burned for hours. When
they first appeared, the older horses, knowing them, would keep their
noses in the grass as they grazed, or they would, when through grazing,
gather in groups and rest their chins firmly upon each other’s backs,
thus giving the pest no chance to creep up. In time the colts learned to
protect themselves in the same way.
When sultry spells were suddenly broken by gusts of unbridled winds,
which would carry the pests away, the colts would give themselves over
to eating and drinking and merrymaking.
There came a sultry spell in the early days of summer. Every chin was
resting upon some friend’s back. Tails switched ceaselessly and feet
stamped the ground with drowsy rhythm. The air was still. Not a blade of
grass moved. The silence was broken only by the nauseous singing of
mosquitoes and the monotonous droning of nose-flies.
Suddenly there came upon the still, warm air the tattoo of distant
hoof-beats. Two horsemen, coming up over a hill to the south, were just
in the act of separating with the obvious intention of coming together
on the other side of them, when Queen discovered them. Instantly the
group broke up, and colts and mares and horses mixed in a noisy
stampede.
When the older horses wearied of the race, they stopped to look back
anxiously at the pursuing riders; but Queen, in whom the fear of man,
dormant all winter, had now awakened with great intensity, tore away to
the north, snorting as she went, her tail at an angle behind her, loping
as fast as she could despite the heat and the insects.
She came breathlessly to the summit of a rather high hill and turned to
look back. Some of the colts and some of the faster adults were there
with her, but the white mare and the old sorrel were not there. Half a
mile behind them she could see the riders, now facing south; and beyond
them she saw the part of the herd which they had captured.
White-black was standing beside Queen when he suddenly discovered the
loss of his mother. Neighing loudly and distractedly, he started down
the hill after the men. Queen was afraid to go with him, yet she did not
want to let him go alone. She followed him, calling to him as she went;
but White-black persisted. When they got within a quarter of a mile of
the men, they saw one of them turn off to the side and then turn
backward. White-black then realised the danger of continuing after them.
Judging by horses he had known, horses reared in barnyards, the man
thought that it would be a simple matter to get the rest of them, now
that he had captured some of them; but he was mistaken.
It was anything but a simple matter. Queen stopped so short that one of
the colts, following along behind, hurt himself, running into her. With
a stamp of her strong front leg, she turned north and once more led the
race for freedom.
All afternoon they ran as fast as their strength would allow. The smell
of man hung in the air before Queen’s nose, poisoning her blood with
hate of him. She had little time to question, yet her whole soul,
confused by fear and the urgent need to make distance, sought the why of
this two-legged creature, always breaking in upon their peace and always
hurting them.
At last they began to feel that no one was pursuing them and stopped to
investigate. There was not the faintest glimpse of anything on hill or
horizon and in the air there was no trace of man. In the evening they
fed about a slough and at night they slept on the north side of it with
their heads turned toward the south.
Early next morning White-black was seized again by an intense longing
for his mother and braving the terrors of captivity, he started again in
search of her. They were trotting and walking along leisurely, searching
the spaces constantly when they came upon a hill from where they spied a
number of horses galloping toward them. They got frightened and turned
back north, but soon stopped again to ascertain who it was that was
coming, and so these horses gained upon them.
They proved to be three of the colts and a big mare who had somehow
broken free from the cunning little men. They were so excited that they
would not stop to sniff noses. While they passed through the group they
trotted, but as soon as they were on the other side they broke away in a
gallop. Queen and White-black and all the rest caught the contagion of
their fear, abandoned their search for those who were lost to them and
ran with the feeling that danger of captivity had become imminent once
more. And for almost a week they continued their desultory flight.
When the fear of the little men creatures had lost some of its
intensity, White-black and Queen made several attempts to find the white
mare. Her form seemed to flash across the prairies like patches of
sunlight, seen only at the vanishing moment. Often they called loud and
long trying in vain to pierce the unknown and waiting hopelessly for a
reply.
But this, too, was the inevitable, and railing and fretting was no
solution. In time the hunger for his mother shrank back into the depths
of White-black’s limited soul and the full ardour of his love fell to
the lot of Queen. And Queen felt in the touch and the presence of
White-black a compensation for the aches in her soul, which, like
wounds, had healed, but had left their scars for life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI
HOW MAN BREAKS THE SPIRIT AND THE BODY
THE summer days dragged along hot and enervating. Mosquitoes and
nose-flies in countless numbers became more and more annoying as the
sultry period prevailed. It made grazing during most of the daytime very
disagreeable. All through these long days they stood dozing in small
bunches, their chins resting upon each other’s backs, their tails
switching mechanically. When a momentary gust of wind came along, they
would run down to the sloughs for water. There they would drink till the
stinging of the pests, who were always in greater numbers above the
tall, wet, slough grass, would make the place unendurable, then they
would gallop away to the hill tops for relief.
Beautifully tolerant of all things, always moved by the spirit of “live
and let live,” Queen could not understand men and insects. She could
easily see why one horse might kick at another when the other came along
and greedily seized upon his find of grass; but the desire to attack
without reason or excuse, as it seemed to be in the character of men and
insects, was unfathomable and wholly foreign to her nature. Whenever men
appeared there was fear and confusion and anguish. So, too, as soon as
insects arrived, there was pain and discomfort.
Had she been a meat eater, she would have perceived some connection
between the joy of eating and the tragedy of being eaten; but Queen
belonged to the sweetest-tempered race on earth, whose sustenance
required neither pain nor blood, and so she could not understand, and
being unable to understand, she feared.
There followed a period of windstorms which carried the pests away. For
a long time the herd enjoyed once more the freedom of the wilds; but
another hot spell came and one day as they were eagerly seeking the
higher places, they ran into a cloud of a new kind of insect, which was
worse than anything they had ever experienced. This new pest settled
upon them in such numbers that they changed the appearance of their
heads and when in fear they tried to shake them off, the insects crept
into their ears and noses, stinging viciously.
It was now the last part of the summer, the time of the year when young
ants, having acquired their wings, began swarming; and this was one of
the summers when these ants were more annoying than they usually are.
Queen did not remember ever having come upon this pest before, and felt
that it was peculiar to the particular neighbourhood in which they
happened to be at the time. Accordingly, when first attacked by an
unusually large swarm, she turned to the south, and the herd loped at
her heels. By running, they rid themselves of the young ants and so
continued running, till the cool of the evening cleared the air of all
insects.
Next day, however, they ran into another swarm and again took to flight.
Thus they were driven back again into the vicinity of the bowl-like
valley. There because things seemed familiar they remained.
A season of constant raining followed. The cold, the excessive wetness,
and the strong winds drove all pests from the plains. The rainy season
passed and frosts came night after night, spreading layers of white dew
on the grass and freezing the surface of the spring lake. The
exhilarating days of autumn were at hand, cool, clear, and sunny. The
peaceful nights scintillated with the colours of the aurora borealis and
the unhindered brightness of the stars. Life became again a protracted
festival.
They were startled one afternoon by the sudden appearance of four
strange horses who came plodding along in single file from the south.
Queen discovered them first as they were coming down the slope of a
hill. Like the rest of the herd she stopped grazing and stared at them
curiously. Because she saw no men on them or near them and because they
came so wearily, so unenergetically, she was not afraid of them, though
she regarded them with suspicion.
When they came within a few hundred feet, the herd moved off to the
side, from where they studied them curiously to learn their intentions.
But the strangers did not even look toward them. Doggedly bobbing their
weary heads, they made straight for the lake. The leader was a big, red
horse with an ugly pugnacious face, the nose bone of which curved, very
peculiarly, outward. His hip bones protruded out of deep hollows in his
back and his sides, fallen in, revealed distinctly every hair covered
rib. Behind him lumbered a white mare so bent upon limping fast enough
to keep up with him that she did not take her eyes off him. The third
was a miserable-looking bay pony and the last was an old jade, black as
a crow. All were thin and bedraggled and two of them had sores on their
necks and breasts. The white mare seemed to have suffered most, for one
of her hind legs was swollen to twice its normal size, and she limped
very painfully.
When the queer-looking procession caught sight of the lake, they broke
the line and ran down to the water, where they drank as if they had been
without water for many days. While they were drinking the herd
surrounded them, intending peacefully to sniff noses with them and to
find out who and what manner of horses they were; but the ugly leader
met the first approach with a kick and an angry whinny. They soon
discovered that though the other three horses were not as mean, they,
too, were ill-tempered and disagreeable. The first attempt at
understanding resulted in a noisy quarrel and a stampede. When they
settled down to grazing, the herd was off by itself and the four
strangers were in a corner of the valley not any too near each other.
Queen did not like these strangers at all. She felt that they were
responsible for the unpleasant feeling that now seemed to hang in the
very atmosphere. She did not know then that slavery and cruelty such as
these poor creatures had endured would sour the best-tempered horse.
What that slavery really meant she had yet to learn.
In spite of her feelings toward the four newcomers, there was something
about the white mare that made Queen interested in her. She kept raising
her head and looking toward her and one time as she did so, she saw
White-black approaching her. When Queen saw them sniffing noses and
touching each other eagerly, she trotted over to them. This time instead
of limping away at her approach, the white mare waited for her. She
seemed glad to touch noses with Queen; but Queen felt uncomfortable. The
old kindly spirit that had made the white mare so lovable had given way
to a disagreeable impatience and suspicion; and her presence set two
emotions struggling with each other in Queen’s heart. The subtle odour
that made Queen think of some of those distant, weary, winter nights
when she lay close against her old foster mother, drew her emotionally
to the old mare; while the odour of man and barn repelled her. Over
these emotions like a black cloud in the sky, hovered a new-born fear as
if she had discerned in the poor mare’s condition the warning: “Beware
of man for thus he breaks the spirit and the body.”
At dusk Queen led the herd in a race over the plains. The poor white
mare who now clung to Queen and to White-black tried to follow; but she
did not go very far before in her eagerness she tripped and fell. Queen
and White-back went back to her and grazed about her. They began to feel
that there was something terrible going to happen to her and they
watched her curiously.
That night all three of them lay near each other. White-black and Queen
were fast asleep in the latter part of the cold night, when they were
awakened by a cry from the white mare. Queen jumped up in time to get
out of the black old jade’s way. The night was cold and he was very
thin-blooded. Unable to keep warm he had gone in search of a warmer
place and in his clumsy way had stepped upon the white mare’s swollen
leg. White-black nipped him on the back and with a cry of protest he
lumbered away into the darkness. When Queen went back to sleep she was
very much disturbed by the white mare’s groaning. Several times she woke
up and whinnied to her, but the groaning continued at intervals all
through the night.
Next day Queen noticed that blood was running from her swollen leg, and
by nightfall the white mare was nowhere to be seen. Queen looked for her
for a while and she saw that White-black too was anxious about her, but
they did not find her that day nor the next, though they searched for
her constantly as they went about their grazing.
The dull days of early winter came back, grey and silent and ominous.
Geese flew over them daily on their way to the south and their honking
filled Queen with an ineffable sadness. Suddenly one day as she was
grazing by herself she came upon the body of the white mare. She touched
the cold, hard nose with her own and sprang away frightened. She did not
try to sniff again. Now she knew that this was death and hurried away.
White-black was grazing almost a quarter of a mile away. Queen trotted
over to him and whinnied repeatedly. He answered her, but he did not
know what ailed her. She walked away a short distance and called him.
First he replied while grazing, then at the second call, he raised his
head and walked toward her. But he was no sooner pulling away at some
grass there, when he discovered that she was some distance away again
and calling as hard as ever. For some reason known only to her she was
leading him away to the north again and though he went reluctantly at
first, with the rest of the herd following him, they were soon well on
their way. A few miles from the lake, they stopped, however, for fear
that they might not come upon water. There were in this group no more
than a dozen of them, all colts that had been brought up together, and
they were glad to be by themselves, though as they moved on, the rest of
the horses, miles behind, moved after them. When a snowstorm came and
filled all the hollows, they began once more moving northward in
earnest. Forces they could not understand impelled them. Thus they
abandoned forever the scenes of their youth.
The winter passed like a night of pleasure. Protected on the north by a
strip of woodland many miles long, Queen and her companions slept the
long nights away. The snow, deep in many places, was not very deep near
the wall of poplars and feeding came comparatively easily. On sunny days
they spent as much time chasing each other through the deepest drifts as
they did in pawing for grass. The dry snows made warm blankets and the
howling winds, shrieking in the poplars, provided music for their
enjoyment of life, often sad, but for all its sadness, sweet.
They were big and strong now. Blood flowed rich and freely through their
veins and the hair on their bodies, which was as long as the hair on the
bears that at very rare intervals showed themselves and disappeared,
kept them warm. The elements, no matter how savagely they raged, could
not become disagreeable.
A few weeks of springtime with open plains to lope over and new grass,
and they grew daily stronger and fleeter. Sorrows of the dead past were
forgotten and the joys of the present were so all absorbing that even
man seemed to have become extinct, as far as they were concerned.
To the joy of unlimited space, of surging healthy blood, of plenty to
eat and drink, of peaceful and constant companionship was added the
aesthetic pleasures of love. Having first discovered in themselves
preferences for members of the opposite sex, they began to see traits
and characteristics in their choice which thrilled them.
There were, of course, petty quarrels now and then, since love will not
come unaccompanied by strife, and nature is not always provident, or
when she is provident, so often disorderly. There were some
disappointments and the weak, helpless here as the weak are helpless
everywhere, often had to give way to the strong; but the tragedy that
follows love among ferocious and greedy animals never marred their
happier relations; and even the weaker ones found love requited. Life on
the rim of love was so rich, Nature beyond love was so lavish, hurts
healed before the wounds reached the flesh.
But to Queen and White-black life was a game in which even tiredness had
its delight. Strong and healthy and beautiful, admired by the rest and
followed in their every whim, they played through the uninterrupted
carnival of laughing spring and smiling, drowsy summer. When winter came
again, they met it without fear, willing to wade through deep snows,
accepting the violent lashes of wind and blizzard, warming their hearts
in the expectant joy of another spring and another summer, looking upon
life, in their innocence, as an endlessly interesting cycle in which
winter was the greatest discomfort and spring its eternal retribution.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII
THE CONSPIRACY OF MAN AND COYOTE
THEN came an early spring. Geese returned from the south. The sadness in
their honking had given way to the exaltation of rebirth. The snows
melted almost in a day. Hundreds of wild ducks populated the many
sloughs in the hollows, and filled the delightful evenings with the soft
calling of their love-making. In the still nights or as she lay through
the rest periods which she now so strangely needed, Queen kept her ears
pricked high to catch the last faint sound of every love call and the
air now almost always vibrated with some one form or another of these
calls.
White-black, still a playful colt, thrilled her with his presence or the
touch of his lovely nose; but something sweet and remote was
mysteriously laying hold upon the love in her heart. She liked to half
close her eyes and doze, floating as she dozed, on the waves of this new
emotion. It seemed a joyous feeling all her own and unlike any joy she
had ever experienced before. It was a joy she felt within, a joy that
expressed itself best in dreaming rather than in the activity that her
other joys had always stimulated.
She liked to wander away by herself. White-black would follow her about
a good deal and sought to arouse her old play spirit; but when he
realised that he could not influence her any more as he used to, he
learned to let her alone. She seemed to have lost her agility and
preferred to be on the outskirts of the circle of the herd where she
could move about with less excitement. She liked to wander around the
small ponds and listen to the croaking of frogs, always lingering till
the night shadows lay thick over all things and she heard the ineffable
half murmur, half song of wild ducks, as they paddled along in the
stillness of the night.
Often by day she would stop her shuffling gait and with her nose down
among the blades of grass, she would watch the little sandpiper,
wondering what he meant with his heart-rending _pee-weet_ and his
eternal seeking. Sometimes she would stand for a long time and watch the
brown curlew and listen to his persistent, lugubrious complaint. All
these sounds, these melodious cries of strange little souls, somehow
responded harmoniously to voices and emotions in her own soul, and she
looked upon them as fellow beings of the wilds she loved, knowing each
by the sound of his voice.
So too the woods interested her, though she had never penetrated them
very far, because the woods were confining and she loved the open where
one could see and run in all directions. Yet she loved the trees because
these new emotions which had mysteriously come to her made her more
observant than she had been. She realised more fully than ever before
that woods and plains and skies had moods in each of which they were
different, and these revelations broadening her outlook upon her
surroundings made her, in a way, more capable of joy.
To White-black she was a puzzle. Yielding to her desire to be alone and
interesting himself in other friends, he nevertheless kept an eye on
her. There came a period in which he missed her entirely. Day after day,
he went looking for her and then one day he found her in the woods, on
an open grassy spot, cut off from the plains by a small pond and a thin
wall of poplars. She was licking a small black colt that was trying very
hard to stand on its long, shaky legs.
White-black was so glad to see her he began to neigh excitedly and caper
about the water’s edge. Then, wading across the pond, he ran toward her;
but she sprang between him and her baby with an angry whinny, ears down,
eyes glowing and her lips curling threateningly. He stopped a few paces
from her and whinnied placatingly; but she threatened him again and he
was afraid to approach. He gazed at her from where he was for a few
minutes, then like a man who, failing to understand, shrugs his
shoulders, he lowered his head and began to graze, looking up
occasionally to see if she had changed her attitude in any way. At last,
discouraged, he walked to the pond, took a long drink, waded across and
disappeared.
For several days Queen kept to herself in her own little pasture in the
woods. She knew just where the herd was and what they were doing at all
times for she watched them almost as anxiously as she watched over her
little son. Her baby grew stronger every day, spending most of his time
romping about the limited space, learning to use his awkward legs; and
as he grew stronger, the desire to return to the herd began to make
Queen restless.
At last she led the little fellow carefully around the pond, but just as
she reached the open space she saw the herd gathering as if danger
threatened. She stopped short, raised her beautiful head and with one
long nervous sniff took in the whole situation.
Man again!
She could not see the horseman, but she heard the faint, far away patter
of hoofs and the scent of man trickled through the air. She turned about
and looked at her little one who was innocently indifferent to what
worried her and extremely interested in the open space of which, being
behind her, he had caught but a glimpse. She knew that if she attempted
to join the herd and fly with them, he could not follow her. She could
hear, as she tried to decide what to do, the sudden clamour of
hoof-beats as the herd broke into a race for safety. She did not even
turn to see them go. With utmost haste she glided under cover.
