THE prairie grass began once more to wither and grow grey. The winds assumed again their autumnal sadness and moaned with an aimless complaint. Again dead thistles began rolling over the plains, expressing somehow in their helpless rolling the relentlessness of change. Frosts rewhitened the morning earth and geese honked again on their flight to the south.
The herd was grazing on a hillslope. On the top of the hill stood Queen. The wind was tugging away at her mane and tail, but otherwise she was as motionless as the hill she was standing on. Her eyes were fixed upon two horses coming from the southeast and more than a mile away.
Once or twice the brown colt, now a full grown stallion, fat and almost clumsy, raised his head to look as she was looking; but most of the others were busy seeking better grasses and wild plants they liked, until Queen, with a partially suppressed whinny of excitement trotted away to meet the newcomers. At once the peaceful scene broke into activity.
But when they had come within a quarter of a mile of the two horses, they stopped. A white horse that made Queen think of White-black, tied to a sorrel horse that made her think of the old sorrel work-horse, running as fast as they could under the circumstances, were coming toward them, by fits and starts. The white horse, as he came, kept stepping backward and raising his head every once in a while, only to leap forward again a few paces. Always as he leaped forward something dragged him back by the head. They would run on together for a short distance and then the same thing would happen again.
When they got very near, in spite of her interest, Queen’s fear of the scent of man which clung to them got the better of her and she led away till the apparition was out of sight. There the herd waited for its reappearance. When they did appear the herd fled again. This they kept up for the greater part of the day. Toward evening Queen made another attempt to find out just what was wrong. By this time she was convinced that there was no man with them anywhere, and the labourious manner in which these miserable creatures followed them mitigated her fear of their being dangerous.
She went round on a curve and stopped some fifty feet from the two weary animals. The sorrel, now about a foot behind the white horse, snorting as if he had great difficulty in breathing, took the opportunity during the moment’s rest to brace his body with his front legs against the pulling of the white one. The white one, driven by some fear, began pulling and tugging as soon as he had caught his breath; but he couldn’t budge the old fellow an inch. Queen advanced fearfully. The scent of man, despite the fact that there was no man about, worried her even as the growing certainty that these were her old companions drew her toward them. Finally she ventured near enough to touch the white nose that came forward a few inches to meet hers. White-black it was! Poor, abused White-black, covered with barn dirt, his sides fallen in through struggle and lack of sufficient food.
A touch of the old sorrel’s nose brought him to his proper place in her mind and Queen ran from one to the other, feeling vaguely that the spell of the dirty barn was still holding both of them in captivity, and trying to arrive at some plan of helping them, yet not having the faintest idea of what to do.
The old sorrel was by far the weaker one of the two. He was evidently just about exhausted. His poor old sides expanded and contracted rapidly and his dirty flanks were literally wet with foamy perspiration. Though White-black took advantage of their halt and grazed as far as the entanglement of straps that held him fast to his mate would allow; the old sorrel made no attempt to eat. His harness had slipped down his side and one of his front legs was caught in a loop in one of the straps that hung from his neck.
The weary old sorrel had hardly regained his breath, when Queen spied a man on horseback coming after the pair. The herd dashed away to the north while White-black, dragging the exhausted sorrel behind him, brought up the rear. The old sorrel did the best he could. The lines tying his bridle to White-black’s bridle pulled painfully at his lips, the corners of which were red with blood. Strength was ebbing rapidly from him and he moved through space as if he were dazed.
Suddenly one of his front legs went into a badger hole. The old fellow went down with a groan. The groan was immediately followed by several sharp, successive snaps and White-black was free from his poor, wretched, old mate. And the poor old sorrel, too, was free, free from all future agony.
The hanging straps impeded White-black’s flight, but the darkness came to his rescue. The herd had ceased running. The hoof-beats of the man’s saddle pony were dying away in the distance. By morning when the man reappeared on the horizon, White-black, still burdened by his heavy harness, was free enough to be able to keep up with the herd, for what was left of the lines, stepped upon so many times during the night, now hung above his knees.
For more than a week, the man persisted in his futile attempt to catch the white horse; then, because his saddle pony was completely exhausted, racing daily with the weight on his back, he gave up the chase with a vicious hope that White-black would strangle himself in the harness he carried with him, and a curse upon the wild western broncos that were “no good anyway.”
But White-black had no inclination to pass out of existence that way, nor did his notion of value coincide with that of his would-be owner. He did everything he could think of doing to rid himself of his trying encumbrance. He would lie down every once in a while and roll in the hope of thus rubbing the harness off. In time, he managed to loosen the crupper so that it let the greater part of the harness, the part that covered his back and sides, slip down on one side of him and drag on the ground.
This only intensified his discomfort, for every horse that went near him was sure to step on some strap. Every time some one stepped upon a strap, however, there was one strap less dragging after him, and in a few days the whole network of straps was torn from the hames. One day while he was grazing, the hames suddenly loosened and fell off and the collar fell down upon his head. A little help with one hoof got it completely off his head, and so he was free from all but the bridle. The bit was tormenting enough but since it did not entirely prevent his grazing and his drinking, and the straps hanging down did not interfere with his running, he was virtually free again.
It was during the middle of the winter that he was relieved of this last link in the chain of his captivity. There came a severe blizzard that kept them lying huddled into each other with nothing to do for a long time. Queen had always been annoyed by these straps that clung to White-black and lying close to him, she stretched her neck and began to chew at them. While she chewed at the straps, White-black ground his teeth in his persistent effort to dislodge the bit, and suddenly it fell from his mouth.
When next spring the homesteader, in another vain attempt to recapture his valuable white horse, got near enough to the herd to see that White-black did not have on him a piece of all the harness with which he had run away, he could hardly believe his eyes. That night he told his neighbours:
“That mare’s got the devil in her. She just took them there harness right off him. I know it. How else could he get ’em off? When the critters ran away they both had all their harness on. How in thunder did he get his bridle off? Tell me that! She’s a devil, that mare! I’ll tell y’u she went for me like a witch the day I got her colt. I went away and left her round the barn thinkin’ I’d get her with the help of Colter; but I reckoned on her bein’ a mare—not a devil! She opened her mouth just like a wolf. I swear it!”
Because she was able to defend herself against man’s tyranny, they accused her of having the devil in her; because she was wise enough to retain her liberty, they cursed and hated her. Yet they had ample reason for hating her. Within two years after the loss of White-black, not a homesteader dared release his horses in the fall as they had been in the habit of doing. To release them was in all probability to lose them.
But keeping them in the barns all winter meant the necessity for gathering much greater quantities of hay than they were accustomed to gather, and, worse than that, it meant horses with less energy for seeding time in the spring.
Every spring, all manner of attempts were made to capture Queen but every attempt ended in costly failure. Some of the older and weaker horses were taken from the herd each year, but Queen and all the younger horses remained free. Once Queen learned that she was being pursued, it was impossible for them to get within a mile of her.
When these futile attempts to capture her became too annoying, Queen would invariably turn to the north. The ominous barbed wire fences which year after year encroached upon the wild, somehow never appeared on the northern horizon. North, always north, she went, maneuvering with such cunning about the hills and through the deeper valleys, that for every mile she was able to put between herself and her pursuers, they were obliged to travel five.
The Canadian Government embarked upon a campaign of advertisement to urge farmers in the United States to go north and take up homesteads in Alberta. Men sold their farms in the northwestern states and moved across the border. Every year a new crop of homesteader’s shacks appeared to baffle the desolation. To be sure, many a shack built hopefully one year stood gaping like a skull the next; but in spite of the discouraging features of the country, much of the encroachment yearly made upon Queen’s domains was permanent.
Every springtime with the blossoming of the wild rosebushes and the prairie cacti, new fence posts with their glittering lines of barbed wire cut some small portion of her territory on the east, the south and the west. Slowly man crept northward and with an inborn faith in the justice and the security of the wilds, Queen fled at his approach.
