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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.