She was not content with what safety the little pasture offered. As if
she had been a creature of the woods, she picked her way through thorny
shrubs and under heavy branches, till she came to a secluded spot that
satisfied her and there she lay down to regain her composure.
For almost a week she lived like a deer, hiding in the woods and coming
out by night to graze and to seek the herd which she hoped would return.
Then as the days went by and she had come upon no trace of man in the
air of the open prairies, she ceased going back into the woods, and
divided her time between her baby, feeding, and looking wistfully and
hopefully over hill and hollow for her lost companions, calling,
calling, calling till the solitudes echoed with the anguish in her
heart.
Her interest in the small living things that went about the daily
business of their little lives revived and the anxious searching of the
plains often gave way to an absorbed study of her little neighbours. She
came upon a mother duck, one day, who was waddling down the old buffalo
trail with a brood of tiny little ducklings, only a few yards away from
her. Queen slackened her pace when she saw that the mother duck was
getting excited, and watched them. The old duck walked on as rapidly as
she could, turning her head from side to side as she scrutinised Queen
first with one eye and then with the other, and though she did not seem
to consider her a very grave danger she called her little ones and
swerved off the path. The old duck was apparently leading them to the
slough, but she hadn’t gone very far when a lean and hungry-looking
coyote shot out from a cluster of rosebushes.
Instantly there was a frantic whir of wings and while the mother duck
flew almost upon the coyote, the little ones scattered, dropping down
under bushes or flowers or disappearing in gopher holes. Queen was too
much worried about her own baby to notice at the time what happened to
the duck. She sprang protectingly toward her foal and then when she
looked up she saw the coyote running eagerly after the duck, who acted
as if one of her wings were broken. Flopping with one wing she cried
with fright and half flew, half ran on ahead of him. The foolish coyote
thought she was wounded and licked his chops as he ran, anticipating a
good meal.
The old duck appeared to be losing; but always just as the coyote was
about to seize her she flew off with a cry. Thus she led him far away
and out of sight. But before Queen had started off again for the slough,
she saw the anxious mother duck come flying from the opposite direction.
Queen turned from her to where the coyote had disappeared wondering
whether he was coming back. The joyous peeping of the little brood who
appeared in all directions at the first call of their mother, reassured
her and she followed them down to the pond.
The duck and the little ones set sail as soon as they touched the water,
and paddled away triumphantly to the centre of the slough where among
the rushes no foolish coyote could threaten them. The lesson of duck
wisdom impressed itself deeply on Queen’s mind in a series of pictures,
and she sensed acutely the trick the duck had played upon the coyote.
She hated the coyote because she feared him. The very sight of him made
her uncomfortable and she did not let the little one out of her sight
for an instant. Even when she drank, the image of the beast would come
into her mind and between sips she would raise her head and stare all
around her to make sure that he hadn’t come back; for from that time on,
she seemed to expect him to show up at any moment.
Long as the days were at this time of the year, they succeeded each
other rapidly and each day added to the weight of loneliness on Queen’s
heart. Ducks came in great numbers, returning from their sojourns into
the land of motherhood with flourishing broods. Gophers appeared
everywhere. The saucy little fellows would sit up on their haunches a
yard away from Queen’s head and defy her with their queer little barks,
which betrayed much more fear than defiance. The colt would look at them
with his large, round eyes, sometimes making an attempt to approach them
but as soon as he came too near they fled. Coyotes began to show
themselves more and more often, and every time Queen came upon one, even
the clear memory of the duck playing her trick could not prevent her
heart from throbbing with fear.
A variety of flowers appeared, one kind giving way to another, and the
sloughs on the open began to shrink daily. The woods retained their
ponds, cool and clear, and in the darker corners, among the tall
poplars, there were still shrunken drifts of snow.
In spite of the abundance of food and water, in spite of her growing
interest in her baby who played about her in perfect contentment, and
played more and more delightfully, Queen’s longing for her companions
reached overwhelming proportions and at last she started away from those
solitudes in search of the herd.
For several days she travelled toward the east along the wall of the
woods. She came to where the woods ended and a vast treeless plain
stretched away beyond vision. From the pointed end of the woods, an old,
partially overgrown buffalo trail cut diagonally across the prairie,
running comparatively straight southeast. There she remained for a few
days as if unable to decide which way to go. Then, one day, when she had
followed the buffalo trail for several miles she came upon signs of the
herd. This puzzled her, for experience had taught her not to go south;
yet here was unmistakable evidence that they had gone south; and _they_
were her goal. Despite her disinclination to go in that direction, she
went on eagerly, moving each day as far as her colt would go without
protest, and resting when he refused to go any farther.
One evening, long after the woods had faded out of sight, when her baby
balked at the daily increase in the distance she urged him to make and
deliberately lay down on the path, she saw what seemed to be two horses,
grazing. Queen broke the stillness with an impassioned whinnying that
puzzled the little fellow. The fact that she was standing with her back
to him and whinnying so frantically interested him. That she might be
calling to any one but himself was entirely beyond his experience.
Feeling that she was looking for him, he got up and sidled up to her,
touching her neck with his little nose. Queen bent down and covered him
with caresses; but to his dismay, she soon returned to her calling,
keeping her head high and looking away into the shadows.
The darkness obliterated the two horses and Queen, unable to stand
still, started away again, the little fellow complaining plaintively as
he lumbered after her. When, however, he lay down once more, she yielded
and there they spent the night.
Her night’s rest was a troubled one. What with other emotions tormenting
her, there was a strong scent of man in the air that kept her awake and
watchful. When dawn came at last, she saw the two horses, still grazing
but much nearer to her. Beyond them she saw two black mounds, like
malignant growths on the body of the plains. In these mounds, she knew,
lived man.
She was afraid to go any closer to the mounds so she called loudly to
the two horses who finally responded by starting in her direction. When
she saw them coming, she hastened to meet them, despite her fear. She
whinnied loudly as she went and when the foremost of the two horses
replied to her, his voice sounded familiar. Who it was she did not know
but she started toward him on a gallop and as soon as she touched his
nose, she remembered the old sorrel work-horse of the spring lake in the
bowl-like valley of her childhood.
Where he had been, how he had got up there, what he was doing, these
were facts Queen could not find out, nor did she experience any desire
to find out. Life to her was somewhat of an abysmal night with
beautiful, star-like gleams of understanding. The past to her was an
ally of death not to be thought about and the future became important
only when it turned into the present. The sole value of the impressions
that she carried in her memory lay in the help they offered for the
understanding of the impressions that the present was making and Queen
never wept over them.
There was the old sorrel before her! The memory of what he had been to
her, inundated by floods of time and other experiences, had gone out
like the stars at dawn. But now, certain odours and sounds and qualities
too delicate for words, like the evening that follows every dawn,
brought the stars back to her sky and she strove to express the almost
inexpressible satisfaction she experienced.
The other horse was a stranger and so Queen was wary of him. She sniffed
noses with him suspiciously and kept away, refusing to allow him to go
near her colt whereas the old sorrel sniffed all over him without her
protest.
But the pleasure she derived from the momentary satisfaction of the
longing for companionship, inadequate as it was, had its price. Her
excitement was so great that she did not notice the coming of another
horse with a man on his back, till he was already dangerously close.
With an anxious call to her little one she dashed away in the direction
from which she had come. The two horses went with her.
It was not long however before she saw the man through the corner of her
eye, urging his straining horse, apparently to get ahead of her. Queen
was not running as fast as she could, for she knew that her baby could
not keep up with her. But the sight of the man at the side of her
bewildered her. She leaped out of his way, leaving him a hundred feet
behind only to realise at once that her colt was not with her. She swung
off to the side and turned to see the man driving the old sorrel, his
companion, and her own colt off towards the black mounds.
Her eyes fairly bulging out of her head, her lips frothing, Queen leaped
back after him, calling frantically to him as she ran. As soon as the
little thing heard her, he turned to run back, but instantly the man
threw a rope and caught him round the neck, hurling him to the ground.
The two horses ran on toward the mounds, but the man stopped, dismounted
and battled with her frightened, crying baby.
The desire to hurt was foreign to Queen’s nature, but when she saw her
foal on the ground struggling with the man who was apparently getting
the better of it, she ran toward the monster with murder in her heart.
The man saw her coming and with the other end of his long rope he struck
her head a terrible blow. She jumped back in terror. Before she had
aroused enough courage to make another attack, the man had completely
tied the little thing so that it could not move a limb and, mounting his
horse again, he rode away.
Queen rushed to her little son with a sense of relief but that feeling
soon gave way to one of painful solicitude. She had her baby and the man
had left, but the baby was helplessly tied. It was changed with a change
like death. The monstrous two-legged creature had cast a spell upon it.
She ran around it frantically, called to it encouragingly, licked it
tenderly, then ran off a few paces, urging it to exert itself and follow
her.
Then to her horror, she saw the man coming back. This time he had the
sorrel and his companion with him. She grew desperate. She bit at the
rope with nervous haste, trying to drag her colt away with her, but her
efforts resulted only in hurting it and at the first cry of pain, she
stopped. Until the man was so near that he struck her with the long
binder whip which he had brought with him, she would not leave her baby
and then she only kept out of reach of the whip. Finally, in
desperation, unable to decide upon anything that she might try to do,
she stood and watched; while the man was busy, preparing the ropes on
the stone boat which the two horses had been dragging after them.
One thing at once hurt and puzzled her, and that was the nonresistance
of the old sorrel. There he stood covered with the bewildering straps
with their glittering buckles, making no attempt to run from the man nor
to help her. He did not even call to her.
She tried to make out how the man succeeded in holding the two horses
though he was not even looking at them. Her deliberations, however, were
suddenly interrupted by the man’s leaving the stone boat and going to
her little one. When she saw him drag the colt to the stone boat, she
went mad again and rushed at him with bared teeth; but as soon as he
straightened himself and turned to her, she fled.
Her hatred included the old sorrel when she saw him start away dragging
her baby off. She sprang at him from the side and nipped him savagely.
The old fellow got frightened and backed up almost stepping upon the
helpless little colt on the stone boat. The man got angry. He jumped
from the stone boat and with his long whip struck her with all his
strength squarely upon her tender nose. The pain took her breath away.
She reared on her hind legs in a fit of agony, then dashed out of reach,
and the man drove off with her colt.
Bewildered by her anguish, she ran after him, rending the air with her
cries, zigzagging from one side to the other. When the man reached one
of the black mounds, his sod barn, Queen remained at a distance, running
around the place in a wide circle and running steadily as if she found
relief in activity.
The man disappeared in the black mound, but when Queen ventured nearer,
for fear that she would again attack the old sorrel, the man poked his
head out of a hole in the wall and yelled at her; and she turned and
ran. When she started for the barn again, the man came out altogether.
She was forty rods away when she turned and as she did so she heard the
strong, healthy call from her colt, muffled by the confinement of the
barn; but apparently free as if he were untied. She replied with all her
strength and ran toward the barn, stopping a hundred feet away and
watching the man, as he fastened the barn-door securely.
She saw him unhook the horses from the stone boat and then drive them
over to a queer-looking instrument that lay near the house. Then she saw
them start away with the plow dragging behind the horses. They were
coming toward her so she loped away to the right. When she stopped, she
saw that they were not following her but were going off toward the
south. Considerably relieved she watched them go till they were lost
from view behind a hill.
She trotted up to the first of the two mounds, the man’s small, sod
house and cautiously sniffed about for a few minutes to make sure that
there was no other man about. The odours there were unendurable, but
everything was motionless, and at a call from her little one, she ran to
the barn. For a while she ran round and round it as she called, then
suddenly she spied his little head through a hole in the wall. She
attempted to thrust her head in. She just managed to touch him with her
hot lips, but the fear of the evil-smelling barn forced her to withdraw
her head, in spite of her desire to keep touching him. She had the
feeling of being trapped herself and immediately loped away again. A
thorough examination of the house and the plains, however, assured her
that she was still free and that the man was not returning.
Again and again she thrust her head into the hole, and despite the
nauseating odours she prolonged her caresses every succeeding time that
she put her head through the window. Yet she realised that that was not
giving her back her baby. At the same time the touch of his beloved head
intensified the fire in her heart and she began desperately to seek some
way of getting him out.
There was a pile of manure back of the barn which sloped upward till it
almost reached the flat, straw roof. She ran around the barn in an
attempt to find some opening and every time she came to the heap of
manure she was forced to enlarge the circle she was making. With a look
in every direction, to make sure the man was not returning, she suddenly
started up the pile of manure and carefully stepped upon the roof of the
barn.
She had only taken a step forward, though, when she felt the roof giving
way under her feet. This frightened her and she attempted to turn back
much too hastily. Before she could get back to the pile of dirt, half
the roof together with a part of the wall caved in, dropping her down
into the barn on top of the débris. She was very badly frightened.
Without stopping even to look for her colt, she leaped over the
remaining portion of the wall taking half of it with her.
She did not turn to see what she had accomplished but fled in terror
over the fields. When her courage returned, she looked back and happily
discovered that still the man had not returned, nor was there any other
sign of danger. On the other hand her little colt was now standing near
the broken wall, his head and shoulder sticking up above it, calling
frantically. She then hurried back with all her speed, caressing him as
if she hadn’t seen him for weeks, and urging him, in her dumb way, to
come out.
He tried very hard to get over the barrier, but could not make it. To
show him how to do it, she jumped in again and as she jumped she knocked
another layer of sod into the barn. Then as she was about to leap out a
second time she heard a familiar whinny behind her. Turning nervously,
she made out in the gloom of the other end of the barn, two horses, one
of them her mate. Poor White-black was standing listlessly in a
cage-like stall, securely tied to the manger. His voice was weaker than
it had ever been, and his calling seemed strangely half-hearted. A great
desire to touch his nose came over her, though the fear of the barn, the
frightfully nauseating odours and the slippery, dirty floor, all urged
her to fly before some mysterious force should seize her and hold her
there. All she was able to do was to call to him from where she stood
trembling near the opening in the wall, ready to jump at the first sign
of danger. The sound of her own voice in the confines of the gloomy barn
terrified her. With a single bound she leaped over the broken wall,
taking so much more of it with her, lowering it so decidedly that the
little fellow was able to climb over it.
With a last heartfelt call to White-Black, appealing to him to follow
her as he used to follow her in the days that had gone, Queen raced once
more toward the haven of the north, ran against all feeble protest of
her little son, ran till the loathsome mounds vanished from the
undulating plains.
In a hollow where a spring slough had turned much of the earth into mud
and then had partially dried up, Queen drank, fed her baby; and, because
he would go no further, she grazed while he rested. She felt very unsafe
and gazed incessantly and fearfully toward the hilltop behind her. Two
images she expected to see coming over the brow every time she looked
up. She expected and feared to see the man coming after her and she
expected and hoped to see White-black. Neither came, but both haunted
her stormy mind and allowed it no peace.
Fear urged her to be off and away but every time she started, her little
fellow refused to go with her. He would raise his head painfully from
the grass and call to her but he would not get up. He had not taken all
the milk there was for him and he acted very peculiarly, but Queen’s
fear was implacable. She pretended to leave him and ran all the way up
the other slope of the hollow. He called to her in a frenzy of fear, but
though her heart beat fast for him, she did not reply and when she began
to disappear over the summit of the hill he got up in haste and ran with
all his strength till he found her but a few feet from the summit. She
whinnied to him lovingly but continued her trot and he wearily followed
her.
A peculiar note in his cry, some distance farther on, made her turn
round to look at him. She saw him touch his shoulder with his little
nose and as he touched it she saw a swarm of insects fly off from the
spot. She walked back to him and discovered a deep gash that ran across
his breast and up his other shoulder. The hideous cut was covered by
lumps of coagulated blood and the insects settled back on it as soon as
he withdrew his nose.
She proceeded at once to lick the wound till she found it was bleeding
again and stopped, bewildered by the dripping blood. But the bigger
problem presented itself anew. She looked up suddenly and spied, on the
horizon in the direction from which she had come, a black moving object.
She was certain that it was the man coming after her and springing
forward a few paces stopped suddenly when she found that her colt was
not following her. She stamped her foot frantically, calling to him with
more terror than urge.
He started bravely after her, but the more he ran, the more his wound
opened, and the coagulation that had taken place and was trying to take
place failed to save him. Queen, who loved him with magnificent passion,
did not know that her running was killing him. What could she have done
if she had known? The man was fast gaining in the chase. Man always
gained, save where death entered the race and death was slowly defeating
this man.
At last, the little fellow dropped, exhausted. When she hurried back to
caress and to urge him on, she knew that he could go no further. The man
had disappeared behind a hill. Queen ran back with a mad, desperate
impulse to bar his way to her little son. The image of a mother duck
flying into the face of a coyote, flashed through her brain. She ran
down one hillside and up another, her throbbing sides wet with
perspiration, and in the valley below that, she saw him.
He was somewhat to the right of her. Seeing her he turned to the left.
She, too, turned left and she ran trying to keep a hill between them. As
soon as she heard him coming over the hill that was between them she
raced over the next hill. In that way she led him several miles north,
then running for the first time as fast as she could go, she fled west.
On the top of one of the hills, she stopped finally and looked back. She
saw the man turn homeward and before he should see her, she dropped down
into a valley and there she started back to her colt, running now as
fast as ever, though her sides were white with foam. When she got to a
second hilltop and found that the man had disappeared and that there was
no trace of him in the air, she loped along a bit more easily.
The belated summer evening was coming at last. The sun, very red and
big, lowered on one side of her and high in the heavens the moon grew
brighter. She came to a slough and drank. She gulped the water a moment,
then raising her noble head, pricked her ears and listened, the water
dripping from her mouth. It seemed to her that she had heard a coyote
somewhere in the distance. She grew troubled and fearful again, running
in her confusion beyond the hill where she should have turned.
Instead of going right back she turned south and when she ran into the
trail of blood that his open wound had left on the grass, she was quite
some distance away from him. But she was on his trail and with her nose
low to the ground she trotted along hopefully till she was suddenly
startled by the hideous cry of a coyote. She stopped, completely
terrified, and listened. A cry of a second coyote, nearer, responded to
the first from the other side of the hill before her.