THE years rolled by. Old tragic hurts were dulled by the mists of passing time and every hour of the unfettered present came bringing some new joy. New children came to Queen and in the love of each succeeding one, Queen rejoiced as if it were the first and only one. Carefully she led them all to the doorway of maturity and there, since life willed it so, she gave them over to the herd, to live and provide for themselves and to abide by the unwritten laws of the herd in the finest exemplification of the Golden Rule on earth. The friends who died or who suddenly disappeared she would miss for a long while, sometimes spending months in search of them, then she would transfer her love of them to some other member of the brotherhood, just as she transferred her mother-love from the older to the younger of her offspring.
The shadowy creatures of the receding past often came, walking into the dozing memory at nightfall. Queen would remain lying, chewing absent-mindedly and watching them, her contentment undisturbed, loving the sadness that clung to them, as we love the sadness that clings to our sweetest music.
There came a spring of unusual activity on the part of man, and his daily appearance intruded so threateningly upon the herd, that they abandoned the land which had become endeared to them and journeyed north almost steadily for many days.
They came upon a pleasant valley abounding in delicious, virgin grass and many small ponds; and they took possession of it. But at midnight, while they were resting, they were suddenly aroused by a shrieking noise which was followed by a long-drawn rattle, like distant thunder.
The sound died out and did not come again, but an attenuated cloud of smoke swept across the valley. Though the rest of that night was undisturbed and the air, from then on, was clear, they kept awake and fearfully restless. At dawn they abandoned the valley though they saw nothing that was alarming; and as they moved northward, they came upon a railroad track.
On the other side of the track the land stretched away silent and desolate, merging at the northern horizon in a long, narrow shadow, as of woodland. The tracks remained perfectly motionless and the herd slowly ventured near them. While some of the horses looked on curiously, some of the headstrong young colts to the dismay of their mothers, walked upon the tracks and sniffed at them. Seeing that nothing happened to them, the herd started at once to cross.
Half a mile north of that they came upon another elongated slough which had been hidden by a hill. Always glad to see water, they trotted down in concert and took possession, once more intending to end the journey. But toward evening while the colts were expressing the joy of life in a gambol about the water, they were startled by another shriek like the one of the night before, and associating it somehow with the tracks, they tore up the slope to see what it was.
In the distant east glowed a light, like the harvest moon. It gleamed from the centre of a black, fear-inspiring object from which clouds of smoke poured into the air and streamed backward into space. They gazed upon it for a few moments as if transfixed, then when they realised that it was coming rapidly nearer, they broke down into the valley, splashing through the slough and sped up the other slope. On the top of that hill, they stopped to look back. The thing was already thundering past them, shutting away the whole of the south with a long, black line of smoke in which sparkled a thousand star-like eyes of fire.
Had they remained to look at that line of smoke, they might have lost the fear of it. Within a few minutes it went as it had come. The sweet evening air cleared and settled down to the silence they loved. But such is the way of destiny that a thing of smoke and illusion may wield a power greater than that of iron or mind.
They did not wait long enough to see what it really was. An impassable wall had arisen behind them. A guard of ferocious beasts had rushed across their path, shutting from them forever the old south world they knew so well. To Queen it was, in the vaguest sense, somewhat more than that. The apprehensions of the moment were dispelled by the widening distance between them and this weird thing they feared; but a new anxiety crept into Queen’s heart, like a snaky creature, and grew bolder there as the danger it forecast approached. It was the fear of the hunted for the cage. It was as if she had entered an enormous trap and had seen the door shut upon her.
They instinctively kept to a strip of wild prairie several miles in width. On the eastern and western horizon they saw from time to time shacks and barns and fences and huge squares of black, plowed earth; and from the distances came at long intervals the muffled barking of dogs. The feel and the smell of man was in the air, and they found that air hard to breathe. They grazed when hunger asserted itself and rested when the younger colts refused to go on, but continued their migration.
They came to a country where there were no shacks and no fences, where the evenness was broken only by promising patches of woodland. There the earth seemed destitute of living things and in the moaning of the winds as they blew through the swaying trees, the spirit of loneliness assured them of safety. The grass on the open spaces grew high as if no living thing had ever touched it, and swaying with the trees, it subtly testified to the authenticity of that assurance. In Queen’s mind, however, the shacks and the fences and the barking of dogs were as yet too distinct to allow her to feel entirely secure; and she continued the flight, fear urging her to go on till the last trace of man had faded from the air and a wall of solitude and wilderness had covered it. But they came one day to a very steep slope. Tall trees rose from the foot of the slope and beyond their tops Queen saw the reflecting waters of the Saskatchewan pouring along rapidly from west to east.
The river was very wide and the darker waters beneath the brighter surface indicated a perilous depth. The fear of the trap that had been vague in Queen’s mind now became distinct as she gazed at the obscure distance from which the river came and at the shadowy spaces into which it rushed. Her faith in the north had given her a decade of precarious freedom and had taken her two hundred miles from her birthplace. The sight of those impassable volumes of water staggered that faith. She grew nervous and restless and when the herd had drunk the treacherous water, she led them away to the west.
A half day’s journey brought them to where the Vermillion River tearing along between high banks comes pouring down from the south and the west and breaks into the Saskatchewan, with a threatening roar. Again Queen felt that she had come to another wall of the trap and turning, led the herd back toward the east. A few days of grazing and moving east along the Saskatchewan brought them to a barbed wire fence that ran down the banks to the very edge of the river. Ever as she had followed the slightly winding river, she had searched in vain for a ford. The doors of the north, too, had closed to them, and their freedom now depended upon a battle of wits, the wits of the herd in the limited wilds against the wits of man in his protecting civilisation.
They returned to the middle of the unsettled belt and there Queen spent a happy week of freedom, disturbed only by the promptings of the canker within her which derived its sustenance from the frequent appearance of men on horseback.
Seeding time arrived and the homesteaders who lived south of the railroad tracks went forth to hunt for the horses they had released the preceding fall. The homesteaders who lived on the outskirts of these wilds, in the hope of capturing some of the unclaimed horses, joined them. But with a cunning that exasperated the hunters, Queen went from one hiding place to another, detecting every approach so long before the horsemen appeared that in the first full week of searching she was seen only on two occasions.
The homesteaders became desperate. The snows were fast disappearing and the land was in best condition for their work. They appealed to the Canadian Government and half a dozen members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police came out to reinforce them in the war to the knife that was declared upon Queen and her followers.
Several times a day Queen would run down the banks of the Saskatchewan. At the river she would take a few sips of water as if she had come to drink and then she would stand and look longingly across the roaring deeps to the wilds beyond, suppressing the constantly rising impulse to plunge into the rapid waters and beat her way to the freedom of the north, which seemed, after half a lifetime of benefaction, to have abandoned her. Then one day the impulse came with overwhelming suddenness and she struck out madly for the other shore. But when she felt the bottom drop away from under her feet, she became frightened. The remnants of the huge snow drifts that were still melting kept the river swollen to twice its volume. The current lifted her and carried her several rods downstream, fortunately for her, hitting a bar and depositing her there.
Puffing and snorting and registering the promise that she would never try it again, Queen finally clambered back upon the shore where she shook the water from her body. Some of the horses who had watched the whole performance with anxiety, came trotting toward her. Queen joined them dejectedly, grateful to be out of the treacherous water, but remembering that she was being hunted and realising now that there was no chance of getting across the river and that her only hope lay in her delicate legs and the cunning that many years of resistance to man had developed.
A few days passed by in which all hostilities on the part of the homesteaders and the Mounted Police seemed to have ceased. Queen began to feel that the war had been abandoned; but she was surprised one very early morning by a formidable group of horsemen, less than a quarter of a mile to the east from where the herd was grazing, who were coming at full speed. A strong wind had been blowing from the west and had carried the scent and sound of them away. A lull in the wind apprised her of the enemy’s approach.
They had been moving along the edge of a patch of dense woodland, the wall of which stretched from the Saskatchewan to a point a little more than a mile south of the river. There was no opening between the trees and the brush. The only chance for escape lay in a wild dash south and in reaching the end of the wooded wall before the horsemen could reach it. That chance they took.