With a few bounds she was at the top of the hill. Not a dozen feet down
the slope sat a coyote over the lifeless body of her colt. He had eaten
a great deal and was heavy with meat. He was so completely surprised
that he could not move for a moment. It was too late to move. She was so
close to him that he was afraid to turn. He bared his teeth in a feeble
effort at defiance and snarled, but Queen was too furious to think of
herself. With all the strength of madness she hurled herself upon him
and over him, leaping away in terror and carrying with her the sensation
of hoof crushing bone. When she was quite certain that there was nothing
pursuing her, she thought he had run away and so nervously trotted back
to her baby.
She came back cautiously a step at a time, her eyes gleaming like
burning coals, her skin quivering with fear. She saw the black shadowy
mass that was her colt and then she made out a second black mass beside
it. A few steps nearer and she began to feel that she had rendered the
coyote motionless, but when she got quite close she saw the beast’s hind
legs kick backward in the throes of death. Queen did not know that he
was dying, but she did know by the motionlessness of his head that she
had him at a disadvantage and she approached with less fear and beat at
him with her hoof just as she had many a time beaten a hole in the ice
over a pond.
Finally she revolted against a task so foreign to her nature and turned
as if with sudden realisation of something overwhelmingly terrible, to
the almost unrecognisable body of her foal. But she only sniffed once
and sprang away with a snort and cry. Round and round the hilltop she
ran expressing the agony in her soul with loud and plaintive, fearful
calls to which there was no answer in all the infinity of space.
The odours were maddening. The place became unbearable and in her soul
the desire for the companionship of the herd flared up like a great
light in the torturous darkness. It was as if she saw them somewhere in
the gloomy spaces and running would bring her to them. So she loped and
trotted northward, all night. At dawn, too weary to continue on her
feet, she lay down to rest and as she rested she cropped the grass about
her. A few hours of rest and she was ready to continue her anxious
journey.
When toward noon she came to where the familiar woods appeared on the
horizon Queen accelerated her pace. It was there in that woods that the
beloved little thing had come to her, and she loped as if she expected
to find it there again. Forgotten were all the aches in her muscles.
What pain of body can outweigh the pain of mother mind at the loss of
her baby? Deny the animal all the finer emotions you like! Mother love
is too obvious a quality of the lowest animal life to be denied.
But the moment Queen saw the familiar trees, the moment she entered the
shadowy, fragrant atmosphere of the woods where the little thing had
been born, the image of it, wandering about elusively in the solitude,
came plaintively calling into her soul and she turned back upon the
trail of sorrow. Back over the plains she ran, as if her speed could
save it, ran as if some evil man creature were carrying it away, running
off with it, ahead of her, just out of sight.
An overwhelming sense of bodily weariness came over her at sundown and
she lay down to sleep; and all through her heavy slumber, she pursued
her elusive baby and struggled with monstrous man and hungry coyote.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII
RETRIBUTION
EVERY dawn on the plains is the miracle of creation, and the best
philosophy for man or animal lies in this daily beginning. “Endure
Sorrow’s night,” says the dawn, “then rise with me and plan for the
day.”
Before her on the emerging plain lay a suspicious-looking stone. Without
moving her head, Queen regarded it a long time. It was altogether too
woolly for a stone. Her scrutiny brought strange sensations and her
heart began to beat rapidly. A gust of soft morning breeze swept down
from the hill and the stone moved. Queen sprang to her feet.
With its hungry face turned toward her, the coyote glided away. Sorrow’s
night was over and Queen loped after him with a new notion of life. The
faster and the more fearfully he ran, the more faith Queen acquired in
her own superiority, the more consolation she derived from the hope and
the will to crush him, as she had crushed the other one.
He swung off toward the northwest. She too turned northwest. He stopped
to sit down on his haunches and to look back at her, to learn if
possible the purpose of this uncanny mare. But as soon as he sat down
she seemed to increase her effort to reach him. When she got too near,
he bounded away out of reach. When he tried to turn in a new direction,
she turned and headed him off, forcing him north against his will.
Wherever he went she pursued him doggedly. Over hills, down into
valleys, around sloughs, she went driven by emotions she had never
experienced before. But while these emotions drove her, others retarded
her and the coyote began to leave her farther and farther behind,
growing smaller and smaller in the distance. Finally Queen abandoned the
chase and turned with satisfaction to grazing.
Long after he had disappeared, however, Queen scrutinised the indistinct
spaces in which he had sunk out of sight. She had been grazing a long
while and had almost forgotten about the coyote, when she looked up once
more and discovered a tiny object moving on the sky-line. There was no
doubt in Queen’s mind as to what that object was. She galloped away at
full speed and did not stop till she was out of breath. For a while she
lost sight of the object, because of a deep and winding hollow through
which she was obliged to pass, but when she reached a high place again,
she beheld with great joy a group of horses still so far away that they
did not notice her coming.
She called constantly as she ran, though she did so more to express her
own excitement than with any hope of getting their attention. When at
last they heard her, every head went up and every pair of ears turned
forward. The big, brown colt, her old rival in the race, left the group
first and started for her. As soon as she recognised him, Queen knew
that she had found her old companions. Her joy was insuppressible. She
rushed from one to the other and caressed the little colts till they
fled in terror of her passion.
There was a brown, fuzzy little fellow, the foal of a big, good-natured
sorrel mare. Queen caressed it emotionally. The little fellow endured it
without any kind of manifestation for a little while, then suddenly he
decided to take advantage of the situation. Queen gave him her milk most
willingly, but his mother watched the performance with growing
dissatisfaction. When he had had about all he could have she jumped at
him to prevent him from going back for more and incidentally showed her
jealousy by pretending to bite Queen. Queen sprang out of the way,
manifesting clearly her disinclination to fight over it.
In spite of the big mare’s protests, Queen fed him again before
nightfall. When the mother objected again, she relinquished temporarily
and led the whole group in a merry race round the hill top. Her desire
to be active, born of emotions that would not down within her, was
contagious. She could not rest and every time she started off with a
toss of her head, the herd was at her heels.
In spite of all the weary days of journeying in the tragic period that
had just passed out of her life, so tense was Queen’s joy at meeting her
companions, so full was her life again, now that she had friends to love
life with, and a colt to drink her milk, that she seemed to have lost
the faculty of feeling weariness, and frisked about in the shower of
moonlight like a gratified colt.
Not far off lay the carcass of a dead horse, from which life, tired of
baffling snows all winter and toiling for man all summer, had departed.
Over this carcass a pack of coyotes were savagely feasting and their
hymns to the god of coyotedom disturbed Queen’s revelry. Several times
she ran off a short distance in the direction from which the insane
howling was coming. Every time she started off the herd started with
her. Locating the coyotes half way down the long slope, Queen first
circled around the hilltop, then suddenly turned down the slope at
breakneck speed. Like an ocean wave the herd swept down the incline.
The coyotes were taken completely by surprise. Not until the herd was
almost upon them did they attempt to escape, fleeing then chaotically in
all directions. But the horses also spread out to avoid the carcass; and
with momentum stronger than their fear, they stampeded across the paths
of the fleeing pack. Most of the scavengers escaped but one was struck
down. At the foot of the hill Queen turned back to the dismay of the
herd. They watched her curiously as she trotted, some distance ahead of
them, up the incline.
She came to the miserable creature whose back had been broken. Unable to
move his hind legs, he dragged them along behind as he crept away with
his forelegs. But Queen did not let him get away. The herd had by this
time timorously come after her. Stepping back a moment before the
flashing teeth and the gleaming eyes she rushed at him again and struck
him upon the head with a sharp, front hoof. She struck him again and
again as if moved by the terror of the thing she was doing. The herd had
come up toward her but when they saw her attacking the coyote they got
frightened and ran away. Queen then abandoned the lifeless form and ran
to join them.
Far away on the moonlit sky-line sat the rest of the coyote pack, their
nozzles turning periodically to the moon and baying madly against the
betrayal of their god. Never in all their savage experience had they
come upon such a herd of horses and never again would they expose
themselves to its madness.
Without vote or discussion, without struggle or rivalry, Queen assumed
her regency. Her will became the will of the herd. Queen she became in
earnest, in the highest sense of the word, ruling neither for gain nor
power, ruling solely for love of freedom and her companions. And her
ruling was the salvation of the herd and the consternation of the
homesteaders whose wretched shacks skirted her domains.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX
SLOWLY MAN CREPT NORTHWARD
THE prairie grass began once more to wither and grow grey. The winds
assumed again their autumnal sadness and moaned with an aimless
complaint. Again dead thistles began rolling over the plains, expressing
somehow in their helpless rolling the relentlessness of change. Frosts
rewhitened the morning earth and geese honked again on their flight to
the south.
The herd was grazing on a hillslope. On the top of the hill stood Queen.
The wind was tugging away at her mane and tail, but otherwise she was as
motionless as the hill she was standing on. Her eyes were fixed upon two
horses coming from the southeast and more than a mile away.
Once or twice the brown colt, now a full grown stallion, fat and almost
clumsy, raised his head to look as she was looking; but most of the
others were busy seeking better grasses and wild plants they liked,
until Queen, with a partially suppressed whinny of excitement trotted
away to meet the newcomers. At once the peaceful scene broke into
activity.
But when they had come within a quarter of a mile of the two horses,
they stopped. A white horse that made Queen think of White-black, tied
to a sorrel horse that made her think of the old sorrel work-horse,
running as fast as they could under the circumstances, were coming
toward them, by fits and starts. The white horse, as he came, kept
stepping backward and raising his head every once in a while, only to
leap forward again a few paces. Always as he leaped forward something
dragged him back by the head. They would run on together for a short
distance and then the same thing would happen again.
When they got very near, in spite of her interest, Queen’s fear of the
scent of man which clung to them got the better of her and she led away
till the apparition was out of sight. There the herd waited for its
reappearance. When they did appear the herd fled again. This they kept
up for the greater part of the day. Toward evening Queen made another
attempt to find out just what was wrong. By this time she was convinced
that there was no man with them anywhere, and the labourious manner in
which these miserable creatures followed them mitigated her fear of
their being dangerous.
She went round on a curve and stopped some fifty feet from the two weary
animals. The sorrel, now about a foot behind the white horse, snorting
as if he had great difficulty in breathing, took the opportunity during
the moment’s rest to brace his body with his front legs against the
pulling of the white one. The white one, driven by some fear, began
pulling and tugging as soon as he had caught his breath; but he couldn’t
budge the old fellow an inch. Queen advanced fearfully. The scent of
man, despite the fact that there was no man about, worried her even as
the growing certainty that these were her old companions drew her toward
them. Finally she ventured near enough to touch the white nose that came
forward a few inches to meet hers. White-black it was! Poor, abused
White-black, covered with barn dirt, his sides fallen in through
struggle and lack of sufficient food.
A touch of the old sorrel’s nose brought him to his proper place in her
mind and Queen ran from one to the other, feeling vaguely that the spell
of the dirty barn was still holding both of them in captivity, and
trying to arrive at some plan of helping them, yet not having the
faintest idea of what to do.
The old sorrel was by far the weaker one of the two. He was evidently
just about exhausted. His poor old sides expanded and contracted rapidly
and his dirty flanks were literally wet with foamy perspiration. Though
White-black took advantage of their halt and grazed as far as the
entanglement of straps that held him fast to his mate would allow; the
old sorrel made no attempt to eat. His harness had slipped down his side
and one of his front legs was caught in a loop in one of the straps that
hung from his neck.
The weary old sorrel had hardly regained his breath, when Queen spied a
man on horseback coming after the pair. The herd dashed away to the
north while White-black, dragging the exhausted sorrel behind him,
brought up the rear. The old sorrel did the best he could. The lines
tying his bridle to White-black’s bridle pulled painfully at his lips,
the corners of which were red with blood. Strength was ebbing rapidly
from him and he moved through space as if he were dazed.
Suddenly one of his front legs went into a badger hole. The old fellow
went down with a groan. The groan was immediately followed by several
sharp, successive snaps and White-black was free from his poor,
wretched, old mate. And the poor old sorrel, too, was free, free from
all future agony.
The hanging straps impeded White-black’s flight, but the darkness came
to his rescue. The herd had ceased running. The hoof-beats of the man’s
saddle pony were dying away in the distance. By morning when the man
reappeared on the horizon, White-black, still burdened by his heavy
harness, was free enough to be able to keep up with the herd, for what
was left of the lines, stepped upon so many times during the night, now
hung above his knees.
For more than a week, the man persisted in his futile attempt to catch
the white horse; then, because his saddle pony was completely exhausted,
racing daily with the weight on his back, he gave up the chase with a
vicious hope that White-black would strangle himself in the harness he
carried with him, and a curse upon the wild western broncos that were
“no good anyway.”
But White-black had no inclination to pass out of existence that way,
nor did his notion of value coincide with that of his would-be owner. He
did everything he could think of doing to rid himself of his trying
encumbrance. He would lie down every once in a while and roll in the
hope of thus rubbing the harness off. In time, he managed to loosen the
crupper so that it let the greater part of the harness, the part that
covered his back and sides, slip down on one side of him and drag on the
ground.
This only intensified his discomfort, for every horse that went near him
was sure to step on some strap. Every time some one stepped upon a
strap, however, there was one strap less dragging after him, and in a
few days the whole network of straps was torn from the hames. One day
while he was grazing, the hames suddenly loosened and fell off and the
collar fell down upon his head. A little help with one hoof got it
completely off his head, and so he was free from all but the bridle. The
bit was tormenting enough but since it did not entirely prevent his
grazing and his drinking, and the straps hanging down did not interfere
with his running, he was virtually free again.
It was during the middle of the winter that he was relieved of this last
link in the chain of his captivity. There came a severe blizzard that
kept them lying huddled into each other with nothing to do for a long
time. Queen had always been annoyed by these straps that clung to
White-black and lying close to him, she stretched her neck and began to
chew at them. While she chewed at the straps, White-black ground his
teeth in his persistent effort to dislodge the bit, and suddenly it fell
from his mouth.
When next spring the homesteader, in another vain attempt to recapture
his valuable white horse, got near enough to the herd to see that
White-black did not have on him a piece of all the harness with which he
had run away, he could hardly believe his eyes. That night he told his
neighbours:
“That mare’s got the devil in her. She just took them there harness
right off him. I know it. How else could he get ’em off? When the
critters ran away they both had all their harness on. How in thunder did
he get his bridle off? Tell me that! She’s a devil, that mare! I’ll tell
y’u she went for me like a witch the day I got her colt. I went away and
left her round the barn thinkin’ I’d get her with the help of Colter;
but I reckoned on her bein’ a mare—not a devil! She opened her mouth
just like a wolf. I swear it!”
Because she was able to defend herself against man’s tyranny, they
accused her of having the devil in her; because she was wise enough to
retain her liberty, they cursed and hated her. Yet they had ample reason
for hating her. Within two years after the loss of White-black, not a
homesteader dared release his horses in the fall as they had been in the
habit of doing. To release them was in all probability to lose them.
But keeping them in the barns all winter meant the necessity for
gathering much greater quantities of hay than they were accustomed to
gather, and, worse than that, it meant horses with less energy for
seeding time in the spring.
Every spring, all manner of attempts were made to capture Queen but
every attempt ended in costly failure. Some of the older and weaker
horses were taken from the herd each year, but Queen and all the younger
horses remained free. Once Queen learned that she was being pursued, it
was impossible for them to get within a mile of her.
When these futile attempts to capture her became too annoying, Queen
would invariably turn to the north. The ominous barbed wire fences which
year after year encroached upon the wild, somehow never appeared on the
northern horizon. North, always north, she went, maneuvering with such
cunning about the hills and through the deeper valleys, that for every
mile she was able to put between herself and her pursuers, they were
obliged to travel five.
The Canadian Government embarked upon a campaign of advertisement to
urge farmers in the United States to go north and take up homesteads in
Alberta. Men sold their farms in the northwestern states and moved
across the border. Every year a new crop of homesteader’s shacks
appeared to baffle the desolation. To be sure, many a shack built
hopefully one year stood gaping like a skull the next; but in spite of
the discouraging features of the country, much of the encroachment
yearly made upon Queen’s domains was permanent.
Every springtime with the blossoming of the wild rosebushes and the
prairie cacti, new fence posts with their glittering lines of barbed
wire cut some small portion of her territory on the east, the south and
the west. Slowly man crept northward and with an inborn faith in the
justice and the security of the wilds, Queen fled at his approach.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER X
THE DOORS OF THE TRAP SHUT
THE years rolled by. Old tragic hurts were dulled by the mists of
passing time and every hour of the unfettered present came bringing some
new joy. New children came to Queen and in the love of each succeeding
one, Queen rejoiced as if it were the first and only one. Carefully she
led them all to the doorway of maturity and there, since life willed it
so, she gave them over to the herd, to live and provide for themselves
and to abide by the unwritten laws of the herd in the finest
exemplification of the Golden Rule on earth. The friends who died or who
suddenly disappeared she would miss for a long while, sometimes spending
months in search of them, then she would transfer her love of them to
some other member of the brotherhood, just as she transferred her
mother-love from the older to the younger of her offspring.
The shadowy creatures of the receding past often came, walking into the
dozing memory at nightfall. Queen would remain lying, chewing
absent-mindedly and watching them, her contentment undisturbed, loving
the sadness that clung to them, as we love the sadness that clings to
our sweetest music.
There came a spring of unusual activity on the part of man, and his
daily appearance intruded so threateningly upon the herd, that they
abandoned the land which had become endeared to them and journeyed north
almost steadily for many days.
They came upon a pleasant valley abounding in delicious, virgin grass
and many small ponds; and they took possession of it. But at midnight,
while they were resting, they were suddenly aroused by a shrieking noise
which was followed by a long-drawn rattle, like distant thunder.
The sound died out and did not come again, but an attenuated cloud of
smoke swept across the valley. Though the rest of that night was
undisturbed and the air, from then on, was clear, they kept awake and
fearfully restless. At dawn they abandoned the valley though they saw
nothing that was alarming; and as they moved northward, they came upon a
railroad track.
On the other side of the track the land stretched away silent and
desolate, merging at the northern horizon in a long, narrow shadow, as
of woodland. The tracks remained perfectly motionless and the herd
slowly ventured near them. While some of the horses looked on curiously,
some of the headstrong young colts to the dismay of their mothers,
walked upon the tracks and sniffed at them. Seeing that nothing happened
to them, the herd started at once to cross.
Half a mile north of that they came upon another elongated slough which
had been hidden by a hill. Always glad to see water, they trotted down
in concert and took possession, once more intending to end the journey.
But toward evening while the colts were expressing the joy of life in a
gambol about the water, they were startled by another shriek like the
one of the night before, and associating it somehow with the tracks,
they tore up the slope to see what it was.
In the distant east glowed a light, like the harvest moon. It gleamed
from the centre of a black, fear-inspiring object from which clouds of
smoke poured into the air and streamed backward into space. They gazed
upon it for a few moments as if transfixed, then when they realised that
it was coming rapidly nearer, they broke down into the valley, splashing
through the slough and sped up the other slope. On the top of that hill,
they stopped to look back. The thing was already thundering past them,
shutting away the whole of the south with a long, black line of smoke in
which sparkled a thousand star-like eyes of fire.
Had they remained to look at that line of smoke, they might have lost
the fear of it. Within a few minutes it went as it had come. The sweet
evening air cleared and settled down to the silence they loved. But such
is the way of destiny that a thing of smoke and illusion may wield a
power greater than that of iron or mind.
They did not wait long enough to see what it really was. An impassable
wall had arisen behind them. A guard of ferocious beasts had rushed
across their path, shutting from them forever the old south world they
knew so well. To Queen it was, in the vaguest sense, somewhat more than
that. The apprehensions of the moment were dispelled by the widening
distance between them and this weird thing they feared; but a new
anxiety crept into Queen’s heart, like a snaky creature, and grew bolder
there as the danger it forecast approached. It was the fear of the
hunted for the cage. It was as if she had entered an enormous trap and
had seen the door shut upon her.
They instinctively kept to a strip of wild prairie several miles in
width. On the eastern and western horizon they saw from time to time
shacks and barns and fences and huge squares of black, plowed earth; and
from the distances came at long intervals the muffled barking of dogs.
The feel and the smell of man was in the air, and they found that air
hard to breathe. They grazed when hunger asserted itself and rested when
the younger colts refused to go on, but continued their migration.
They came to a country where there were no shacks and no fences, where
the evenness was broken only by promising patches of woodland. There the
earth seemed destitute of living things and in the moaning of the winds
as they blew through the swaying trees, the spirit of loneliness assured
them of safety. The grass on the open spaces grew high as if no living
thing had ever touched it, and swaying with the trees, it subtly
testified to the authenticity of that assurance. In Queen’s mind,
however, the shacks and the fences and the barking of dogs were as yet
too distinct to allow her to feel entirely secure; and she continued the
flight, fear urging her to go on till the last trace of man had faded
from the air and a wall of solitude and wilderness had covered it. But
they came one day to a very steep slope. Tall trees rose from the foot
of the slope and beyond their tops Queen saw the reflecting waters of
the Saskatchewan pouring along rapidly from west to east.
The river was very wide and the darker waters beneath the brighter
surface indicated a perilous depth. The fear of the trap that had been
vague in Queen’s mind now became distinct as she gazed at the obscure
distance from which the river came and at the shadowy spaces into which
it rushed. Her faith in the north had given her a decade of precarious
freedom and had taken her two hundred miles from her birthplace. The
sight of those impassable volumes of water staggered that faith. She
grew nervous and restless and when the herd had drunk the treacherous
water, she led them away to the west.
A half day’s journey brought them to where the Vermillion River tearing
along between high banks comes pouring down from the south and the west
and breaks into the Saskatchewan, with a threatening roar. Again Queen
felt that she had come to another wall of the trap and turning, led the
herd back toward the east. A few days of grazing and moving east along
the Saskatchewan brought them to a barbed wire fence that ran down the
banks to the very edge of the river. Ever as she had followed the
slightly winding river, she had searched in vain for a ford. The doors
of the north, too, had closed to them, and their freedom now depended
upon a battle of wits, the wits of the herd in the limited wilds against
the wits of man in his protecting civilisation.
They returned to the middle of the unsettled belt and there Queen spent
a happy week of freedom, disturbed only by the promptings of the canker
within her which derived its sustenance from the frequent appearance of
men on horseback.
Seeding time arrived and the homesteaders who lived south of the
railroad tracks went forth to hunt for the horses they had released the
preceding fall. The homesteaders who lived on the outskirts of these
wilds, in the hope of capturing some of the unclaimed horses, joined
them. But with a cunning that exasperated the hunters, Queen went from
one hiding place to another, detecting every approach so long before the
horsemen appeared that in the first full week of searching she was seen
only on two occasions.
The homesteaders became desperate. The snows were fast disappearing and
the land was in best condition for their work. They appealed to the
Canadian Government and half a dozen members of the Royal Northwest
Mounted Police came out to reinforce them in the war to the knife that
was declared upon Queen and her followers.
Several times a day Queen would run down the banks of the Saskatchewan.
At the river she would take a few sips of water as if she had come to
drink and then she would stand and look longingly across the roaring
deeps to the wilds beyond, suppressing the constantly rising impulse to
plunge into the rapid waters and beat her way to the freedom of the
north, which seemed, after half a lifetime of benefaction, to have
abandoned her. Then one day the impulse came with overwhelming
suddenness and she struck out madly for the other shore. But when she
felt the bottom drop away from under her feet, she became frightened.
The remnants of the huge snow drifts that were still melting kept the
river swollen to twice its volume. The current lifted her and carried
her several rods downstream, fortunately for her, hitting a bar and
depositing her there.
Puffing and snorting and registering the promise that she would never
try it again, Queen finally clambered back upon the shore where she
shook the water from her body. Some of the horses who had watched the
whole performance with anxiety, came trotting toward her. Queen joined
them dejectedly, grateful to be out of the treacherous water, but
remembering that she was being hunted and realising now that there was
no chance of getting across the river and that her only hope lay in her
delicate legs and the cunning that many years of resistance to man had
developed.
A few days passed by in which all hostilities on the part of the
homesteaders and the Mounted Police seemed to have ceased. Queen began
to feel that the war had been abandoned; but she was surprised one very
early morning by a formidable group of horsemen, less than a quarter of
a mile to the east from where the herd was grazing, who were coming at
full speed. A strong wind had been blowing from the west and had carried
the scent and sound of them away. A lull in the wind apprised her of the
enemy’s approach.
They had been moving along the edge of a patch of dense woodland, the
wall of which stretched from the Saskatchewan to a point a little more
than a mile south of the river. There was no opening between the trees
and the brush. The only chance for escape lay in a wild dash south and
in reaching the end of the wooded wall before the horsemen could reach
it. That chance they took.
The horsemen divided into groups. One group sped away southwest at an
angle, while another, going straight west, spread out on a long line to
prevent the herd from going back to the river.
It was a close race. Every animal, pursuing or pursued, groaned in the
terrible exertion of it. The younger and the stronger of the herd led
the race, with Queen’s magnificent head in front. Behind the group of
fastest runners came the mothers with their colts, and the old work-worn
horses brought up the rear. Though spurs dug unmercifully into wet,
throbbing sides, staining them with small red spots, the forepart of the
herd, unencumbered by riders, won the end of the wall and broke away to
the west in safety. Not until the wall point was almost out of sight did
they stop to look back and when Queen finally felt it safe to do so and
swung round a knoll, she saw no sign of her pursuers; but the far
greater portion of the herd was gone with them.
About a mile southwest of where they were, they knew of a slough. It was
down in a deep hollow and though they would rather have remained on the
hills where they could more easily spy any one coming after them, they
were very thirsty and trotted away for water. At the rim of the hollow
some of them stopped to look about before going down, others broke down
on a run.
Queen drank very little. She was worried and very nervous. While most of
the horses walked into the pond, looking for deeper and clearer water,
she took a few hasty sips of the warm, muddy stuff on the edge and then
ran up the slope to take another look. There seemed to be nothing
untoward on the plains, but to make sure she remained there a while and
grazed.
She had not been grazing more than a few minutes when she was startled
by a frantic splashing in the pond. She looked down in time to see
White-black whose forelegs had sunk into a mud-hole, attempt to turn
round. Half a dozen of the others began to struggle just as frantically.
Some of them managed to reach hard ground, but White-black and two
others seemed to sink deeper the harder they struggled.
At first all this violent effort to get out made her think that some
awful danger had suddenly arisen in the centre of the pond, but the
light grey mud on the flanks of those who did get out, apprised her of
the fact that they had struck an alkali mud-hole. She had had her
experience with alkali mud-holes before. They had been in the habit of
drinking at the other end of the slough and had come to this end now
only because the other end was somewhat nearer to the territory from
which they had just escaped.
She hurried down to the side of White-black and as he resumed his
struggling, she called to him anxiously. Finally the three of them
ceased struggling for a while and set up a helpless neighing to which
those on the shore responded just as helplessly.
There was little danger of drowning for the water was very shallow, but
the fear of being caught, the fear of the pursued creature still warm in
their throbbing hearts, kept them struggling and their struggles tired
them out and drove them down deeper into the mud. Queen was perplexed.
It seemed as if everything were combining for their destruction, that
even the mud joined man in his effort to torture them. She called to the
helpless creatures ceaselessly, running up and down the slope in a
frenzy of fear.
Suddenly while she was down at the edge of the pond, urging White-black
to exert himself and White-black was groaning for want of strength, the
wind shifted and brought from the northwest a message of danger. The
horses who were free ran up the slope to the southeast. Queen, who was
this time behind the others, suddenly stopped half way up the slope and
turning back called frantically to White-black. Her life long
association with White-black had endeared him more strongly to her than
the other two and it seemed hard for her to leave him in distress.
She ran back to the edge of the water, stamping her foot and calling
with all her strength; but White-black only weakened himself. One of the
two other horses, in a violent last effort, pulled himself half way out,
and dropped back, but White-black ceased trying.
The hoof beats of the free horses faded away in the distance and their
rhythmic patter was followed by those of the enemy’s horses. A man’s
head appeared at the rim of the hollow and with a last call to
White-black, Queen shot up the slope and away to the southwest. The men
had seen the other horses first and had veered to go after them, when
they discovered Queen. Trying to head her off, one man started down the
slope and as he did so he discovered White-black and his two companions
struggling in the mud.
As Queen fled she heard the one man whistling to the others. She could
not hear anyone behind her but she did not stop to find out whether she
was being followed or not. In the distant west she saw the shadowy blue
of a clump of trees and she made for that with every bit of strength
left in her. When she reached the trees she first shot under cover, then
investigating to make sure that no dangerous animal was hidden there, or
that no men were coming from any other direction, she pushed her way out
to a thicket of buffalo berries, and stopped to scan the plains she had
covered.
Not a living thing stirred on the monotonous level of the prairies. Only
heat waves danced above the narrow, blue strips of woodland shadows.
Within a few minutes she was convinced that no one was coming after her
and then despite her fear and restlessness, and her anxiety to get back
to the other horses that had escaped, she sank down to the ground,
snorting and panting like a dog. But within half an hour she was off
again in pursuit of the remnant of the herd.
All through the afternoon she hunted them, stopping often to graze and
to drink, now trotting, now loping, going fast when something on the
horizon made her think that she had found them or walking slowly when
she realised that she had been mistaken; calling often, sometimes with
all her strength as if she hoped they would hear her and sometimes
calling softly and hopelessly only because she felt an urge to express
the feeling that had taken complete possession of her.
Toward evening when the light began fading and the shadows grew long,
she trotted cautiously to the pond where she had left White-black in the
mud. The desire to find him grew stronger as the evening progressed
toward night and Queen went at full speed.
The unruffled surface of the pond was brightly reflecting the last rays
of daylight when she turned over the rim of the hollow and stopped there
to make sure that the men were gone. Even those thoughtless men who
hated her—they were not many—if they had been able to see her as she
slowly came walking over the rim a step at a time, would have admired
that beautiful head in the evening silhouette with its touch of
magnificence and the cunning that had kept her out of their greedy
reach.
A few ducks were moving about in the glitter. Immediately upon seeing
her they rose into the air and flew away. Queen trotted down to the
muddy edge where White-black had been trapped. The mud that was not
covered with water was stippled with countless hoof prints. Here and
there on the stippled surface she saw impressions of the whole side of a
horse and she knew that the horses had fallen many times after coming
out of the mud-hole. Some of these impressions still bore the scent of
White-black and Queen excitedly read the story of his struggle with his
captors. For some time she walked round the slough, stopping now and
then to sniff or to break the heavy silence by long and nervous
whinnies, then realising the futility of her going round the slough and
feeling suddenly a sense of confinement in the hollow, she went up the
slope and on the rim began to feed.
The ducks came back. They flew directly over her to see just what she
was. Assured that she was neither man nor coyote, they swept down to the
water’s surface, touching it gracefully with a melodious splash. Queen
lifted her head a trifle above the grass and stared at them
thoughtfully. The sight of the little black objects sailing about in the
bright reflection of the sky and the occasional murmur that came from
them out of the stillness, gladdened her. She felt somewhat less alone.
It was a hard night for Queen. She needed rest very badly but she was
much too apprehensive and too lonely to rest well. When the ducks late
in the night flew away, the hollow became unbearable to her and she
wandered off over the plains searching and calling and tiring herself
out.
During the day she rested some, then from one end of the wilds to the
other she rambled, searching for her companions and finding only fences
and lifeless shacks which stood on the level distances, stony sentinels
forever barring her way with threat of captivity. Along the east side of
her desolated domains she followed fence after fence for days without
coming upon a trace of the herd. With eyes alert for the first sign of
man, she stuck to the east, because she knew that her captured followers
had all been taken in that direction.
She came to where the fence broke into two parts leaving an open roadway
between. She entered the roadway cautiously and walked farther and
farther, scanning the distances as she went. But when she had gone half
a mile, the feeling of having fences on both sides and so near to her,
began to worry her and she turned and raced back for the wilds.
When she saw, however, that the avenue had not closed upon her, she
walked in again. She went about a mile this time and spied a group of
horses in one of these wiry enclosures. She started away in great haste,
but soon stopped still. There was a man’s shack only a quarter of a mile
away from where the horses were and she was afraid to go. She called to
them emotionally but besides raising their heads to look her way, they
made no attempt to come to her, and when she called again a dog came out
of the shack and started in her direction barking ferociously.
On her way out of the avenue through which she had come, she noticed
half a mile from the furthest point she had reached, that the wires
turned leaving her another open avenue through which she could approach
the group of horses on the other side of the fence and very much farther
from the shack. Very cautiously and very nervously she followed that
avenue, stopping very often to make sure that she hadn’t already been
trapped, and when she reached the other side of the fence, some of the
horses who had been watching her, came forward to meet her. Here the
fence ended completely and when she saw the plains stretch from there
unfenced, she lost a good deal of her fear and trotted in their
direction, calling eagerly as she ran.
Queen was so excited when a dozen noses reached over the wires to greet
her that she cut herself several times on the barbs without knowing that
she had cut herself. Having greeted her, however, the confined horses
went on grazing; while Queen capered about on the outside, calling again
and again and reaching over the wires recklessly, to the consternation
of the strangers who would just raise their heads a moment, look at her
curiously and go on about their business.
White-black was not there and those whom she recognised were all horses
that had but the fall before attached themselves to her herd. But she
was happy to see them and to be with them and grazed with a better
appetite than she had had for a long time. She grazed just outside of
the fence, moving along as they moved within.
She spent the night there outside of the fence and though the group of
horses kept walking away considerably they were yet near enough to
dispel the gloom and the loneliness that had been hanging over her world
since the herd had been taken from her. It was the pleasantest night she
had had for some time. Queen intended to remain there outside that
fence; but she was discovered next morning by a man who came for some of
the horses and his dog went after her. At first for fear of the man, she
ran as fast as she could go, the dog at her heels; but when she got to
where she was no longer afraid of the man, she turned upon the dog,
striking at him with a lifted foot. She did not hit him but he did not
wait for her second attempt. He fled surprised and badly frightened,
yelping for help.
She experienced a good deal of satisfaction over his cowardly departure;
but she was afraid of the man who seemed to be coming in her direction
and who was calling loudly to the dog; and so she ran away. The
experience of the night was like a clue to her in her search for her
companions. From there she went to other fences. Fences were hateful
things but they were also hopeful affairs and she expected to find her
friends in one of them. Thus she penetrated farther and farther into
man’s dominion. Over the endless, deviating roadways, between the
endless lines of fence posts and the treacherous barbed wire, always
alert, she went, confident that she could find her way out in case of
danger. When she would come upon a group of horses in some fence she
would follow them on the outside, grazing as they grazed and lying down
when they were near her.
She did not find those of her companions whom she was most anxious to
find, and those that she did come upon, though they always replied to
her, did not always come to her when she called. Queen began to feel
vaguely and painfully that her influence was gone, that her regency was
over. Like the dethroned leader that she was, she accepted the censure
that was due her for having failed, with almost evident humility.
Her loneliness became harder to bear. She wearied of the life of
interminable limitations and the fence posts on all sides of her began
to hurt her as if the roadways had steadily grown narrower and the barbs
had penetrated her skin.
So she started back toward the west, toward the wilds she loved, hoping
that there she might find the rest of the herd where the herd by the
natural right of things belonged. When she was back again upon the
unsettled wilds she was happier for a while; but as she went from one
familiar spot to another—the pond where White-black had been trapped,
the various patches and strips of woodland where they used to hide or
spend their nights, and the river—the loneliness grew heavier in her
heart and Queen began to lose interest in life. Grass and water there
was plenty, but the taste could no longer derive complete satisfaction
from grass and water. After every mouthful she cropped she would lift
her head and look so wistfully over the spaces that she would forget to
chew the grass between her teeth. She would start off and gallop away
over the prairie as if she had suddenly thought of some place where she
was sure she would find her companions and just as suddenly she would
stop and continue to graze.