The horsemen divided into groups. One group sped away southwest at an angle, while another, going straight west, spread out on a long line to prevent the herd from going back to the river.
It was a close race. Every animal, pursuing or pursued, groaned in the terrible exertion of it. The younger and the stronger of the herd led the race, with Queen’s magnificent head in front. Behind the group of fastest runners came the mothers with their colts, and the old work-worn horses brought up the rear. Though spurs dug unmercifully into wet, throbbing sides, staining them with small red spots, the forepart of the herd, unencumbered by riders, won the end of the wall and broke away to the west in safety. Not until the wall point was almost out of sight did they stop to look back and when Queen finally felt it safe to do so and swung round a knoll, she saw no sign of her pursuers; but the far greater portion of the herd was gone with them.
About a mile southwest of where they were, they knew of a slough. It was down in a deep hollow and though they would rather have remained on the hills where they could more easily spy any one coming after them, they were very thirsty and trotted away for water. At the rim of the hollow some of them stopped to look about before going down, others broke down on a run.
Queen drank very little. She was worried and very nervous. While most of the horses walked into the pond, looking for deeper and clearer water, she took a few hasty sips of the warm, muddy stuff on the edge and then ran up the slope to take another look. There seemed to be nothing untoward on the plains, but to make sure she remained there a while and grazed.
She had not been grazing more than a few minutes when she was startled by a frantic splashing in the pond. She looked down in time to see White-black whose forelegs had sunk into a mud-hole, attempt to turn round. Half a dozen of the others began to struggle just as frantically. Some of them managed to reach hard ground, but White-black and two others seemed to sink deeper the harder they struggled.
At first all this violent effort to get out made her think that some awful danger had suddenly arisen in the centre of the pond, but the light grey mud on the flanks of those who did get out, apprised her of the fact that they had struck an alkali mud-hole. She had had her experience with alkali mud-holes before. They had been in the habit of drinking at the other end of the slough and had come to this end now only because the other end was somewhat nearer to the territory from which they had just escaped.
She hurried down to the side of White-black and as he resumed his struggling, she called to him anxiously. Finally the three of them ceased struggling for a while and set up a helpless neighing to which those on the shore responded just as helplessly.
There was little danger of drowning for the water was very shallow, but the fear of being caught, the fear of the pursued creature still warm in their throbbing hearts, kept them struggling and their struggles tired them out and drove them down deeper into the mud. Queen was perplexed. It seemed as if everything were combining for their destruction, that even the mud joined man in his effort to torture them. She called to the helpless creatures ceaselessly, running up and down the slope in a frenzy of fear.
Suddenly while she was down at the edge of the pond, urging White-black to exert himself and White-black was groaning for want of strength, the wind shifted and brought from the northwest a message of danger. The horses who were free ran up the slope to the southeast. Queen, who was this time behind the others, suddenly stopped half way up the slope and turning back called frantically to White-black. Her life long association with White-black had endeared him more strongly to her than the other two and it seemed hard for her to leave him in distress.
She ran back to the edge of the water, stamping her foot and calling with all her strength; but White-black only weakened himself. One of the two other horses, in a violent last effort, pulled himself half way out, and dropped back, but White-black ceased trying.
The hoof beats of the free horses faded away in the distance and their rhythmic patter was followed by those of the enemy’s horses. A man’s head appeared at the rim of the hollow and with a last call to White-black, Queen shot up the slope and away to the southwest. The men had seen the other horses first and had veered to go after them, when they discovered Queen. Trying to head her off, one man started down the slope and as he did so he discovered White-black and his two companions struggling in the mud.
As Queen fled she heard the one man whistling to the others. She could not hear anyone behind her but she did not stop to find out whether she was being followed or not. In the distant west she saw the shadowy blue of a clump of trees and she made for that with every bit of strength left in her. When she reached the trees she first shot under cover, then investigating to make sure that no dangerous animal was hidden there, or that no men were coming from any other direction, she pushed her way out to a thicket of buffalo berries, and stopped to scan the plains she had covered.
Not a living thing stirred on the monotonous level of the prairies. Only heat waves danced above the narrow, blue strips of woodland shadows. Within a few minutes she was convinced that no one was coming after her and then despite her fear and restlessness, and her anxiety to get back to the other horses that had escaped, she sank down to the ground, snorting and panting like a dog. But within half an hour she was off again in pursuit of the remnant of the herd.
All through the afternoon she hunted them, stopping often to graze and to drink, now trotting, now loping, going fast when something on the horizon made her think that she had found them or walking slowly when she realised that she had been mistaken; calling often, sometimes with all her strength as if she hoped they would hear her and sometimes calling softly and hopelessly only because she felt an urge to express the feeling that had taken complete possession of her.
Toward evening when the light began fading and the shadows grew long, she trotted cautiously to the pond where she had left White-black in the mud. The desire to find him grew stronger as the evening progressed toward night and Queen went at full speed.
The unruffled surface of the pond was brightly reflecting the last rays of daylight when she turned over the rim of the hollow and stopped there to make sure that the men were gone. Even those thoughtless men who hated her—they were not many—if they had been able to see her as she slowly came walking over the rim a step at a time, would have admired that beautiful head in the evening silhouette with its touch of magnificence and the cunning that had kept her out of their greedy reach.
A few ducks were moving about in the glitter. Immediately upon seeing her they rose into the air and flew away. Queen trotted down to the muddy edge where White-black had been trapped. The mud that was not covered with water was stippled with countless hoof prints. Here and there on the stippled surface she saw impressions of the whole side of a horse and she knew that the horses had fallen many times after coming out of the mud-hole. Some of these impressions still bore the scent of White-black and Queen excitedly read the story of his struggle with his captors. For some time she walked round the slough, stopping now and then to sniff or to break the heavy silence by long and nervous whinnies, then realising the futility of her going round the slough and feeling suddenly a sense of confinement in the hollow, she went up the slope and on the rim began to feed.
The ducks came back. They flew directly over her to see just what she was. Assured that she was neither man nor coyote, they swept down to the water’s surface, touching it gracefully with a melodious splash. Queen lifted her head a trifle above the grass and stared at them thoughtfully. The sight of the little black objects sailing about in the bright reflection of the sky and the occasional murmur that came from them out of the stillness, gladdened her. She felt somewhat less alone.
It was a hard night for Queen. She needed rest very badly but she was much too apprehensive and too lonely to rest well. When the ducks late in the night flew away, the hollow became unbearable to her and she wandered off over the plains searching and calling and tiring herself out.
During the day she rested some, then from one end of the wilds to the other she rambled, searching for her companions and finding only fences and lifeless shacks which stood on the level distances, stony sentinels forever barring her way with threat of captivity. Along the east side of her desolated domains she followed fence after fence for days without coming upon a trace of the herd. With eyes alert for the first sign of man, she stuck to the east, because she knew that her captured followers had all been taken in that direction.
She came to where the fence broke into two parts leaving an open roadway between. She entered the roadway cautiously and walked farther and farther, scanning the distances as she went. But when she had gone half a mile, the feeling of having fences on both sides and so near to her, began to worry her and she turned and raced back for the wilds.
When she saw, however, that the avenue had not closed upon her, she walked in again. She went about a mile this time and spied a group of horses in one of these wiry enclosures. She started away in great haste, but soon stopped still. There was a man’s shack only a quarter of a mile away from where the horses were and she was afraid to go. She called to them emotionally but besides raising their heads to look her way, they made no attempt to come to her, and when she called again a dog came out of the shack and started in her direction barking ferociously.
On her way out of the avenue through which she had come, she noticed half a mile from the furthest point she had reached, that the wires turned leaving her another open avenue through which she could approach the group of horses on the other side of the fence and very much farther from the shack. Very cautiously and very nervously she followed that avenue, stopping very often to make sure that she hadn’t already been trapped, and when she reached the other side of the fence, some of the horses who had been watching her, came forward to meet her. Here the fence ended completely and when she saw the plains stretch from there unfenced, she lost a good deal of her fear and trotted in their direction, calling eagerly as she ran.
Queen was so excited when a dozen noses reached over the wires to greet her that she cut herself several times on the barbs without knowing that she had cut herself. Having greeted her, however, the confined horses went on grazing; while Queen capered about on the outside, calling again and again and reaching over the wires recklessly, to the consternation of the strangers who would just raise their heads a moment, look at her curiously and go on about their business.
White-black was not there and those whom she recognised were all horses that had but the fall before attached themselves to her herd. But she was happy to see them and to be with them and grazed with a better appetite than she had had for a long time. She grazed just outside of the fence, moving along as they moved within.
She spent the night there outside of the fence and though the group of horses kept walking away considerably they were yet near enough to dispel the gloom and the loneliness that had been hanging over her world since the herd had been taken from her. It was the pleasantest night she had had for some time. Queen intended to remain there outside that fence; but she was discovered next morning by a man who came for some of the horses and his dog went after her. At first for fear of the man, she ran as fast as she could go, the dog at her heels; but when she got to where she was no longer afraid of the man, she turned upon the dog, striking at him with a lifted foot. She did not hit him but he did not wait for her second attempt. He fled surprised and badly frightened, yelping for help.
She experienced a good deal of satisfaction over his cowardly departure; but she was afraid of the man who seemed to be coming in her direction and who was calling loudly to the dog; and so she ran away. The experience of the night was like a clue to her in her search for her companions. From there she went to other fences. Fences were hateful things but they were also hopeful affairs and she expected to find her friends in one of them. Thus she penetrated farther and farther into man’s dominion. Over the endless, deviating roadways, between the endless lines of fence posts and the treacherous barbed wire, always alert, she went, confident that she could find her way out in case of danger. When she would come upon a group of horses in some fence she would follow them on the outside, grazing as they grazed and lying down when they were near her.
She did not find those of her companions whom she was most anxious to find, and those that she did come upon, though they always replied to her, did not always come to her when she called. Queen began to feel vaguely and painfully that her influence was gone, that her regency was over. Like the dethroned leader that she was, she accepted the censure that was due her for having failed, with almost evident humility.
Her loneliness became harder to bear. She wearied of the life of interminable limitations and the fence posts on all sides of her began to hurt her as if the roadways had steadily grown narrower and the barbs had penetrated her skin.
So she started back toward the west, toward the wilds she loved, hoping that there she might find the rest of the herd where the herd by the natural right of things belonged. When she was back again upon the unsettled wilds she was happier for a while; but as she went from one familiar spot to another—the pond where White-black had been trapped, the various patches and strips of woodland where they used to hide or spend their nights, and the river—the loneliness grew heavier in her heart and Queen began to lose interest in life. Grass and water there was plenty, but the taste could no longer derive complete satisfaction from grass and water. After every mouthful she cropped she would lift her head and look so wistfully over the spaces that she would forget to chew the grass between her teeth. She would start off and gallop away over the prairie as if she had suddenly thought of some place where she was sure she would find her companions and just as suddenly she would stop and continue to graze.
Her loneliness became unendurable. It seemed to have peopled the solitudes with invisible creatures bent upon harming her. She was afraid to rest, afraid even to graze or drink. Once more she took to the labyrinthine avenues between fence posts, penetrating with impassioned eagerness the very heart of the homesteading district, seeing many homesteaders’ shacks and fighting many dogs, becoming reckless as she became accustomed to them. Often as these remote farmers plowed their fields, they would hear her call, sometimes finding her only a few rods behind them; and their horses fettered as they were in their harness would turn their heads and reply to her. When a farmer set his dog upon her she would fight him; but when the farmer himself started for her, she would lope away and he would not see her again for many days.
She came upon a small group of horses in an enclosed pasture, one day, among whom she spied the brown stallion and a little bay mare who had nestled close to her many a cold winter night. This pasture was farther in the area of wire fences than Queen had ever gone before. As soon as she called, the group started in her direction. She was so overwhelmed by the familiar scents of those she knew that she could not control herself. First she ran along the fence a while, then she deliberately trotted away from the fence. Going off for a few rods and coming back at full speed she leaped over the wires. Though she was slightly cut on one of her hind legs, she landed safely in the midst of the group.
They were as happy to see her as she was to see them and the expression of their excitement and joy attracted the attention of the farmer and his dog in the shack a quarter of a mile away. She was sniffing noses with a grey horse whom she had mistaken in the distance for White-black, when she caught sound of the barking of the farmer’s dog, and turned to see him coming toward her.
He was a big, ferocious-looking, wolf-like dog, much bigger than the average coyote and many times as savage. At his approach, the other horses started away but Queen, who was not ready to part from her companions again so soon, stopped to fight him. He remained a short distance away from her, barking angrily, turning his head backward now and then as if he waited for reinforcement, his eyes glaring at her threateningly. The other horses had turned about and stopped to watch the battle, and Queen, feeling encouraged by their watching, waited for him to come nearer.
But suddenly, taking her eyes off the beast for just a moment, she saw two men lead two saddle ponies into the barbed wire enclosure and she made a dash for the fence, hoping to jump over it before they arrived. Just as soon as she started off the dog rushed at her with a bark and a snarl. In terror of him, she turned to strike at him with her hoof, but as soon as she turned the dog sprang out of reach. When she turned once more for the fence the dog seized her tail. She struck him with a hind leg. He let go his hold of the tail and dug his fangs into her leg.
Had there been no men coming, she might have fought it out with him. As it was they were already racing toward her and in desperation, Queen loped after the rest of the horses who were now stampeding away to the other end of the pasture. When she reached her companions she plunged into their midst as if she expected them to protect her.
The men first drove the entire group to the corner nearest to the shack and there setting the dog upon her they separated her from the other horses. They continued to urge the dog to go at her and his ferocious teeth and the nerve wracking noise he was making so confused her that she stopped to fight him almost disregarding the two men, whose ropes, as she faced the dog, sailed over and dropped upon her head.
The ropes so alarmed her that she paid no more attention to the dog. She reared in an effort to pull her head from the loops but this only tightened their hateful grip. While she was uselessly struggling the men slipped from their saddles and fastened the ends of their ropes to a fence post on each side of the corner. Then slowly they pulled the ropes in, forcing her back. Despite the pain it gave her, Queen tugged and pulled and reared. The men then got some more ropes from a boy who came with them from the shack and with these new ropes they first caught a front leg and after a long struggle caught a hind one, then pulling on the ropes they threw her to the ground.
She fell with a sickening thud. A spell of dizziness came upon her and she half shut her eyes as consciousness began slipping from her. But fear and assailing odours brought her to her senses. She made a violent effort to continue the struggle, but a man leaped for her head and seized her nose bone with both his hands. With a quick twist he turned her nose upward and she lay absolutely helpless. She snorted and groaned but she could not rise. She felt the bony fingers of the man gripping her nose bone and felt the other man winding ropes about her legs.
What they wanted with her she could not know. She thought of the coyote as she had seen him sitting over and feasting upon her colt. Her skin quivered all over her body and she tried once more to throw off the appalling weights that kept her down; but her attempts only proved to her how hopelessly she was in their power, how easy it was for them to do just what they liked with her. She expected them at any moment to begin tearing the flesh from her body.
The smell of man was nauseating, their voices were terrifying and it seemed as if she just could not endure the pain that the man’s fingers gave her as they dug round her nose bone; yet worse than all this was the smoke and the smell of fire that suddenly filled the atmosphere, bringing terrors out of her darkened past to help in her torture.
Suddenly she felt a pain that was worse than any pain she had ever experienced in her life before. They were pressing some terrible instrument into her shoulder, an instrument that penetrated the skin like the teeth of a dog but a thousand times more painfully. All her hatred, all her fear combined, and with a strength that the greedy men admired she began to struggle again. As she struggled, the man gripped tighter on her nose bone and the pain of his digging fingers took her mind off the burning pain in her shoulder.