Her loneliness became unendurable. It seemed to have peopled the
solitudes with invisible creatures bent upon harming her. She was afraid
to rest, afraid even to graze or drink. Once more she took to the
labyrinthine avenues between fence posts, penetrating with impassioned
eagerness the very heart of the homesteading district, seeing many
homesteaders’ shacks and fighting many dogs, becoming reckless as she
became accustomed to them. Often as these remote farmers plowed their
fields, they would hear her call, sometimes finding her only a few rods
behind them; and their horses fettered as they were in their harness
would turn their heads and reply to her. When a farmer set his dog upon
her she would fight him; but when the farmer himself started for her,
she would lope away and he would not see her again for many days.
She came upon a small group of horses in an enclosed pasture, one day,
among whom she spied the brown stallion and a little bay mare who had
nestled close to her many a cold winter night. This pasture was farther
in the area of wire fences than Queen had ever gone before. As soon as
she called, the group started in her direction. She was so overwhelmed
by the familiar scents of those she knew that she could not control
herself. First she ran along the fence a while, then she deliberately
trotted away from the fence. Going off for a few rods and coming back at
full speed she leaped over the wires. Though she was slightly cut on one
of her hind legs, she landed safely in the midst of the group.
They were as happy to see her as she was to see them and the expression
of their excitement and joy attracted the attention of the farmer and
his dog in the shack a quarter of a mile away. She was sniffing noses
with a grey horse whom she had mistaken in the distance for White-black,
when she caught sound of the barking of the farmer’s dog, and turned to
see him coming toward her.
He was a big, ferocious-looking, wolf-like dog, much bigger than the
average coyote and many times as savage. At his approach, the other
horses started away but Queen, who was not ready to part from her
companions again so soon, stopped to fight him. He remained a short
distance away from her, barking angrily, turning his head backward now
and then as if he waited for reinforcement, his eyes glaring at her
threateningly. The other horses had turned about and stopped to watch
the battle, and Queen, feeling encouraged by their watching, waited for
him to come nearer.
But suddenly, taking her eyes off the beast for just a moment, she saw
two men lead two saddle ponies into the barbed wire enclosure and she
made a dash for the fence, hoping to jump over it before they arrived.
Just as soon as she started off the dog rushed at her with a bark and a
snarl. In terror of him, she turned to strike at him with her hoof, but
as soon as she turned the dog sprang out of reach. When she turned once
more for the fence the dog seized her tail. She struck him with a hind
leg. He let go his hold of the tail and dug his fangs into her leg.
Had there been no men coming, she might have fought it out with him. As
it was they were already racing toward her and in desperation, Queen
loped after the rest of the horses who were now stampeding away to the
other end of the pasture. When she reached her companions she plunged
into their midst as if she expected them to protect her.
The men first drove the entire group to the corner nearest to the shack
and there setting the dog upon her they separated her from the other
horses. They continued to urge the dog to go at her and his ferocious
teeth and the nerve wracking noise he was making so confused her that
she stopped to fight him almost disregarding the two men, whose ropes,
as she faced the dog, sailed over and dropped upon her head.
The ropes so alarmed her that she paid no more attention to the dog. She
reared in an effort to pull her head from the loops but this only
tightened their hateful grip. While she was uselessly struggling the men
slipped from their saddles and fastened the ends of their ropes to a
fence post on each side of the corner. Then slowly they pulled the ropes
in, forcing her back. Despite the pain it gave her, Queen tugged and
pulled and reared. The men then got some more ropes from a boy who came
with them from the shack and with these new ropes they first caught a
front leg and after a long struggle caught a hind one, then pulling on
the ropes they threw her to the ground.
She fell with a sickening thud. A spell of dizziness came upon her and
she half shut her eyes as consciousness began slipping from her. But
fear and assailing odours brought her to her senses. She made a violent
effort to continue the struggle, but a man leaped for her head and
seized her nose bone with both his hands. With a quick twist he turned
her nose upward and she lay absolutely helpless. She snorted and groaned
but she could not rise. She felt the bony fingers of the man gripping
her nose bone and felt the other man winding ropes about her legs.
What they wanted with her she could not know. She thought of the coyote
as she had seen him sitting over and feasting upon her colt. Her skin
quivered all over her body and she tried once more to throw off the
appalling weights that kept her down; but her attempts only proved to
her how hopelessly she was in their power, how easy it was for them to
do just what they liked with her. She expected them at any moment to
begin tearing the flesh from her body.
The smell of man was nauseating, their voices were terrifying and it
seemed as if she just could not endure the pain that the man’s fingers
gave her as they dug round her nose bone; yet worse than all this was
the smoke and the smell of fire that suddenly filled the atmosphere,
bringing terrors out of her darkened past to help in her torture.
Suddenly she felt a pain that was worse than any pain she had ever
experienced in her life before. They were pressing some terrible
instrument into her shoulder, an instrument that penetrated the skin
like the teeth of a dog but a thousand times more painfully. All her
hatred, all her fear combined, and with a strength that the greedy men
admired she began to struggle again. As she struggled, the man gripped
tighter on her nose bone and the pain of his digging fingers took her
mind off the burning pain in her shoulder.
When she least expected it, the man sprang away from her head, leaving
it free. She made an attempt at once to get back upon her feet, but her
legs were still tied and she fell back again to the ground. She raised
her head and glared fearfully at her tormentors. In the far distance she
caught a glimpse of the other horses, grazing indifferently. The two men
stood a few feet away, looking down upon her and talking to each other.
The smell of her burnt flesh in the welter of nauseating odours, the
pain in her shoulder growing momentarily worse, the lack of excitement
on the part of the men, the cool deliberateness with which they seemed
to have gone about her torture, together with the fear of what they were
yet to do, bewildered Queen; and out of this bewilderment emerged a
feeling that was worse than fear or pain, a feeling that was an ally of
both, the feeling of submission. But Queen’s submission was not a
servile one. Rather was it like the retreat of the general who hopes for
a more propitious moment in which to strike again and strike with all
his rallied force.
The man who was, without any further doubt, stronger than she was might
burn her flesh; he might tie her legs so that she could not get up; he
might force his sharp fingers about her nose bone and torturously twist
her head so that she would be helpless; but he could not control or
limit her hate. And hate boiled in her blood and burned like a fever in
her body, restraining itself only as the tiger restrains his desire
before he springs upon his prey.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI
ROPE, IRON AND FIRE
QUEEN was branded! A large letter _B_ had been burned through the hair
and almost through the skin on her right shoulder. The red hot metal had
broken through the skin in several spots on the curves and from these
spots oozed drops of blood. The air constantly passing over the wound
kept the pain of it at its original intensity.
The ropes gave way. The two men stepped away quickly. Queen thought for
a moment that she was free. The ropes were still hanging from her neck
but they were hanging loosely. She sprang to her feet. A hasty look
around made her think, foolishly, that she could now get away. She
leaped forward eagerly and at once realised her mistake. The ropes
became taut. A front leg was drawn back to one of the hind legs and she
went down on one side with a shock that seemed to have disturbed every
organ in her body.
She remained lying down but raised her head. With large round eyes,
radiating fear and hate, she looked from one to the other of her little
captors as if she were seeking some vulnerable point for attack; but
they were standing calmly and their calmness bespoke their power. Nearby
the fire that had heated the irons was still smouldering, poisoning the
air with its pungent significance.
For a few moments Queen remained comparatively still. Their obvious
power over her crushed and confused her. From her shoulder came the
painful reminder of her captivity; and somehow, this gnawing pain, more
than the ropes that gripped her neck and feet, brought her the
overwhelming conviction that she was as much their property as the body
of her first beloved colt had been the property of the coyote that had
sat and feasted over it.
That the rest of her flesh would be torn from her body as she felt a
piece had already been torn from her shoulder, there was no doubt in her
mind. But Queen had fought many battles and though the pain of the brand
was inescapable and unforgetable, though that moment she was well-nigh
hopeless, she still watched for her chance to get away.
When she got up again she was afraid to move a foot. One of the men
pulled on the rope that gripped her neck. Queen expected to be hurt
again. She braced herself against the earth with all four legs, and
pulled back. A severe lash on the haunch sent her limping to the side.
The man behind followed her while the man in front ran off a few paces
ahead, and pulled again. Several repetitions of this performance brought
her to the open gateway of the fence. Near the gateway was the house and
beyond the house was the barn. Experience had taught her to keep away
from men’s shacks and the smell of the barn where she had once seen
White-black, and her colt had been imprisoned, came back faintly and
called upon her to resist. There were the men about her. There was the
boy and at his heels, barking ferociously, was the dog. But in spite of
them she made another attempt to get away and once more earned a violent
throw to the ground.
The fall this time stunned her. She stretched out her head and lay
motionless a moment, breathing very heavily and groaning as if she were
dying. The man behind her struck her with his rope. Her skin quivered
and another groan forced its way out between her clenched teeth. Her
consciousness came back slowly. She heard the barking of the dog and the
voices of the men and above their voices the shriller voice of the boy.
She was sick at her heart and stomach. She felt as if she didn’t care
what they did any more. But a very severe blow with the end of the rope
striking a tender spot on her flanks brought her to her senses. She felt
as if a wave of cold water had swept over her. She managed to get to her
feet. As she stood, bewildered, not knowing what to do, and feeling the
terrible necessity of doing something, her whole body shook with an
uncontrollable tremour.
The injustice of all this torture aroused an insane resentment; and,
casting a glance over the silent prairies that stretched away to the
hazy horizon, within her grasp, yet cruelly denied her, she leaped
toward the open with all her waning strength, so suddenly and so
unexpectedly that the man behind her, clinging to the rope, was thrown
to the ground and the man in front barely escaped her front legs.
The cries of men and boy and dog broke fearfully upon her ears and the
ferocious dog leaped at her throat. He fell back without having touched
her but she lifted a hoof to strike him and thus pulling on the rope
that tied that foot to a hind leg she threw herself to the ground. She
fell outside of the gateway and within a dozen yards of the barn-door
which stood gapingly open and black, ready to swallow her.
The man behind her beat her with his rope and kicked her unmercifully;
but even if she could have risen she would not have done so; and they
finally decided to let her rest a while.
The beating commenced all over again and she was forced to her feet.
With another swing of the rope she started off nervously before it
struck her. The man in front ran on each time she went forward and in
that way they got her to the barn-door. But she was afraid to enter. The
boy had brought the man behind her a whip and when that came down upon
her back raising a welt, she involuntarily rushed into the barn to
escape it.
Thus they got her into a stall and tied her securely. One man got into
the manger and against all her fearful protestations managed to force a
halter upon her head. With double ropes tied to the ring of the halter
they tied two rope ends to each side of the manger, then removed the
ropes with which they had first tied her; and she almost killed one of
the men in the process. Finally, they left her alone.
It was so dark and damp and dirty in the barn. The foul smells were
revolting. When her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she made out a
horse, chewing contentedly a short distance away, and the sight of him
relieved her immeasurably. She called to him but he went on chewing and
ignored her call. Queen was hurt. She looked at him sadly, then half
closed her eyes. But in a few minutes she called to him again and more
forcibly. This time the old glutton replied to her but with little
enthusiasm, rather with annoyance, for he didn’t like it a bit that she
made him take time from his chewing to reply to her.
The ropes did not allow her to see him very well, but she watched him a
moment out of the corner of her eye and felt as she watched him that
somehow he was in league with man, the usurper of her liberty. She hated
him and looked no more in his direction. Over her came full force the
horror of her bondage and the fearful realisation that her every effort
to escape it would prove futile. Yet her thoughts contradicted each
other and where some images came out of her memory and experience and
supported her fear, others came just as strongly and allayed it. She
remembered, for instance, White-black tied in his stall in the sod barn
where her colt had been imprisoned and then she saw him coming over the
plains tied to the old sorrel work-horse. So she saw him in many happier
moods on the open plains long after that. Together with the endless
stream of sensations of pain, from the wound on her shoulder and from
other wounds on her body, came visions of familiar nooks on the prairies
and in the woods. Like ghosts these visions came through the smelling
darkness and haunted her.
At times these visions drove her frantic and she would pull and tug and
tear and kick till her energy was spent and after every momentary storm
there was some new wound to torment her. There was a deep gash on her
upper lip that bothered her almost as much as the burn on her shoulder,
for blood kept trickling from it into her nose and mouth and the taste
and the smell of blood were as tormenting as the pain.
The man came back. She heard him coming and her eyes began to blaze
again and her sides throbbed for fear. He walked around to the front of
the manger and approaching her head, extended a hand carefully. She
pulled her head back as far as the ropes would allow her and snorted
with fright. He said something to her angrily and she listened in terror
to the sound of his voice. He made another attempt to touch her with his
hand, but this time she threateningly bared her teeth. He withdrew his
hand quickly and lifting the long end of one of her ropes he struck her
with it. It hit the sore on her upper lip and Queen pulling on the ropes
with all her might, cried out for pain.
Then the second man appeared and the boy and the dog came behind him.
Queen expected a new battle, but they only brought her hay and water.
They stood near the manger watching her and talking. They took handfuls
of hay and touched her lips with it but she only shook her head
violently and whinnied fearfully. So, too, she disdained the water they
gave her. The man seemed to know that she wanted the water, however, and
so he set the pail down into the manger. When they finally went out
Queen looked after them anxiously.
Night came down. The man came back again and offered her some oats in
his hands; but even if she had desired to eat the oats, the smell of his
hands would have destroyed that desire. Seeing that she had touched
neither hay nor water he threw the oats into the hay and walked away.
Suddenly as she looked sideways, she saw the man lead the horse out of
the barn. It was too dark to see clearly but she could feel that the
horse was going out and she could hear the tread of his heavy feet.
Forgetting all her previous emotions, Queen shamelessly begged him to
return and the terror in her voice seemed to break up the shadows that
filled the barn into monstrous creatures which she felt were surrounding
her. She called again and again till the fear of the sound of her own
voice finally hushed her. She hoped that the horse would return and
waited and listened for his coming, but he did not return. Faint queer
sounds of scratching came from above and behind her. Chickens roosting
somewhere in the darkness tortured her with their sleepy peeping. And a
bat flying around the barn, buzzing every few moments near her head,
kept her nerves on edge. But when the dog came into the barn, Queen went
mad. She had fought coyotes and dogs but she had never been helplessly
tied before. She pulled at her ropes and kicked with her legs till she
shattered one of the crate-like sides of her stall and tore the top
board of her manger loose at one end.
The frightened dog ran out of the barn and barked so loud he brought the
man from the house. Queen heard him coming and when she saw rays of
light break through the cracks in the walls, she almost jumped over the
manger. He opened the door and a flood of light poured into the barn and
when he began to talk to her she calmed down a bit.
He retied her and fixed the broken board of the manger. She seemed to
fear him less now than before and as he talked she listened, her eyes
fixed as if fascinated on the lantern he had hung up not far from her
head. Suddenly the dog reappeared. Queen jumped involuntarily. The man
kicked the dog and the dog ran out of the barn crying for pain. It was
then that the first slight sense of gratefulness came over Queen; but it
left her with the man’s going out and gave way to the puzzle of his
strange light, which for some time obscured everything else in her mind.
The night dragged horribly and when dawn came at last she was exhausted.
She saw the barn-door open and was relieved by the shower of daylight.
Though the man came into the barn and seemed to have much to do there,
he did not come near her. Chickens moved around her, some of them even
jumping up on her manger to pick the grains of oats that she had
refused, and Queen watched them with interest. For a while she was
afraid of them, but their contented sing-songs as they ceaselessly
searched for food bespoke their harmlessness.
The man had gone out and Queen was dozing from sheer exhaustion when the
boy appeared. He came over to Queen’s manger and seized the ropes,
drawing her head toward him. She resisted as best she could and because
she bared her teeth when he tried to touch her with his hand, opening
her mouth as with the intention of biting him just as soon as the hand
was near enough, he let go his hold on the rope and picking up a stick
began to prod her with it. At first she just struggled to pull her head
out of reach of the stick but when he persisted she became furious.
Snorting and whinnying she kicked right and left against her stall and
the boy, afraid that his father would come in, quietly sneaked out of
the barn.
All day she stood stolidly without touching the hay, drinking a little
of the ill-tasting water only when alone and when she could not resist
the desire for it. When night came again Queen began feeling most uneasy
about the shadows and the strange nocturnal sounds; yet she seemed more
able to endure this night than the first. When the second dawn appeared
she was partially resigned to her evil-smelling confinement; but the
monotony of standing on her feet in one place, standing, standing,
standing endlessly, like a new kind of pain was far more distracting
than bodily pain.
The pain of the brand seemed to grow dull and then it bothered her only
when the healing wound touched something. The other pains in the many
places about her body also kept growing less tormenting; but these
tortures of the first days of her captivity gave way to the less
perturbative, more gnawing anguish of imprisonment.
Calls of distant horses sometimes penetrated her prison and Queen would
make the very walls surrounding her tremble with the agony of her
aimless replies. So, too, wafts bearing familiar fragrance often strayed
into the smelling atmosphere of the barn, rekindling smouldering fires.
The love of the plains, the desire to lope over them with the freedom
she had retained so long would at those times seize upon her with
maddening hold and she would kick and pull till she hurt herself or
until she realised once more, each new time more forcefully than the
last, that all her storming was as futile as it was hurtful.
So Queen began to learn. She learned to eat the dead hay even though the
dirt often mixed with it was revolting. She learned to drink the water
though the taste and the smell of it was nauseating. “You’ll get over
your fussiness,” the man often said to her when he came into the barn.
Fortunately Queen did not understand what he said and the resentment she
would have experienced, had she understood, never interfered with her
“getting over it.” It was really better for Queen, as it is in similar
circumstances sometimes better for us, to “get over it.”
But her “getting over it” was always a matter of weights and measures.
Every pain set itself against some other pain and the stronger pain
conquered her aversions. When so weary standing that her legs ached in
the joints, carrying the weight of her body, she lay down the first
time. The smell of the floor was so loathsome that she got up again
after a few minutes. She remained standing till the pain became more
tormenting than the smell of the floor, and then lay down again,
learning to endure the smell. And it proved to be a valuable lesson in
so far as it divided the endlessly dragging hours in half. Instead of
standing all day and all night shifting the weight of her body from foot
to foot, she would stand one hour and lie down for one hour and thus
broke the killing completeness of the excruciating monotony.
The hay was constantly replaced when she had eaten what was in her
manger and the pail was always refilled with water when she had drained
it. This in time seemed to assure her that they did not mean to destroy
her or that destruction was not going to take place immediately. Her
hatred for man did not lose its intensity but her experience relegated
it to some more distant corner of her soul, moved it from where it had
dominated the whole of her consciousness so that she could endure her
bondage as she waited for the opportunity to escape it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII
THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK
ONE day while Queen, for want of something better to do, was dozing over
her empty manger from which she had eaten up every spire of hay, she
heard the dog, outside, bark with unusual excitement. By the increasing
rapidity with which his barks succeeded each other, she knew that
something was coming. She soon heard the rumbling of a wagon and when
that sound came very close and stopped it was followed by the clatter of
many voices. She had allowed herself to worry about many sounds that had
resulted in no harm to her and experience was teaching her not to worry.
So she soon went back to her dozing, especially since the rapid patter
of hoofs, as the horses drawing the wagon pulled into the yard, had
quickened her memory of life with the herd.
In the midst of her dreaming she was suddenly disturbed by the entrance
of two strange horses whose heavy feet beat the floor of the barn so
hard that she felt every beat. The harness on these two huge horses was
massy and bits of metal on it flashed with the reflection of the light
of the doorway. They were led into the stall next to Queen and with
absolute indifference to her they began to rummage in the manger and the
oats boxes, calling greedily for food. Queen watched them with no little
interest. She was afraid of the men who had come in with them but in
spite of the men she could not resist the desire to touch noses with the
horse nearest to her. She pushed her nose anxiously through an opening
in the partition and the big horse touched it with his nose a moment,
but immediately returned to his voracious search for oats. But the touch
of the big nose had only intensified the burning desire in her heart for
companionship, and she called more loudly and with greater appeal.
Suddenly, she felt a slap upon her back and when she almost flounced
into her manger in fright, she heard laughter behind her. The man who
had slapped her then went round to the front of the manger and when
Queen’s eyes fell upon him she recognised him. It was he who had helped
the man of the place capture and brand her. The smell of him was most
repellent and she backed away as far as she could go; but he untied her
ropes and pulling their ends together, around a steading of the back
wall of the manger, he pulled on them, dragging her forward till her
knees struck the manger, and her head was over his shoulder as he
stooped. He held on to the ropes keeping her head immovable; while her
owner, coming from the other end of the barn with a bunch of straps,
threw them upon her head.
She struggled desperately to pull her head away but the ropes were
relentless. The evil-smelling hands of her owner moved all over her face
and she was powerless even to show her resentment. His big thumb forced
its way between her teeth and while her jaws were apart a piece of iron
slipped in between her teeth; and before she could dislodge it, the
straps were forced over her ears and fastened around her neck.
With teeth and tongue she struggled to eject the annoying iron from her
mouth but try as she would she could not move it to the edge of her
teeth. They then loosened the ropes and her owner seized them all with
one hand. Taking the reins which hung from the bridle bit in the other
hand, he jumped over the manger. Seeing him she sprang back nervously
and he followed her. She started for the doorway and when she got out
into the open, she was going a little too fast for him. With a vicious
jerk on the reins he halted her. The iron in her mouth was bent in the
centre and the least jerk on the reins forced the bend to strike the
tender palate with the force of a hammer.
The full light of day to which she was no longer accustomed hurt her
eyes and her limbs seemed stiff, the joints paining her with the
exertion of her first activity in so long a time. A wagon stood not far
off with its tongue extended before it. On the seat was a fur robe. It
appeared to her like some sort of animal and she was afraid of it.
Against its wheel leaned the boy. He was pounding the earth with a stick
and was looking at her. Under the wagon sat the dog on his haunches. As
soon as he saw her he raised his muzzle and barked at her.
She tried to back into the barn but the man who stood in its doorway
struck her with a stone which he threw at her. She dashed forward and
reared. Her owner pulled down on the reins and once more the bend in the
centre of the rider’s bit struck her tender palate. The pain terrified
her. It seemed as if her enemies were able to strike her from within.
She jumped involuntarily but she realised at once that every jump
inflicted its own punishment. So she tried very hard to control herself,
though her every nerve was on edge.
The man then walked forward and pulled on the ropes. She did not know
what he wanted, so she braced herself against his pull. Again he jerked
the reins and to avoid the force of his pull she moved hastily toward
him. At once he moved off again and a few repetitions of this taught her
to follow when led. Around and around the yard the man led her and with
eyes aflame with fear, her skin quivering with nervousness, Queen
hastily followed him, desiring to resist but anxiously afraid to do so.
She was beginning to think that that was all they wanted of her when the
man in the doorway of the barn came forward with a heavy leather affair
from which straps and things hung and dragged on the ground. She was
standing quite still, breathing rapidly when this new apparition
appeared. As the man swung it upon her she jumped to the side in fright.
The man at the bridle immediately jerked the reins and with impatient
force. Her palate by this time was sore and the pain was so excruciating
Queen again lost her temper and for ten minutes both men were obliged to
hang on the ropes and the reins as she reared and kicked and balked. But
in her enraged kicking one of her hind legs struck one of the rear
wheels of the wagon and the pain that shot through her whole body had a
quieting effect upon her. While they had her up against the wagon from
which the boy and the dog had fled, they placed the saddle upon her.
The saddle securely fixed, they led her off again, but walking was now
difficult and painful. The cinch, the strap that keeps the saddle in
place, was so tight that it was almost completely hidden by the skin
which lopped over it from both sides. It cut her painfully every step
she took. In two places on her back some hard parts of the saddle
pressed against the backbone.
But all this, miserable as it made her, was as nothing compared with the
horror that swept over her when the man suddenly seized the horn of the
saddle and threw himself upon her back like a beast of prey. She sprang
forward to get away from the farmyard; then on the open prairie she
began in real earnest the attempt to throw him. He pulled on the reins
till she felt the bend in the bit boring into her tongue. He dug his
spurs into her sides. He lashed her savagely with the knotted ends of
the ropes. But in her desire to rid herself of the frightful weight she
seemed to have lost her sensitiveness to pain. She shook her body as a
horse will shake water from him. She reared. She kicked backward. She
shook the rear of her body while she braced her front legs against the
earth. Then failing in all these attempts, she threw herself to the
ground.
He jumped in time to avoid a broken leg. Thinking that she had conquered
she struggled to her feet intending to fly, but to her consternation,
she was no sooner on her feet than he jumped back upon the saddle. She
was determined to get rid of him and was about to throw herself again
when she received a blow upon one ear that almost stunned her. The man
had leaned forward and struck her with his hand in which he held his
hat; but she thought it was some ferocious bird come out of the air to
assist him. She turned in the opposite direction and dashed away. When
he wanted her to turn back he struck her on the other ear and this time
when his wing-like hat reached her ear, he sent forth a most fiendish
shriek.
Away she leaped over the plains as if some awful monster were at her
heels. She seemed to get relief in the running. Her rider ceased pulling
on the reins and ceased poking her sides with his spurs. He showed no
displeasure in any way and Queen began to realise that that was what he
wanted. When with his reins he pulled her head sideways she
involuntarily turned in that direction and as soon as she turned he
stopped pulling.
She was finally so worn out running, that she dropped back into a weary
walk and as she looked up she was surprised to find herself but a few
rods from the barn. Rebellion was futile. All her failures proved it to
her, yet when the man near the barn-door came forward to take hold of
her, she tossed her head wildly, gripped the bit between her teeth and
reared. Then when he ran off to the side to get away from her hoofs, she
fell back and rushed for the barn-door.
But while her rider drew her head back till her ears touched him, the
man on the ground hurried over to the barn-door and seized her by the
bridle, holding her till the man jumped from the saddle. She was glad to
get back into her stall and allowed them to tie her without a protest.
The saddle was removed from her wet back and sides and the bit was
removed from her blood-stained mouth.
She was dizzy and her heart pounded at her sides. From her wet distended
nostrils the breath came like the roar of the ocean. Two sores on her
back itched almost unendurably. Both sides were pierced by the cruel
spurs and blood-stained. An aching pain gnawed in her palate and she
could not throw off the painful sensation of grating iron from her
teeth. Her body throbbed as a steamer throbs with the pounding of its
engines.
They threw hay into her manger but she only sprang back and looked at
them with moist, glowing eyes. They stopped in front of her manger and
talked. While they talked she held her terrified eyes upon them,
watching for what they might show evidence of wanting to do next. In the
next stall, the two big horses, apparently unconcerned about the weight
of harness still on their backs and indifferent to her troubles, stood
with their greedy heads right over the hay in their manger and noisily
and rapidly ground the hay in their mouths as if they were afraid that
they would be taken out before they could devour all that lay before
them. When the men walked into their stall and untying them started out
with them, each one eagerly stretched his head backward to take a last
large mouthful.
Queen looked after them as they went and experienced a sense of relief
at their departure, worried only by the fear that they would be coming
back again. When a few minutes passed and the doorway remained
unobstructed, she turned her head back again and sank into a doze which
was constantly disturbed. What troubled Queen most was the shattered
condition of her nerves. The slightest sound sent her into paroxysms of
fear, making her heart beat with a sense of impending calamity and
sending chills and waves of heat, by turn, over her body. The voices she
heard coming from the yard oppressed her with a constant threatening
suggestion of the men’s return.
Then, some time later, she became aware of the fact that the noises were
withdrawing. She heard the wagon rumbling away and even the barking of
the dog grew fainter in the distance. A sweet silence, as refreshing as
the cold water she longed for, fell upon the little farmyard; and the
feeling of being alone was like an opiate.
But she was suddenly alarmed by the sensation as of some one present and
turning hastily about, discovered a woman in the doorway of the barn.
Queen was badly frightened. This creature was different from man but it
was only a different sort of man. She gazed at the apparition which was
talking in a voice that was softer than that of the men. The woman was
carrying a pail full of water and came with it to the front of the
manger. When she lifted it to set it down into the manger, Queen sprang
back, frightened.
“Drink, Dora, you poor little wild thing,” said the woman, backing away
a bit and looking at her commiseratingly, “you’re taking it so hard, you
poor little Dora.”
Despite her fears, Queen’s ears went up straight and the glow of fear in
her eyes dulled slightly. The woman went on talking to her in the same
low tones, so different from the harsh, staccato sounds of the men and
the boy. When the woman went out of the barn Queen turned her head and
looked after her till she had disappeared. Then she turned to the pail
of water and sticking her burning lips into the cool liquid she drank
without a stop until there wasn’t a drop of water left.
The woman came back again driving a cow. Behind her, pushing its little
muzzle into her hand, came a little calf. The cow walked into the stall
next to Queen and there, like the horses, she rummaged about for food.
For some reason known only to the cow, she did not like the hay that the
horses had left, but cast her cowy eyes upon the hay that was heaped
much higher in Queen’s manger. She thrust her peculiar wide muzzle
between two beams into Queen’s manger and with her long tongue gathered
some of the hay and pulled it into her own stall where she chewed it
with apparent great relish. Queen took a mouthful and chewed it as if
the cow had reminded her of what she ought to do.
“Some more water, Dora?” said the woman coming around to the front
again, and as Queen jumped back frightened, she went on, “Don’t be
afraid of me, Dora. I won’t hurt you.”
She took the empty pail and went out with it, coming back a few minutes
later with the pail refilled and setting it once more into the manger.
She talked to her a few minutes, then went away. Queen saw her sit down
beside the cow and soon heard the peculiar sound of milk streams beating
against the walls of a tin pail. She watched her and listened for a
while but since the cow who was most concerned in the matter seemed not
the least worried, she turned to her water.
When the woman was through milking, she drove out the cow and fed the
calf and then sending it out too, she came back to Queen. She stood
leaning forward against the manger and talked to her for a long time.
There was something about that voice that made Queen think of ducks
paddling on the surface of a pond at night, or the songs with which they
sang themselves to sleep. It was a sound as of birds on branches of
trees overhead pushing into each other and expressing the desire for
warmth or the comfort of having it. The words followed each other slowly
and softly and there was neither threat nor authority in them. Queen
studied the strange face with the light playing upon it. She was still
slightly uncertain about the eyes that she was afraid of and that
strangely fascinated her. She was afraid to look into them, yet there
was something in them that was in a way overcoming her. Was it the
wetness about those eyes that in some way, perhaps never to be known,
affected Queen? Was it the sympathy that the suffering have for the
suffering that Queen recognised and that made her blindly place her hope
in this new and mysteriously different human being?
When the woman went out Queen felt as she had felt on many a winter
night in the wilds when some warm body next to her suddenly got up and
left one side of her disagreeably cold. For the rest of the afternoon
she kept turning her head toward the doorway and pricking her ears with
more hope than expectation, and throughout the long disappointing hours
the voice of the woman poured through her mind like a stream, like a
long persistent melody, and its even flow was rhythmically measured by
the one word that she remembered most clearly. “Dora!” What it meant she
did not know, but she felt in a vague way, when she heard it, that it
applied to her.
Next morning her owner put the saddle on her again, and though she was
very nervous and afraid and would have fled at the first real
opportunity, the lesson went by without much of the pain and agony of
the first lesson. She began to understand what every pull of the reins
meant and even the differences she heard in the man’s voice helped her
to avoid trouble, as for instance, when by the sound of his voice she
knew that he was impatient with her going too slowly and she sprang
forward into a more rapid gait before the man felt it necessary to apply
the spurs.
In the afternoon the woman came into the barn to give her water and to
talk to her. When she patted her forehead, Queen did not resist and in
time began to crave the touch of that hand, as she craved the sound of
that voice.
Day after day she had her little run over the fields and as her fear of
the farmer lessened slightly, she began to enjoy the exercise. It broke
the crushing monotony of standing in the barn and gave her a chance to
look at the plains she loved. So too it gave her a chance to see the
other horses, none of whom were kept in the barn any longer. She found
that the group in the corral had been very greatly reduced and the
mysterious reduction worried her. The brown stallion was gone and with
him all the horses she had known, except the little bay mare, who did
not seem to be on friendly terms with the other two horses in the
corral. She was always off by herself and at the call of Queen would
come rushing to the wire fence and beg her to join her.
One day the boy jumped upon her back. The man stood by and watched. The
boy annoyed her by the way he sat and by the way he held the reins and
she could hear the man angrily instructing him. She could feel him
changing his ways and realised that the man was taking her part,
somehow; but when they got away off on the fields, he tormented her. He
kept digging his spurs into her sides even while she was running her
best and he pulled steadily on the reins, hurting her palate and her
lips and making it difficult for her to see the stone or holes in her
path. But much as she hated and feared this boy, he was as yet afraid to
mistreat her. What he really was capable of doing to torment her, she
was yet to learn.
The old touch of melancholy just barely perceptible on Queen’s beautiful
head deepened rapidly as submission took possession of her soul. She
learned her lessons hastily and learned them well for fear of the pain
that inevitably followed mistakes; yet somewhere in the very heart of
that submission crouched an indestructible hope that sometime, somehow,
she would break the chains of her bondage and go galloping back to her
wilds.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIII
LABOUR WITHOUT LOVE OR WAGE
JUST when Dora was resigning herself to the irksome but unavoidable duty
of carrying them about in the saddle; just when she had learned in this
state of her bondage to get from the plains she would cover, carrying
them, that finer sustenance which the soul requires; just when she had
learned to get all the happiness that it is possible to get in a
condition of physical encumbrance and spiritual domination by an
unshakable and hateful will, there came a change. The middle summer went
by and the winds that blew golden waves over oceans of ripe grain
ushered in the harvest season.
When heavy harness was placed upon her body, Queen showed her
displeasure but curbed her impulses. The collar and the hames choked and
oppressed her and the blinders on her bridle tormented and frightened
her. But for something they did which they did not do for her sake at
all, Queen would have fought as hard as she had fought when the saddle
was first placed upon her. They had led her out and tied her to a wagon
wheel between two of three horses and she found herself next to the
little bay mare. A few moments of sniffing noses and Queen would have
endured almost anything rather than be taken away from her old friend
again. She had been harnessed first and Queen was willing to tolerate
anything she tolerated so long as she could be there with her; and the
farmer wondered at the constant whinnying that went on between the two.
All the while, the big horse on the other side of Queen and the big
horse on the other side of the bay mare stood with their heads at the
same level, motionless, like the mere machines that they were, awaiting
orders to move.
They were hitched to a binder and ordered to move and Queen’s nerves
tingled with the strangeness of the situation. Every move she made
resulted in some disagreeable pull and the feeling of being trapped, of
being held in on every side was fast arousing her resentment and the
slumbering desire to rebel. But not only did the weight of the thing
they were dragging subdue that desire, but the horses on both sides of
her seemed to beat into her soul, with the beating of their hoofs, the
utter hopelessness of showing resentment or attempting to rebel.
When they reached the wheat fields, the thing grew many times heavier,
many times harder to pull and the deafening noise it made was
distracting to Queen. But the morning was delightful; the creatures of
her own kind beside her gave her the feeling of having companionship;
and though her muscles found pulling most arduous, they were still fresh
from a night’s rest. When the morning wore along toward noon her
strength was well nigh exhausted and the struggle to keep from going
under, stimulated by the whip, suffused her soul with agony. The day was
hot and her sides dripped with perspiration. The new harness rubbed her
skin in a thousand places and made her very bones ache. The dust of the
fields and the particles of broken straw filled the air she breathed and
settled down in her nose and eyes.
When her aching muscles began to wear out and the pain she felt
frightened her, she tried to lag a bit but the watchful eye of her owner
soon discovered her lagging and there was a threatening cry of “Dora!”
and the long whip came down upon her haunches without mercy.
Noon came at last. Queen limped on her way back home, moving along as if
the other horses were carrying her, seeing nothing before her, feeling
only her agony of soul and body. Painful sores, under rubbing leather
and iron, smarted with the touch of perspiration, and the hard collar
choked her unmercifully. The weight of the harness seemed to be pressing
her to the ground.
Her water she drank at once in great draughts, but her food she did not
touch for some time and though she stood next to the little bay mare all
through the noon-hour she did not turn to her once. Her misery was
overwhelming and in its salty waves she was alone.
Though she had not eaten a full meal, she went back to work just the
same and a thousand times the whip came down upon her back adding pain
as a stimulant, as if she had not experienced pain enough. When at last
the seemingly endless day came to its close and the harness was removed,
leaving red bloody sores with rims of black dirt exposed, Queen lay down
at the feet of the little bay mare and with her eyes closed, lay as if
in a stupor for half the night before she rose to feed her hunger.