When she least expected it, the man sprang away from her head, leaving it free. She made an attempt at once to get back upon her feet, but her legs were still tied and she fell back again to the ground. She raised her head and glared fearfully at her tormentors. In the far distance she caught a glimpse of the other horses, grazing indifferently. The two men stood a few feet away, looking down upon her and talking to each other.
The smell of her burnt flesh in the welter of nauseating odours, the pain in her shoulder growing momentarily worse, the lack of excitement on the part of the men, the cool deliberateness with which they seemed to have gone about her torture, together with the fear of what they were yet to do, bewildered Queen; and out of this bewilderment emerged a feeling that was worse than fear or pain, a feeling that was an ally of both, the feeling of submission. But Queen’s submission was not a servile one. Rather was it like the retreat of the general who hopes for a more propitious moment in which to strike again and strike with all his rallied force.
The man who was, without any further doubt, stronger than she was might burn her flesh; he might tie her legs so that she could not get up; he might force his sharp fingers about her nose bone and torturously twist her head so that she would be helpless; but he could not control or limit her hate. And hate boiled in her blood and burned like a fever in her body, restraining itself only as the tiger restrains his desire before he springs upon his prey.
QUEEN was branded! A large letter B had been burned through the hair and almost through the skin on her right shoulder. The red hot metal had broken through the skin in several spots on the curves and from these spots oozed drops of blood. The air constantly passing over the wound kept the pain of it at its original intensity.
The ropes gave way. The two men stepped away quickly. Queen thought for a moment that she was free. The ropes were still hanging from her neck but they were hanging loosely. She sprang to her feet. A hasty look around made her think, foolishly, that she could now get away. She leaped forward eagerly and at once realised her mistake. The ropes became taut. A front leg was drawn back to one of the hind legs and she went down on one side with a shock that seemed to have disturbed every organ in her body.
She remained lying down but raised her head. With large round eyes, radiating fear and hate, she looked from one to the other of her little captors as if she were seeking some vulnerable point for attack; but they were standing calmly and their calmness bespoke their power. Nearby the fire that had heated the irons was still smouldering, poisoning the air with its pungent significance.
For a few moments Queen remained comparatively still. Their obvious power over her crushed and confused her. From her shoulder came the painful reminder of her captivity; and somehow, this gnawing pain, more than the ropes that gripped her neck and feet, brought her the overwhelming conviction that she was as much their property as the body of her first beloved colt had been the property of the coyote that had sat and feasted over it.
That the rest of her flesh would be torn from her body as she felt a piece had already been torn from her shoulder, there was no doubt in her mind. But Queen had fought many battles and though the pain of the brand was inescapable and unforgetable, though that moment she was well-nigh hopeless, she still watched for her chance to get away.
When she got up again she was afraid to move a foot. One of the men pulled on the rope that gripped her neck. Queen expected to be hurt again. She braced herself against the earth with all four legs, and pulled back. A severe lash on the haunch sent her limping to the side. The man behind followed her while the man in front ran off a few paces ahead, and pulled again. Several repetitions of this performance brought her to the open gateway of the fence. Near the gateway was the house and beyond the house was the barn. Experience had taught her to keep away from men’s shacks and the smell of the barn where she had once seen White-black, and her colt had been imprisoned, came back faintly and called upon her to resist. There were the men about her. There was the boy and at his heels, barking ferociously, was the dog. But in spite of them she made another attempt to get away and once more earned a violent throw to the ground.
The fall this time stunned her. She stretched out her head and lay motionless a moment, breathing very heavily and groaning as if she were dying. The man behind her struck her with his rope. Her skin quivered and another groan forced its way out between her clenched teeth. Her consciousness came back slowly. She heard the barking of the dog and the voices of the men and above their voices the shriller voice of the boy. She was sick at her heart and stomach. She felt as if she didn’t care what they did any more. But a very severe blow with the end of the rope striking a tender spot on her flanks brought her to her senses. She felt as if a wave of cold water had swept over her. She managed to get to her feet. As she stood, bewildered, not knowing what to do, and feeling the terrible necessity of doing something, her whole body shook with an uncontrollable tremour.
The injustice of all this torture aroused an insane resentment; and, casting a glance over the silent prairies that stretched away to the hazy horizon, within her grasp, yet cruelly denied her, she leaped toward the open with all her waning strength, so suddenly and so unexpectedly that the man behind her, clinging to the rope, was thrown to the ground and the man in front barely escaped her front legs.
The cries of men and boy and dog broke fearfully upon her ears and the ferocious dog leaped at her throat. He fell back without having touched her but she lifted a hoof to strike him and thus pulling on the rope that tied that foot to a hind leg she threw herself to the ground. She fell outside of the gateway and within a dozen yards of the barn-door which stood gapingly open and black, ready to swallow her.
The man behind her beat her with his rope and kicked her unmercifully; but even if she could have risen she would not have done so; and they finally decided to let her rest a while.
The beating commenced all over again and she was forced to her feet. With another swing of the rope she started off nervously before it struck her. The man in front ran on each time she went forward and in that way they got her to the barn-door. But she was afraid to enter. The boy had brought the man behind her a whip and when that came down upon her back raising a welt, she involuntarily rushed into the barn to escape it.
Thus they got her into a stall and tied her securely. One man got into the manger and against all her fearful protestations managed to force a halter upon her head. With double ropes tied to the ring of the halter they tied two rope ends to each side of the manger, then removed the ropes with which they had first tied her; and she almost killed one of the men in the process. Finally, they left her alone.
It was so dark and damp and dirty in the barn. The foul smells were revolting. When her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she made out a horse, chewing contentedly a short distance away, and the sight of him relieved her immeasurably. She called to him but he went on chewing and ignored her call. Queen was hurt. She looked at him sadly, then half closed her eyes. But in a few minutes she called to him again and more forcibly. This time the old glutton replied to her but with little enthusiasm, rather with annoyance, for he didn’t like it a bit that she made him take time from his chewing to reply to her.
The ropes did not allow her to see him very well, but she watched him a moment out of the corner of her eye and felt as she watched him that somehow he was in league with man, the usurper of her liberty. She hated him and looked no more in his direction. Over her came full force the horror of her bondage and the fearful realisation that her every effort to escape it would prove futile. Yet her thoughts contradicted each other and where some images came out of her memory and experience and supported her fear, others came just as strongly and allayed it. She remembered, for instance, White-black tied in his stall in the sod barn where her colt had been imprisoned and then she saw him coming over the plains tied to the old sorrel work-horse. So she saw him in many happier moods on the open plains long after that. Together with the endless stream of sensations of pain, from the wound on her shoulder and from other wounds on her body, came visions of familiar nooks on the prairies and in the woods. Like ghosts these visions came through the smelling darkness and haunted her.
At times these visions drove her frantic and she would pull and tug and tear and kick till her energy was spent and after every momentary storm there was some new wound to torment her. There was a deep gash on her upper lip that bothered her almost as much as the burn on her shoulder, for blood kept trickling from it into her nose and mouth and the taste and the smell of blood were as tormenting as the pain.
The man came back. She heard him coming and her eyes began to blaze again and her sides throbbed for fear. He walked around to the front of the manger and approaching her head, extended a hand carefully. She pulled her head back as far as the ropes would allow her and snorted with fright. He said something to her angrily and she listened in terror to the sound of his voice. He made another attempt to touch her with his hand, but this time she threateningly bared her teeth. He withdrew his hand quickly and lifting the long end of one of her ropes he struck her with it. It hit the sore on her upper lip and Queen pulling on the ropes with all her might, cried out for pain.
Then the second man appeared and the boy and the dog came behind him. Queen expected a new battle, but they only brought her hay and water. They stood near the manger watching her and talking. They took handfuls of hay and touched her lips with it but she only shook her head violently and whinnied fearfully. So, too, she disdained the water they gave her. The man seemed to know that she wanted the water, however, and so he set the pail down into the manger. When they finally went out Queen looked after them anxiously.
Night came down. The man came back again and offered her some oats in his hands; but even if she had desired to eat the oats, the smell of his hands would have destroyed that desire. Seeing that she had touched neither hay nor water he threw the oats into the hay and walked away. Suddenly as she looked sideways, she saw the man lead the horse out of the barn. It was too dark to see clearly but she could feel that the horse was going out and she could hear the tread of his heavy feet. Forgetting all her previous emotions, Queen shamelessly begged him to return and the terror in her voice seemed to break up the shadows that filled the barn into monstrous creatures which she felt were surrounding her. She called again and again till the fear of the sound of her own voice finally hushed her. She hoped that the horse would return and waited and listened for his coming, but he did not return. Faint queer sounds of scratching came from above and behind her. Chickens roosting somewhere in the darkness tortured her with their sleepy peeping. And a bat flying around the barn, buzzing every few moments near her head, kept her nerves on edge. But when the dog came into the barn, Queen went mad. She had fought coyotes and dogs but she had never been helplessly tied before. She pulled at her ropes and kicked with her legs till she shattered one of the crate-like sides of her stall and tore the top board of her manger loose at one end.
The frightened dog ran out of the barn and barked so loud he brought the man from the house. Queen heard him coming and when she saw rays of light break through the cracks in the walls, she almost jumped over the manger. He opened the door and a flood of light poured into the barn and when he began to talk to her she calmed down a bit.
He retied her and fixed the broken board of the manger. She seemed to fear him less now than before and as he talked she listened, her eyes fixed as if fascinated on the lantern he had hung up not far from her head. Suddenly the dog reappeared. Queen jumped involuntarily. The man kicked the dog and the dog ran out of the barn crying for pain. It was then that the first slight sense of gratefulness came over Queen; but it left her with the man’s going out and gave way to the puzzle of his strange light, which for some time obscured everything else in her mind.
The night dragged horribly and when dawn came at last she was exhausted. She saw the barn-door open and was relieved by the shower of daylight. Though the man came into the barn and seemed to have much to do there, he did not come near her. Chickens moved around her, some of them even jumping up on her manger to pick the grains of oats that she had refused, and Queen watched them with interest. For a while she was afraid of them, but their contented sing-songs as they ceaselessly searched for food bespoke their harmlessness.
The man had gone out and Queen was dozing from sheer exhaustion when the boy appeared. He came over to Queen’s manger and seized the ropes, drawing her head toward him. She resisted as best she could and because she bared her teeth when he tried to touch her with his hand, opening her mouth as with the intention of biting him just as soon as the hand was near enough, he let go his hold on the rope and picking up a stick began to prod her with it. At first she just struggled to pull her head out of reach of the stick but when he persisted she became furious. Snorting and whinnying she kicked right and left against her stall and the boy, afraid that his father would come in, quietly sneaked out of the barn.
All day she stood stolidly without touching the hay, drinking a little of the ill-tasting water only when alone and when she could not resist the desire for it. When night came again Queen began feeling most uneasy about the shadows and the strange nocturnal sounds; yet she seemed more able to endure this night than the first. When the second dawn appeared she was partially resigned to her evil-smelling confinement; but the monotony of standing on her feet in one place, standing, standing, standing endlessly, like a new kind of pain was far more distracting than bodily pain.
The pain of the brand seemed to grow dull and then it bothered her only when the healing wound touched something. The other pains in the many places about her body also kept growing less tormenting; but these tortures of the first days of her captivity gave way to the less perturbative, more gnawing anguish of imprisonment.
Calls of distant horses sometimes penetrated her prison and Queen would make the very walls surrounding her tremble with the agony of her aimless replies. So, too, wafts bearing familiar fragrance often strayed into the smelling atmosphere of the barn, rekindling smouldering fires. The love of the plains, the desire to lope over them with the freedom she had retained so long would at those times seize upon her with maddening hold and she would kick and pull till she hurt herself or until she realised once more, each new time more forcefully than the last, that all her storming was as futile as it was hurtful.
So Queen began to learn. She learned to eat the dead hay even though the dirt often mixed with it was revolting. She learned to drink the water though the taste and the smell of it was nauseating. “You’ll get over your fussiness,” the man often said to her when he came into the barn. Fortunately Queen did not understand what he said and the resentment she would have experienced, had she understood, never interfered with her “getting over it.” It was really better for Queen, as it is in similar circumstances sometimes better for us, to “get over it.”
But her “getting over it” was always a matter of weights and measures. Every pain set itself against some other pain and the stronger pain conquered her aversions. When so weary standing that her legs ached in the joints, carrying the weight of her body, she lay down the first time. The smell of the floor was so loathsome that she got up again after a few minutes. She remained standing till the pain became more tormenting than the smell of the floor, and then lay down again, learning to endure the smell. And it proved to be a valuable lesson in so far as it divided the endlessly dragging hours in half. Instead of standing all day and all night shifting the weight of her body from foot to foot, she would stand one hour and lie down for one hour and thus broke the killing completeness of the excruciating monotony.
The hay was constantly replaced when she had eaten what was in her manger and the pail was always refilled with water when she had drained it. This in time seemed to assure her that they did not mean to destroy her or that destruction was not going to take place immediately. Her hatred for man did not lose its intensity but her experience relegated it to some more distant corner of her soul, moved it from where it had dominated the whole of her consciousness so that she could endure her bondage as she waited for the opportunity to escape it.
ONE day while Queen, for want of something better to do, was dozing over her empty manger from which she had eaten up every spire of hay, she heard the dog, outside, bark with unusual excitement. By the increasing rapidity with which his barks succeeded each other, she knew that something was coming. She soon heard the rumbling of a wagon and when that sound came very close and stopped it was followed by the clatter of many voices. She had allowed herself to worry about many sounds that had resulted in no harm to her and experience was teaching her not to worry. So she soon went back to her dozing, especially since the rapid patter of hoofs, as the horses drawing the wagon pulled into the yard, had quickened her memory of life with the herd.
In the midst of her dreaming she was suddenly disturbed by the entrance of two strange horses whose heavy feet beat the floor of the barn so hard that she felt every beat. The harness on these two huge horses was massy and bits of metal on it flashed with the reflection of the light of the doorway. They were led into the stall next to Queen and with absolute indifference to her they began to rummage in the manger and the oats boxes, calling greedily for food. Queen watched them with no little interest. She was afraid of the men who had come in with them but in spite of the men she could not resist the desire to touch noses with the horse nearest to her. She pushed her nose anxiously through an opening in the partition and the big horse touched it with his nose a moment, but immediately returned to his voracious search for oats. But the touch of the big nose had only intensified the burning desire in her heart for companionship, and she called more loudly and with greater appeal.
Suddenly, she felt a slap upon her back and when she almost flounced into her manger in fright, she heard laughter behind her. The man who had slapped her then went round to the front of the manger and when Queen’s eyes fell upon him she recognised him. It was he who had helped the man of the place capture and brand her. The smell of him was most repellent and she backed away as far as she could go; but he untied her ropes and pulling their ends together, around a steading of the back wall of the manger, he pulled on them, dragging her forward till her knees struck the manger, and her head was over his shoulder as he stooped. He held on to the ropes keeping her head immovable; while her owner, coming from the other end of the barn with a bunch of straps, threw them upon her head.
She struggled desperately to pull her head away but the ropes were relentless. The evil-smelling hands of her owner moved all over her face and she was powerless even to show her resentment. His big thumb forced its way between her teeth and while her jaws were apart a piece of iron slipped in between her teeth; and before she could dislodge it, the straps were forced over her ears and fastened around her neck.
With teeth and tongue she struggled to eject the annoying iron from her mouth but try as she would she could not move it to the edge of her teeth. They then loosened the ropes and her owner seized them all with one hand. Taking the reins which hung from the bridle bit in the other hand, he jumped over the manger. Seeing him she sprang back nervously and he followed her. She started for the doorway and when she got out into the open, she was going a little too fast for him. With a vicious jerk on the reins he halted her. The iron in her mouth was bent in the centre and the least jerk on the reins forced the bend to strike the tender palate with the force of a hammer.