Yet when the first few unspeakably torturous days went by, she seemed to
have become more able to endure the torment. The stolidity about the old
sorrel work-horse and other work-horses in Queen’s experience, which she
had so often wondered at in her limited way, now came down like a sort
of mask upon Queen’s head and put a strange dullness into her eyes.
But with the end of the harvest period came the autumn plowing. Had that
been her first experience she would hardly have lived through it. It was
not only harder work to drag the plow, that so often struck the rocks in
its path and fairly pulled them from their feet, but the dust rising in
clouds from under them added to labour and pain the last ounce of
endurable agony. Life to Queen, in its endless repetition of toil and
pain and abysmal discomfort, relieved periodically by a few hours’ rest,
was not only without purpose but without excuse. Queen did not reason
her way to such a conclusion, she just felt; and in this feeling there
was not even the light of illusionary hope. The knowledge that a given
labour will end at a certain time, gave the hope and the courage to her
master which the strange ruling of life denied to Queen.
So Queen lived through the days which she could not know were ever to
end, enduring labour without compensation, getting food and water that
was not as good as that which the wilds had lavishly bestowed upon her.
What it was to lead to, she did not know. She could not even ask. Death
was but a nameless fear and the relief of death was beyond her
understanding. The images of those she had known and loved in her
happier past came back often in dozing moments, coming into her dreamy
vision as imperceptibly as the evening comes into the day; and in going
they left in her soul something that resembled hope. That was all that
life offered her and it was as uncertain as were the whims of the
creatures who dominated and overshadowed her existence; yet never did
she reach a hilltop from which she caught a glimpse of the open prairie
spaces but the hope that freedom would come to her expressed itself like
a hazy light in the dark uncertainty that engulfed her.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV
ONLY JUSTICE HAD BEEN DONE
THE reaping season passed and threshing time arrived. The farmer was
plowing his fields for the next year’s seeding because he had finished
reaping before most of the other farmers had finished. He worked himself
as hard as he worked his “critters.” That was his reputation among those
who did not have anything more serious against him, but they were few.
Every fall he, like most of the other homesteaders, left his farm and
joined a threshing crew some twenty miles south, remaining with it until
winter set in and until the wheat of the last farmer of their circuit
had been threshed.
Came the last hot spell of the year. Cold winds and rain and cloud of
early autumn gave way to a short Indian summer, so warm that insects
long too stiff to appear more than for a few hours during the warmest
part of each day, came buzzing back to life as if it were springtime.
Nose-flies began to bother the horses and the dirty, old, wire-net
nose-baskets were brought back into use.
The sunlit air sponged up the aroma that oozed from the wet earth, and
breathing it filled Dora with old longing. Sensations of loping free
over the unfenced earth, like spirits, danced enticingly before her
yearning eyes. Birds flitting through the sweet air sang with the
enthusiasm of spring and urged her to resist the forces of evil that
fettered her. But the harness on her back was heavy. The traces that
bound her to the plow and the lines that held her to the others who had
forgotten what freedom is, were inexorable as the will of the man, whose
whip was his only argument.
They had been dragging the unyielding plow for a few hours on the first
of these delightful mornings, when, looking up as they turned at the end
of a furrow, Dora saw in the distant south a horse and buggy, coming at
a good pace. All the way down that furrow she saw the buggy steadily
grow larger and clearer. Coming up on the next furrow she could see
nothing and then as she turned once more she saw White-black coming. She
stopped for just a second and the whip came down with a stinging lash.
She sprang forward and pulled along with the rest; but her head was
higher than it had been for some time and from her trembling lips came
nervous whinnies which White-black did not hear. By the time the two
moving objects met, there was a long, melodious and very welcome “whoa,”
and the four horses stopped facing the one horse in the buggy.
The three horses relaxed and stood with heads lowered, grateful for this
bit of rest, but Dora was too excited to stand still. With head erect,
ears pricked she called to her old mate with a call that shook the whole
of her weary body. White-black raised his head at the first call, looked
at the four horses, sniffed somewhat like a dog and then with all his
strength, replied. Hardly had he finished when Dora, exerting herself to
the limit of her strength, called again. White-black started forward as
he replied this time but the impatient man in the buggy, flaring up with
righteous wrath, cruelly jerked the lines. White-black raised his head
in pain and moved back a step. He called again but he did not attempt to
go to her any more. His head lowered like that of the horses beside Dora
and an expression of utter helplessness came over his white face. Dora,
too, dropped her head with the full realisation of the futility of
trying in any way to overcome the hold man had upon them.
The ploughman left the buggy side where he had been standing, conversing
with the visitor, and walked back toward his plow a few feet, then
stopped, and continued the conversation.
“Then I can depend upon you?” said the man in the buggy.
“Oh, I’ll unhook right away,” replied the other, taking out his watch,
“and I’ll be there by supper time. I’ll start just as soon as I feed the
horses and get a bite myself.”
“All right!” said the stranger, striking White-black a blow with the
whip that sent him forward at a bound.
Dora called after him. From the distance, even as he was running away at
top speed, White-black called back, helplessly. Dora tried hard to keep
her eyes on the shrinking buggy and the two white ears that protruded
above it, but her eyes were hemmed in by the blinders and she found it
difficult. She was obliged to raise her head over the mane of the little
bay mare. Forgetting for the moment the man at the plow, she rested her
head upon the bay mare’s neck and called and called again.
There was a sudden order to move on and Dora started off, expecting to
pull with all her might upon the traces. She was most agreeably
surprised to find that they had been unhooked and all the way to the
house, stirred by emotions which she had no other way of expressing, she
pulled ahead of the others, eager to get to the farmyard as if she
expected to be released there so that she could go back to the world and
the life for which she longed with old fervour again.
Dora was unharnessed and taken to her stall in the barn. The little bay
mare was released in the corral, while the two big horses with their
harness on were put into the stall next to Dora and all were fed. In an
hour the farmer was ready to depart. He came into the barn and took the
two horses out, and soon after, Dora heard the wagon rumbling away.
During the last few weeks, throughout the endless hours of wearing toil,
Dora had yearned for the stall; but now as she stood there, fresh from
the unexpected meeting with her lifelong companion, the enclosure of the
barn was as harassing as the slavery of harness, and without knowing why
she did it, realising fully that White-black was far out of hearing, she
called and called like a broken-hearted mother from whom her foal had
been taken.
Her calling was suddenly answered by the loud voice of the boy, who
dashed into the barn and began quickly to saddle her. He tightened the
cinch, as he always did, till Dora protested, and then put into her
mouth the rider’s bit with its cruel bend. So, too, he put on the
wire-net nose basket and fastened it so high that the wire-net pressed
against her lips.
As soon as Dora got outdoors she looked for signs of White-black. When
the boy jumped to the saddle she started away to the south, but with an
angry pull of the reins he turned her to the west. In spite of the fact
that she had been working to the limit of her strength, in spite of the
pain in her muscles and limbs, she leaped away like a racer, and in
spite of the fact that she was already going at her greatest speed, the
idiotic boy, as was his habit, kept applying the spurs. On the trail
along the wire fences she merely tossed her head with displeasure at
every dig, but when they reached the end of the fences and he turned her
diagonally across the trackless plains, the sight of the open,
unobstructed prairie helped her to make her show of resentment plainer.
But the stupid boy not only failed to perceive that he might have been
wrong, he resented what struck him as a challenge to his authority. He
meant to show her that he was master. He jerked the reins back with all
his might and dug the spurs into her sides.
“Go ahead!” he cried when she fled across the plains as if she had been
frightened and were running away, “You can’t go too fast to suit me!”
Before Dora, as she sped, loomed an exceedingly large badger hole, the
freshly dug, yellow earth piled high to one side. She was used to badger
holes and had long ago learned to cunningly avoid them, no matter how
suddenly one appeared in her vision. But despite his tactics the boy was
surprised by Dora’s unusually nervous behaviour. He was not at all sure
that she wasn’t really trying to run away. In spite of his fear, he
could not allow himself to dispense with his bullying proclivities, and
as she neared the hole he turned her head sideways and once more plied
the spurs without reserve.
Where she would have, without any difficulty, avoided it on her own
account, his turning her head drove her upon the mound of earth. Her leg
slipped on the loose, newly-dug earth and went down the hole and as the
boy attempted to leap from the saddle he was thrown forward six feet
from her head, landing with a thud and a shriek.
He was not badly hurt, but he was so badly scared that he yelled like a
frightened baby. When he got to his feet there was an expression of
murderous intent on his face and he stretched his arms forward as he
started for her as if he meant to beat the life out of her when he got
hold of her. But he did not get hold of her. She had been frightened,
too, and had stood looking at him, unable to decide what to do; but when
she saw those hands, she reared high into the air in an effort to
prevent his seizing the reins. This time he backed away afraid of the
hoofs that rose threateningly before him. She turned with a gracefully
defiant toss of her head and bounded away as fast as the dragging reins
would allow her to go. She could hear his frantic threatening cries, but
that voice had lost its power. Her chance had come at last!
By his futile cries she could tell how far she was leaving him behind
her. She dared not stop to look back even when she heard his cries no
more. The reins trailing on the ground impeded her flight and she felt
as if he were but a short distance behind her and would soon reach her.
In her mad race for freedom she kept stepping on the reins and every
step tore her lips and battered her palate; but not for a moment did
this actually halt her. She endured the pain like one who was aware of
the fact that the goal was worth it, till all that was left of the reins
dangled a few inches from her muzzle.
A mile farther west from the badger hole was a patch of woodland. When
she reached it, Dora stopped for a second to look back; but she did not
see the boy. A hill, in between, obstructed her view. She felt somewhat
freer not seeing him; but still she went as fast as she could go working
her way through the woods. The branches of the trees caught in her
saddle and made going very fast impossible. Twigs hooked in the ring of
the bit outside of the basket and not only hurt her but frightened her
because sometimes she had sensations of being seized by some man. But
despite these pulls and digs and impediments, dodging the branches as
best she could, she came in half an hour to a large open space. Two or
three miles beyond that she saw another patch of woods and headed
straight for that. She got through this bit of woodland without much
trouble and reaching another open space she followed the wall of trees
in its irregular curve to the north.
Still northward she fled, though the north had failed her. It was
evening, when after a steady trot for twenty-five miles she came to the
strip of forest that borders upon the Saskatchewan and there, coming
upon a deer path which was familiar to her, she plunged into the shadows
of the woods. She was too tired and still too weary of pursuit to think
of food. Coming to a windfall where she had many a time successfully
hidden in the days before her captivity, she lay down to rest.
She had been down but a short time when the prodding of the hard wooden
stirrup upon which she was lying forced her up. She tried to lie down
again, but again the stirrup forced her to get up. Again and again she
tried it, but each time with the same result, and finally with the
growing fever of a new and threatening fear, she gave up the attempt to
rest and went instead for a drink of water at the river. When she
reached the river’s edge she stopped to stare across to the wilds
beyond. There was a wish in her heart that she could find some way of
getting across the moving water, but that wish was dulled by a vague
realisation of the fact that now, without her old followers, getting
across would not be wholly satisfactory.
A great sad stillness brooded over the river, hanging over the silvery
reflections of the sky-line like a dome of mist that rested upon the
dreary shadows of the trees and banks on each side. Confinement and toil
had sickened Dora’s love of the wilds, though memory sought to exalt it
as of old, and the beauty of the wilderness, without her companions, was
only desolation. A nameless longing in her heart and a complexity of
fears she had never experienced before seized upon her like a disease.
It was as if she expected a fatal blow from some hidden enemy that moved
about her in every possible direction.
She bent down and drank at her feet. It was hard and disagreeable to
drink with the wire-net on her muzzle and the iron bit in her mouth. She
lashed the fast flowing stream with her muzzle in the hope that somehow
the nasty basket would be washed away by the water, but she gave up the
attempt and drank as best she could. Suddenly she lifted her head and
stared away into the dark spaces. In the far distance a small shadowy
form swooped from the top of a tall poplar, like a bit of shadow
breaking away from the body of the night, and disappeared in the
whiteness of the sky, leaving behind the melancholy echo of its cry. She
followed it with her eyes till it was no more visible, then suddenly
turned and ran for the open.
It was not only the open prairie she sought, because the open prairie
was the world she knew and loved best; but something else was driving
her. A fear that seemed to have been born of shadow and water and the
lonely cry of the loon. It was the sudden realisation that though she
had escaped from the detestable slavery of man and toil and dirty barn,
she had carried away from her bondage man’s inescapable curse.
Her first act upon reaching the open was to search the shaded distances,
then out of the depths of her embittered, fear-infested heart, she sent
into the wilds she had longed for her earnest appeal for companionship;
but only the mocking echo of her own voice came back from the motionless
tree-walls on each side of her. She lowered her head to graze but raised
it at once again. Now she knew what she had feared. Now she grasped
something of the extent of man’s curse. The wire-net on her muzzle, like
a trap, forbade her to eat until she returned humbly to man and
submitted to his tyranny.
In a frenzy of fear and anger she loped about in a circle for the
greater part of an hour, then she attempted to rub the cursed thing from
her lips. But rubbing on the ground pushed back the levers of the
rider’s bit and hurt her with every move. She stopped to think a moment,
gazing helplessly about. She lowered her head, pushing it along between
her hoofs, and pulling it forward, trying to rub it off that way; but
all that she did was to bend the strong wire of the basket, which after
that pressed painfully into her nose. She tried rubbing her muzzle
against the bark of a tree. A small twig point pierced the skin of her
lip and as she hastily pulled her head back the lever of the bit caught
in some way and she struggled for some time before she freed it. Then
she gave up, running off into space as if she were trying to flee from
some fearful thing she had just seen.
The cinch was still tight and though it did not bother her much when she
was up on her feet, it seemed to grow tighter and cut into her skin when
she tried to lie down; and if, for want of rest, she lay down anyway,
the stirrups always fell in such a way as to press into some tender spot
as she lay upon one of them. She would endure that for a few minutes and
then she would get up again with a groan.
The poplar woods about the Saskatchewan are not continuous. Patches and
strips covering spaces of from one to fifty acres cut up the rolling
plains. By running round about these she could keep herself invisible to
approaching enemies. Her old power to detect man’s approach seemed to
come back to her. Once that day she thought she detected some one
coming, and hid in the trees without even making sure, then coming out
on the other side and taking a roundabout run, left that section of the
country. Yet as she hastily put distance between herself and this
danger, she half realised that she might have to go back at last to the
man from whom she had escaped, who she knew could save her from the iron
grip on her muzzle. Two days later she saw some one coming on the
eastern horizon. She was certain that it was the boy pursuing her and
first going north to get under cover of a patch of woods, she fled west
for many miles.
She came late in the afternoon to the pond in the wilderness where
White-black had been trapped in the mud. She remembered clearly
White-black’s floundering in the mud and avoided that side of the pond.
She walked leisurely around it, gazing over the silent water from whose
brightness she missed the remembered sight of ducks. Many a time in her
slavery she had had visions of this bit of water with its reflections
smiling up to the heavens. It seemed hard for her to believe that she
was really there. She had longed so often to be there; yet, now, she
experienced something like a feeling of disappointment. What it was or
why, she did not know.
She was crossing a muddy spot when she slipped and fell on her side. She
was not hurt but slightly stunned and remained lying down. As she lay
there it occurred to her that the stirrup was not hurting her. She did
not think of its sinking into the mud, but thenceforth when she wanted
to lie down she came to that muddy spot. The pond came to her assistance
in another way. She had gone in some distance to get a drink of clear
water where the pond bottom was quite hard and as she drank, some of the
lower rushes penetrated the basket through the meshes of the net. She
lowered her muzzle carefully, keeping her jaws open; and when she felt
some of the rushes in her mouth, she cropped them quickly, chewing them
triumphantly as the water dripped from her muzzle.
The rushes grew tallest in the centre of the pond. She was afraid to go
in very far, feeling constantly, as she would move inward, that this
time she was going to stick there. It was not long before what rushes
she could reach had all been cropped. She learned to get some grass by
doing with the grass what she had done with the rushes, but though this
was better food she could not get as much of the grass as she had gotten
of the rushes. She managed in that way, however, to keep life burning in
her bedraggled body.
The fear of being pursued and captured again left her as the days went
by without a sign of man, but as this fear left came hunger. All day she
struggled to obtain enough grass to keep her alive and when the stirrup
resting on frozen mud kept her awake at night, she only thought of grass
and how to get more and more of it. The sweetness of the wilds she had
loved was gone, leaving them hollow and desolate and so cruelly
unresponsive as to be almost mocking.
Day after day man’s curse grew heavier to bear and the strangle-hold it
had upon her life contracted with more telling effect. It was only a
matter of a short time when its contracting hold would finally and
mercifully put an end to her misery.
The short Indian summer passed away. The nights became cold and the
frosts froze the mud into rock. When in lying down the stirrup pressed
into some tender spot, she would endure the pain, then rise next morning
and go limping over the plains. A layer of thick ice which no longer
melted by the middle of the day now covered the pond. What little frozen
dew that she could get, with the little grass she could crop, only
intensified her thirst and the desire for water drove her to
desperation. She tried to break a hole in the ice but she did not have
the necessary strength. The irresistible desire for water sent her out
upon the slippery ice in the hope of finding a weaker spot. A dozen feet
from the edge she slipped and fell with a crash, breaking through and
falling into the icy water. She was obliged to rest a while before she
could summon enough energy to get up. When she did get up she was aching
from head to foot and on her leg was an open, bleeding wound. She drank,
however, all she could hold, then she turned and looked helplessly to
the shore, afraid to step over the broken ice, falling again when at
last she ventured toward it, but finally getting back.
Her sides pained her terribly and her open wound smarted and itched. She
tried to lick it but only hurt it with the wire-net. She stood stolidly
for a few moments, her addled brain trying to clarify the great
confusion that came over it. What was she to do? What was going to
become of her? Life was almost unendurable, and instincts of terrifying
force guarded against the death that would have relieved her. Paroxysms
of fear swept over her, filling the shadows of the desolation with
beasts of prey who, leering and licking their chops, waited with
terrifying patience for the weaker moment when they expected to pull her
down.
Geese flew southward constantly and their ominous honking sang dirges to
the death of all that life had been to her in its happier past. The
skies grew grey and remained chronically grey and the atmosphere seemed
filled up with a great cosmic sorrow, like the face of a child
suppressing the impulse to cry. The winds reaching out from the frozen
north wailed with maddening grief.
A taciturn old coyote began to worry her. He would sometimes pass her
while she grazed or struggled in her attempts to graze, each time
seemingly coming nearer. He filled her soul with terror. Sometimes he
woke her at night with his demoniac howling and she would spring to her
feet and shake and tremble with fear and cold, only to find that he was
sitting on the rim of the hollow, looking down at her, his black,
hateful form cut clearly against the dark grey sky. Then one morning,
she awoke to find him less than a rod away, sitting on his haunches and
watching her. He fled when she sprang weakly toward him with a fearful
cry in which she tried desperately to be defiant; but she decided then
to abandon the horror-infested basin.
The great weakness was upon her. The coyote had long recognised it and
she knew it now. Whither she was to go or what she was to do, she did
not know. Only she felt the need of going and she went, limping slowly
and painfully, sick in body and soul, all her defiance of man crushed
out of her. Thus the erstwhile Queen of the wilds lumbered painfully
over the plains that seemed to no longer sustain her, going humbly back
to man to dumbly beg for mercy, for even in that state of mind she felt
that as man had placed his curse upon her only man could remove it.
It was a dreary, dull afternoon. The sun struggled to show itself and
its weakest warmth was driven from her protruding bones by a cold,
cutting gale. In her lumbering along over the plains that seemed
strangely dim and uncertain she stopped every once in a while and stared
like a decrepit old woman. She came at last to an open space between two
patches of woodland and stopped to gaze wild-eyed upon a black shanty
covered with tar-paper, and a sod barn.
The smells that came from that farmyard made it very hard for her to
advance, but the intense feeling of her desperation conquered each wave
of fear and step by step she made her way toward the house, stopping at
last, a hundred feet away, unable to go any farther. There was no sign
of life. Fear held her motionless yet hunger and thirst and weakness
urged her to call for help. Her call sounded weak and hollow. She called
again with greater exertion and in that call a note of conciliation was
unmistakably audible.
Suddenly she saw the door of the shanty open and a woman came out. Had
it been a man, all her unworded resolution would have gone to naught and
Dora would have turned and fled; but a woman was a different experience.
She turned nervously and walked off a short distance, but when the woman
advanced toward her holding out a hand and calling with a most winning
voice, she stopped and waited. When the woman came nearer Dora heard her
own name. The recognition of that sound gave her so much hope and
courage that she deliberately turned toward the woman who by that time
was near enough to take hold of one of the pieces of strap that still
hung from the bit-ring.
For a few minutes the woman patted her forehead lovingly and talked to
her in a way that warmed poor Dora as if the woman had placed a blanket
over her cold aching body. When the woman began leading her toward the
house she followed willingly till the door opened and a little girl came
out, then she stopped as if afraid; but when the woman urged she went
on, keeping her eyes upon the little girl.
At the well, the little girl chopped a hole in the ice on the trough
while the woman removed the basket, bridle, halter and what was left of
the saddle and Dora lowered her head quickly into the water and drank as
rapidly as she could.
“That dirty brute!” said the woman.
“He never feeds his critters,” piped in the little girl.
“He doesn’t feed his wife,” added the woman, not because she wanted to
tell this to the little girl, but rather because she wanted to express
the hatred of an old and bitter feud.
“Take these rotten things,” said the woman, pointing to the bridle and
the halter, while she seized the remains of the saddle. “Let’s get them
out of the way, and don’t you ever open your mouth to tell any one, no
matter who it is, that his mare was here. I don’t want his rotten old
saddle and bridle. He never keeps anything looking decent enough for any
one to want any of his rotten things. Anyway it is a sin to send this
poor mare back to him. It ain’t up to me to catch his runaway critters
for him and I just can’t let the poor critter go off like this and die.
When Dad gets back from threshin’, he’ll take these things and drop ’em
on the road near his place where he will be sure to find them.”
When Dora had drunk all she could, she turned immediately to some grass
near by and began voraciously to pull at it. The woman had befriended
her and she was not afraid of her. But to her surprise, when she came
back, the woman rushed at her with something in her hand which she waved
threateningly at her, clearly ordering her away. Dora ran off as fast as
she could go and when she got well out of the way, she turned to look
back with a puzzled expression on her face. Both the woman and the
little girl were calmly entering the shanty.
Without an attempt to get at the motive behind the woman’s strange
conduct, Dora went on grazing there, moving off and looking back when
her mouth was too full to crop, eating so rapidly and so absorbedly that
she had no time to think about the phenomenal change that had thus
miraculously come over her. If she was not thinking gratefully, she did
feel grateful and possibly some higher intellectual force than hers, in
some way, realised for her that only justice had been done.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XV
THE TRAIL OF THE MOOSE
FOR several days after the woman had relieved her of the racking burden
of straps and iron and wire-net, Dora was troubled by the conflict of
recurrent impulses to go back to the farm yard and the fears that just
as ardently urged her to get far out of the reach of man. Months of
arduous toil followed by weeks of semi-starvation had robbed her of her
strength and her courage; the barn had so enervated her that she found
the cold, out doors, especially at night, very hard to endure; and her
captivity had deprived her of her companions without whom life was not
worth the struggle.
One snow flurry followed another. The last spot of exposed earth
disappeared. The sun did not show itself for days and every hour seemed
to deepen the drifts. Never had the world seemed so bleak and
inhospitable to her.
She was so miserably cold one windy night that she decided at last to go
back to the farmyard where she had been so magnanimously befriended. She
got up toward the end of the long night and started away, lumbering
along for many miles in the dark, driven by the image of the sheltering
barn; and then she stopped suddenly as the other image, that of the
woman driving her away, came into her mind. She stood still, unable to
decide what to do and as she stood the reddish streak in the south east
grew brighter and less red.
She became very cold, having stood so long, and started off again more
for want of exercise than through any definite decision, and as she
neared the top of a wild rose bush that protruded from a deep drift, a
rabbit sprang out of its shadow and bounded away to the south. Dora
stopped through momentary fright, and followed him with her eyes as he
fled. She missed him when he was swallowed up in the great ocean of
whiteness and searching for him suddenly discovered a group of horses on
the ridge of a long hill, their dark bodies cut clearly against the end
of the light streak in the sky.
Dora did not stop for her breakfast. Her eyes lighted up, her nostrils
distended and her thin legs plowed through the snows as if their old
strength had fully come back to them. There were many hills and valleys
lost to the sight in the level whiteness and, crossing them
over-anxiously, she was obliged to stop a few times to rest and to
regain her breath, before at last she reached the horses, by that time
down the side of the hill.
There were about a dozen of them spread out considerably. While yet some
distance from them, she thought she recognised some of her old friends,
but as she came nearer she was overwhelmed with doubt. They were pawing
the snow very energetically and took little interest in her fervent
greetings. One or two heads raised up a moment, then went back to the
business of finding grass which the rest would not interrupt even for
that short time. This reception was a great disappointment to Dora, but
there were other disappointments in store for her.
The three horses to whom she was nearest, watched her approach with
suspicion. They were, all three, hard working horses, who found the
pawing of snow a laborious task. They thought she meant to eat from
their find and drove her off with threats of angry whinnies and laying
ears. One of them, a miserable old nag, a red mare with two naked scars
on her shoulders, jumped across the hole she had dug, ran after Dora and
nipped her haunches several times, as poor Dora fled from her.
Dora stopped running about a hundred yards from there, looked back at
the old nag and, seeing that she had returned to pawing, began to paw
the snow where she was. When she got to the grass and had taken a
mouthful, she raised her head and stared at the group, wondering what
had happened to the beautiful world from which she had been abducted by
man. She could not make out why that old nag had been so intent upon
hurting her. Dora did not know of those differences in temperament which
makes one creature mellow and sympathetic after an experience of great
suffering and another sour and pugnacious.
Her reception was a sad disappointment to Dora, but even that
companionship was better than none. So she clung to it with all her
strength, content to move about on the outer edge of the group. When the
herd had fed well and for exercise started across the snows, Dora always
went with them, running with every ounce of energy in her body, striving
through her old revived habit to get to the lead; but Dora soon realised
that these were not the days of her supremacy. Strive as she would, she
could not keep up with even the poorest plug and long before the others
were ready to quit, she was obliged to drop out of the race, humiliated
and unhappy, puffing and panting for breath.
Nevertheless, she took part in every race. Every time she made the same
strenuous attempt to do the impossible. The youngsters of two and three
years of age fairly laughed at her, reaching her while she struggled
with might and main and leaving her behind with a few easy bounds. But
it is a poor effort that accomplishes no result whatever, and though she
could at no time outrun the younger horses, she daily managed to leave
some older horse behind her.
One day she tried her old trick. Very early in the race she happened to
be in the lead, having started the race. When the younger horses saw her
leading a few of the old plugs, they started after her, soon, of course,
overtaking her. Dora swerved to the side, in the hope that they would
follow her, and found herself alone. They not only refused to follow her
but they did not even look back to see what had happened to her. Dora
was so unhappy she started off again after them, but soon stopped,
realising that she could not catch up to them and that she would soon be
out of breath once more. She stood still a while and watched them
enviously. Then she turned, intending to paw the snow for grass, when
she saw another group of horses coming from the southeast.
Dora raised her head and looked with absorbed interest. The wind lifted
her mane and fluttered it gracefully in the air. For a few moments,
absorbed in the creatures that moved toward her in single file, she
looked like Queen once more in all the glory of her regency. When they
were a hundred yards away, Queen neighed with all her strength. At once
the marching line stopped and all heads went up high in the air. Then
from the rear of the line a white horse broke from the path he had been
following and with a call of recognition started hastily toward her. It
was White-black and, with a strength born of the very sight of him,
Queen loped to meet him.
Four of the other horses recognized her, too, and the air vibrated with
the music of that happy reunion. Noses touched noses and happy whinnies
greeted happy whinnies. With the five of them had come a young mother, a
sorrel mare with a fuzzy little colt who had been born in the spring.
When the others had gone to meet Queen she remained in her tracks,
hesitating to get into any kind of an assembly where through joy or
anger her colt might be hurt. He stood right behind her, his fuzzy
little head against her haunch, his eyes filled with wonderment.
When Dora had greeted her old friends, she went to greet the mother and
her colt, running her old muzzle, on which were still the marks of her
struggle with the basket, down the fuzzy little fellow’s forehead,
murmuring tremulously. The proud young mother looked on almost eagerly
and commented softly and good-naturedly.
But when the big group returned there was dissention at once. The ugly
red mare seemed to think that there was entirely too much fuss made over
Queen, and turned upon her with open mouth. White-black, right behind
the old nag, nipped her severely. A quarrel followed which spread to the
rest of the group and finally ended in a race which divided the two
groups, Dora going off with her friends. All day the two groups dug the
snow a goodly distance apart and in the evening came the worst storm of
the season.
The storm approached quite suddenly, though all day there had been vague
signs of its coming. A northern gale blew up, tearing the weaker
branches from the trees and sending them sliding over the surface of the
snow, tearing up the looser snow and blowing it into their eyes and ears
and nostrils. Queen led her group to a fairly sheltered spot in among
the trees near by and together they lay down.
The warmth of their bodies, one touching the other, was so comforting
that the slightest move on the part of any one of them brought a low,
patient protest from the rest. The night came rapidly. The wind grew
more and more furious, howling and shrieking overhead, and the tall
poplars groaned as they bent with its lashing. Gusts of wind, loaded
with snow, which it raised on the open, struck the trees and the snow
fell in powder upon them below, covering them as with a blanket.
In the open the savage north wind went mad. It tore along at a terrific
rate, taking everything that was loose with it, then, as if it had in
its savage eagerness fallen over itself, there was a pause for a moment,
after which, picking itself up again, it went on with even greater
ferocity, shrieking as with some ineffable, primordial pain. It seized
the fallen snow and whirled it around with the falling snow, scattered
it high in the air, lifting it again when it had fallen and sending it
like waves across the plains, gathering great showers of it and hurling
them against the wall of the woods, sending these showers down upon the
tree tops, tearing it all up again as soon as it had fallen into drifts
below and once more hurling the restless dust into space—a display of
insane, futile effort—a cosmic passion bereft of purpose.
But if this wild night could have been wilder and had raved with even
more threat in its raving, it could not have diluted the contentment in
Queen’s heart. The touch and the subtler feeling of the presence of her
companions did as much to keep her warm as the heat of their bodies,
and, like a light, illumined the long trail of life behind her. She
moved through the corridor of her past like a curious child, walking in
its sleep and dreaming of a beautiful, incoherent fairyland. The light
was silvery as that of the moon and in the shadows detached images which
she only half recognised glistened like reflections on the snow. And
when dawn ushered in a calm day, Queen rose with a feeling like that of
having returned home from a long visit and shook the snow from her body.
Queen knew the country there as none other knew it. Leading the little
group to the best feeding grounds, she took her place once more at the
head, for at the head only could Queen be happy. In spite of the deep
snows through which they were obliged to plow to get their food, Queen
began to fill out rapidly and the greater part of her old strength came
back to her. With the return of her strength came the old fear of man.
Every move was accompanied by an investigation and in every sound of
wind and tree she seemed to hear the sound of a voice.
There followed a long period of fair weather in which the snows hardened
and shrank and then one day, as they were digging for grass, they were
surprised by three men on horseback on a hill to the south and east,
less than a quarter of a mile away. The horsemen had come upon them so
suddenly that Queen, confounded, stood looking at them a few minutes,
transfixed with fear. She recognised the man who had captured her on the
big horse that had worked beside her in the plow. Next to him was the
boy on the little bay mare and his cry of “There she is!” fully aroused
Queen.
The little herd, however, had no difficulty in getting away from them,
because they had no burdens on their backs and they were now more used
to the deep snows on the open plains than the horses that were chasing
them. The horsemen kept behind them for a long while and then
disappeared. But Queen was too wise to end her flight there. She knew
that even though the men gave up the chase that day they would appear
again the next, or soon after that.
Out of the misery and discomfort of her captivity she had just emerged.
She had found her companions and the life for which she had hungered all
through those unhappy months. Hardly had she realised the full extent of
her good fortune when man reappeared to take it all away from her. But
Queen was in no submissive mood. She had fought for her freedom and she
would fight again. She would watch with such care that she would not
again be caught at a disadvantage. She hardly gave herself time to eat.
Her ears were constantly pricked high. Her eyes, afire with her
emotions, never for a moment abandoned their vigilance. But her nervous
dread of man soured the sweetness of the wilds and Queen moved over the
snows with the old feeling of the trap beating in her heart, moved
without resting and, out of habit, moved northward.
They came next day to the strip of woodland whose heroic poplars
silently guard the Saskatchewan. There they stopped and there the full
horror of the trap took possession of Queen. She was afraid of her own
shadow and the slightest sound startled her. A partridge drumming in the
woods sent her madly loping through space.
The winter evening came early. The distant sun lowered in the southwest
with a sad, yellow glare; and in the north a gleaming, pearly streak
foretold a brilliant display of northern lights. That streak interested
Queen and she watched it as the darkness thickened, and as she watched
it, looking up from time to time, it grew brighter. Faint shimmering
colours appeared at the eastern end of the streak and slowly moved
across it to the west, vanishing in the west and reappearing brighter in
the east. Many times she had seen these lights, but only once, somewhere
in her half-forgotten childhood, had she seen them so bright and so
fascinating.
They were standing directly in front of a cleft in the shadowy wall of
trees. The cleft led like a roadway to the banks and the river below.
There they could see more of the lights, the portion that glowed in the
lower part of the sky and danced about over the shadowy tops of the
trees on the other shore.
It was during a moment when the lights were so compelling that all of
them had stopped to look when there appeared in the cleft the giant body
of a moose, his antlers like a magnificent oak cut clearly against the
scintillating colours of the aurora borealis. His coming had been so
swift, so sudden and so imperceptible that it took them some time to
realise that a living thing stood within a few yards of them, looking at
them. The herd hastily retreated a short distance; but as soon as they
stopped to look back the enormous animal got frightened, turned and
vanished down the banks.
Queen was very curious. She trotted carefully after him and the rest of
the herd kept to her tracks. When Queen’s head appeared where the plains
turn over the banks, the moose looked up at her a moment and then like a
rabbit shot straight across the river. Beyond the centre of the frozen
river he stopped for a moment to look back once more, then leaped on and
vanished in the woods beyond, leaving behind him, across the ice of the
erstwhile invincible Saskatchewan the defiant shadow of his trail.
An overwhelming impulse flared up in Queen’s soul. A great confusion of
fear and hope seized upon her heart. So nervous that every muscle in her
body trembled, she made her way down the banks and with infinite fear
and caution she took the trail of the moose. She walked along slowly and
very carefully and stopped often to take bites of the snow on the ice as
if she were testing it and at the same time trying to quench the fires
that were burning within her. The others hesitated a moment, but when
they saw her nearly half way across, they faithfully followed her.
In the woods north of the river, they camped for the night. Next day
they went on, penetrating the woods and following the trail of the moose
till they came upon an open space a mile beyond the river. There they
remained for the rest of the winter, feeding upon grass the like of
which they had only at rare times come upon.
Succeeding snowfalls covered their tracks and when spring came, melting
the snows and filling the desolate hollows with quivering, rippling
ponds, loading the lonely air with the whir of duck wings and the
happier honking of geese, the roar of the swollen Saskatchewan had
placed the final seal upon their emancipation.
And here the story of Queen Dora must end, for in that new world beyond
the trail of the moose her struggle against the usurpation of man was
over. It was long after her generation that man ventured into that
desolate region where she found perfect happiness, as perfect a
happiness as may come to living things. Grass and water, leisure and
activity, companionship and security, these were all Queen asked of
life, and these were as free in those unfenced wilds as the air and as
limitless in their abundance. No enemies, no contention, preferences
without hatred, joyous play and eternal good will, she looked toward
each coming moment with no fear; while the glowing sensations of fading
yesterdays only sweetened the music of her existence.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Beyond Rope and Fence" ***
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