The full light of day to which she was no longer accustomed hurt her eyes and her limbs seemed stiff, the joints paining her with the exertion of her first activity in so long a time. A wagon stood not far off with its tongue extended before it. On the seat was a fur robe. It appeared to her like some sort of animal and she was afraid of it. Against its wheel leaned the boy. He was pounding the earth with a stick and was looking at her. Under the wagon sat the dog on his haunches. As soon as he saw her he raised his muzzle and barked at her.
She tried to back into the barn but the man who stood in its doorway struck her with a stone which he threw at her. She dashed forward and reared. Her owner pulled down on the reins and once more the bend in the centre of the rider’s bit struck her tender palate. The pain terrified her. It seemed as if her enemies were able to strike her from within. She jumped involuntarily but she realised at once that every jump inflicted its own punishment. So she tried very hard to control herself, though her every nerve was on edge.
The man then walked forward and pulled on the ropes. She did not know what he wanted, so she braced herself against his pull. Again he jerked the reins and to avoid the force of his pull she moved hastily toward him. At once he moved off again and a few repetitions of this taught her to follow when led. Around and around the yard the man led her and with eyes aflame with fear, her skin quivering with nervousness, Queen hastily followed him, desiring to resist but anxiously afraid to do so.
She was beginning to think that that was all they wanted of her when the man in the doorway of the barn came forward with a heavy leather affair from which straps and things hung and dragged on the ground. She was standing quite still, breathing rapidly when this new apparition appeared. As the man swung it upon her she jumped to the side in fright. The man at the bridle immediately jerked the reins and with impatient force. Her palate by this time was sore and the pain was so excruciating Queen again lost her temper and for ten minutes both men were obliged to hang on the ropes and the reins as she reared and kicked and balked. But in her enraged kicking one of her hind legs struck one of the rear wheels of the wagon and the pain that shot through her whole body had a quieting effect upon her. While they had her up against the wagon from which the boy and the dog had fled, they placed the saddle upon her.
The saddle securely fixed, they led her off again, but walking was now difficult and painful. The cinch, the strap that keeps the saddle in place, was so tight that it was almost completely hidden by the skin which lopped over it from both sides. It cut her painfully every step she took. In two places on her back some hard parts of the saddle pressed against the backbone.
But all this, miserable as it made her, was as nothing compared with the horror that swept over her when the man suddenly seized the horn of the saddle and threw himself upon her back like a beast of prey. She sprang forward to get away from the farmyard; then on the open prairie she began in real earnest the attempt to throw him. He pulled on the reins till she felt the bend in the bit boring into her tongue. He dug his spurs into her sides. He lashed her savagely with the knotted ends of the ropes. But in her desire to rid herself of the frightful weight she seemed to have lost her sensitiveness to pain. She shook her body as a horse will shake water from him. She reared. She kicked backward. She shook the rear of her body while she braced her front legs against the earth. Then failing in all these attempts, she threw herself to the ground.
He jumped in time to avoid a broken leg. Thinking that she had conquered she struggled to her feet intending to fly, but to her consternation, she was no sooner on her feet than he jumped back upon the saddle. She was determined to get rid of him and was about to throw herself again when she received a blow upon one ear that almost stunned her. The man had leaned forward and struck her with his hand in which he held his hat; but she thought it was some ferocious bird come out of the air to assist him. She turned in the opposite direction and dashed away. When he wanted her to turn back he struck her on the other ear and this time when his wing-like hat reached her ear, he sent forth a most fiendish shriek.
Away she leaped over the plains as if some awful monster were at her heels. She seemed to get relief in the running. Her rider ceased pulling on the reins and ceased poking her sides with his spurs. He showed no displeasure in any way and Queen began to realise that that was what he wanted. When with his reins he pulled her head sideways she involuntarily turned in that direction and as soon as she turned he stopped pulling.
She was finally so worn out running, that she dropped back into a weary walk and as she looked up she was surprised to find herself but a few rods from the barn. Rebellion was futile. All her failures proved it to her, yet when the man near the barn-door came forward to take hold of her, she tossed her head wildly, gripped the bit between her teeth and reared. Then when he ran off to the side to get away from her hoofs, she fell back and rushed for the barn-door.
But while her rider drew her head back till her ears touched him, the man on the ground hurried over to the barn-door and seized her by the bridle, holding her till the man jumped from the saddle. She was glad to get back into her stall and allowed them to tie her without a protest. The saddle was removed from her wet back and sides and the bit was removed from her blood-stained mouth.
She was dizzy and her heart pounded at her sides. From her wet distended nostrils the breath came like the roar of the ocean. Two sores on her back itched almost unendurably. Both sides were pierced by the cruel spurs and blood-stained. An aching pain gnawed in her palate and she could not throw off the painful sensation of grating iron from her teeth. Her body throbbed as a steamer throbs with the pounding of its engines.
They threw hay into her manger but she only sprang back and looked at them with moist, glowing eyes. They stopped in front of her manger and talked. While they talked she held her terrified eyes upon them, watching for what they might show evidence of wanting to do next. In the next stall, the two big horses, apparently unconcerned about the weight of harness still on their backs and indifferent to her troubles, stood with their greedy heads right over the hay in their manger and noisily and rapidly ground the hay in their mouths as if they were afraid that they would be taken out before they could devour all that lay before them. When the men walked into their stall and untying them started out with them, each one eagerly stretched his head backward to take a last large mouthful.
Queen looked after them as they went and experienced a sense of relief at their departure, worried only by the fear that they would be coming back again. When a few minutes passed and the doorway remained unobstructed, she turned her head back again and sank into a doze which was constantly disturbed. What troubled Queen most was the shattered condition of her nerves. The slightest sound sent her into paroxysms of fear, making her heart beat with a sense of impending calamity and sending chills and waves of heat, by turn, over her body. The voices she heard coming from the yard oppressed her with a constant threatening suggestion of the men’s return.
Then, some time later, she became aware of the fact that the noises were withdrawing. She heard the wagon rumbling away and even the barking of the dog grew fainter in the distance. A sweet silence, as refreshing as the cold water she longed for, fell upon the little farmyard; and the feeling of being alone was like an opiate.
But she was suddenly alarmed by the sensation as of some one present and turning hastily about, discovered a woman in the doorway of the barn. Queen was badly frightened. This creature was different from man but it was only a different sort of man. She gazed at the apparition which was talking in a voice that was softer than that of the men. The woman was carrying a pail full of water and came with it to the front of the manger. When she lifted it to set it down into the manger, Queen sprang back, frightened.
“Drink, Dora, you poor little wild thing,” said the woman, backing away a bit and looking at her commiseratingly, “you’re taking it so hard, you poor little Dora.”
Despite her fears, Queen’s ears went up straight and the glow of fear in her eyes dulled slightly. The woman went on talking to her in the same low tones, so different from the harsh, staccato sounds of the men and the boy. When the woman went out of the barn Queen turned her head and looked after her till she had disappeared. Then she turned to the pail of water and sticking her burning lips into the cool liquid she drank without a stop until there wasn’t a drop of water left.
The woman came back again driving a cow. Behind her, pushing its little muzzle into her hand, came a little calf. The cow walked into the stall next to Queen and there, like the horses, she rummaged about for food. For some reason known only to the cow, she did not like the hay that the horses had left, but cast her cowy eyes upon the hay that was heaped much higher in Queen’s manger. She thrust her peculiar wide muzzle between two beams into Queen’s manger and with her long tongue gathered some of the hay and pulled it into her own stall where she chewed it with apparent great relish. Queen took a mouthful and chewed it as if the cow had reminded her of what she ought to do.
“Some more water, Dora?” said the woman coming around to the front again, and as Queen jumped back frightened, she went on, “Don’t be afraid of me, Dora. I won’t hurt you.”
She took the empty pail and went out with it, coming back a few minutes later with the pail refilled and setting it once more into the manger. She talked to her a few minutes, then went away. Queen saw her sit down beside the cow and soon heard the peculiar sound of milk streams beating against the walls of a tin pail. She watched her and listened for a while but since the cow who was most concerned in the matter seemed not the least worried, she turned to her water.
When the woman was through milking, she drove out the cow and fed the calf and then sending it out too, she came back to Queen. She stood leaning forward against the manger and talked to her for a long time. There was something about that voice that made Queen think of ducks paddling on the surface of a pond at night, or the songs with which they sang themselves to sleep. It was a sound as of birds on branches of trees overhead pushing into each other and expressing the desire for warmth or the comfort of having it. The words followed each other slowly and softly and there was neither threat nor authority in them. Queen studied the strange face with the light playing upon it. She was still slightly uncertain about the eyes that she was afraid of and that strangely fascinated her. She was afraid to look into them, yet there was something in them that was in a way overcoming her. Was it the wetness about those eyes that in some way, perhaps never to be known, affected Queen? Was it the sympathy that the suffering have for the suffering that Queen recognised and that made her blindly place her hope in this new and mysteriously different human being?
When the woman went out Queen felt as she had felt on many a winter night in the wilds when some warm body next to her suddenly got up and left one side of her disagreeably cold. For the rest of the afternoon she kept turning her head toward the doorway and pricking her ears with more hope than expectation, and throughout the long disappointing hours the voice of the woman poured through her mind like a stream, like a long persistent melody, and its even flow was rhythmically measured by the one word that she remembered most clearly. “Dora!” What it meant she did not know, but she felt in a vague way, when she heard it, that it applied to her.
Next morning her owner put the saddle on her again, and though she was very nervous and afraid and would have fled at the first real opportunity, the lesson went by without much of the pain and agony of the first lesson. She began to understand what every pull of the reins meant and even the differences she heard in the man’s voice helped her to avoid trouble, as for instance, when by the sound of his voice she knew that he was impatient with her going too slowly and she sprang forward into a more rapid gait before the man felt it necessary to apply the spurs.
In the afternoon the woman came into the barn to give her water and to talk to her. When she patted her forehead, Queen did not resist and in time began to crave the touch of that hand, as she craved the sound of that voice.
Day after day she had her little run over the fields and as her fear of the farmer lessened slightly, she began to enjoy the exercise. It broke the crushing monotony of standing in the barn and gave her a chance to look at the plains she loved. So too it gave her a chance to see the other horses, none of whom were kept in the barn any longer. She found that the group in the corral had been very greatly reduced and the mysterious reduction worried her. The brown stallion was gone and with him all the horses she had known, except the little bay mare, who did not seem to be on friendly terms with the other two horses in the corral. She was always off by herself and at the call of Queen would come rushing to the wire fence and beg her to join her.
One day the boy jumped upon her back. The man stood by and watched. The boy annoyed her by the way he sat and by the way he held the reins and she could hear the man angrily instructing him. She could feel him changing his ways and realised that the man was taking her part, somehow; but when they got away off on the fields, he tormented her. He kept digging his spurs into her sides even while she was running her best and he pulled steadily on the reins, hurting her palate and her lips and making it difficult for her to see the stone or holes in her path. But much as she hated and feared this boy, he was as yet afraid to mistreat her. What he really was capable of doing to torment her, she was yet to learn.
The old touch of melancholy just barely perceptible on Queen’s beautiful head deepened rapidly as submission took possession of her soul. She learned her lessons hastily and learned them well for fear of the pain that inevitably followed mistakes; yet somewhere in the very heart of that submission crouched an indestructible hope that sometime, somehow, she would break the chains of her bondage and go galloping back to her wilds.
JUST when Dora was resigning herself to the irksome but unavoidable duty of carrying them about in the saddle; just when she had learned in this state of her bondage to get from the plains she would cover, carrying them, that finer sustenance which the soul requires; just when she had learned to get all the happiness that it is possible to get in a condition of physical encumbrance and spiritual domination by an unshakable and hateful will, there came a change. The middle summer went by and the winds that blew golden waves over oceans of ripe grain ushered in the harvest season.
When heavy harness was placed upon her body, Queen showed her displeasure but curbed her impulses. The collar and the hames choked and oppressed her and the blinders on her bridle tormented and frightened her. But for something they did which they did not do for her sake at all, Queen would have fought as hard as she had fought when the saddle was first placed upon her. They had led her out and tied her to a wagon wheel between two of three horses and she found herself next to the little bay mare. A few moments of sniffing noses and Queen would have endured almost anything rather than be taken away from her old friend again. She had been harnessed first and Queen was willing to tolerate anything she tolerated so long as she could be there with her; and the farmer wondered at the constant whinnying that went on between the two. All the while, the big horse on the other side of Queen and the big horse on the other side of the bay mare stood with their heads at the same level, motionless, like the mere machines that they were, awaiting orders to move.
They were hitched to a binder and ordered to move and Queen’s nerves tingled with the strangeness of the situation. Every move she made resulted in some disagreeable pull and the feeling of being trapped, of being held in on every side was fast arousing her resentment and the slumbering desire to rebel. But not only did the weight of the thing they were dragging subdue that desire, but the horses on both sides of her seemed to beat into her soul, with the beating of their hoofs, the utter hopelessness of showing resentment or attempting to rebel.
When they reached the wheat fields, the thing grew many times heavier, many times harder to pull and the deafening noise it made was distracting to Queen. But the morning was delightful; the creatures of her own kind beside her gave her the feeling of having companionship; and though her muscles found pulling most arduous, they were still fresh from a night’s rest. When the morning wore along toward noon her strength was well nigh exhausted and the struggle to keep from going under, stimulated by the whip, suffused her soul with agony. The day was hot and her sides dripped with perspiration. The new harness rubbed her skin in a thousand places and made her very bones ache. The dust of the fields and the particles of broken straw filled the air she breathed and settled down in her nose and eyes.
When her aching muscles began to wear out and the pain she felt frightened her, she tried to lag a bit but the watchful eye of her owner soon discovered her lagging and there was a threatening cry of “Dora!” and the long whip came down upon her haunches without mercy.
Noon came at last. Queen limped on her way back home, moving along as if the other horses were carrying her, seeing nothing before her, feeling only her agony of soul and body. Painful sores, under rubbing leather and iron, smarted with the touch of perspiration, and the hard collar choked her unmercifully. The weight of the harness seemed to be pressing her to the ground.
Her water she drank at once in great draughts, but her food she did not touch for some time and though she stood next to the little bay mare all through the noon-hour she did not turn to her once. Her misery was overwhelming and in its salty waves she was alone.
Though she had not eaten a full meal, she went back to work just the same and a thousand times the whip came down upon her back adding pain as a stimulant, as if she had not experienced pain enough. When at last the seemingly endless day came to its close and the harness was removed, leaving red bloody sores with rims of black dirt exposed, Queen lay down at the feet of the little bay mare and with her eyes closed, lay as if in a stupor for half the night before she rose to feed her hunger.
Yet when the first few unspeakably torturous days went by, she seemed to have become more able to endure the torment. The stolidity about the old sorrel work-horse and other work-horses in Queen’s experience, which she had so often wondered at in her limited way, now came down like a sort of mask upon Queen’s head and put a strange dullness into her eyes.
But with the end of the harvest period came the autumn plowing. Had that been her first experience she would hardly have lived through it. It was not only harder work to drag the plow, that so often struck the rocks in its path and fairly pulled them from their feet, but the dust rising in clouds from under them added to labour and pain the last ounce of endurable agony. Life to Queen, in its endless repetition of toil and pain and abysmal discomfort, relieved periodically by a few hours’ rest, was not only without purpose but without excuse. Queen did not reason her way to such a conclusion, she just felt; and in this feeling there was not even the light of illusionary hope. The knowledge that a given labour will end at a certain time, gave the hope and the courage to her master which the strange ruling of life denied to Queen.
So Queen lived through the days which she could not know were ever to end, enduring labour without compensation, getting food and water that was not as good as that which the wilds had lavishly bestowed upon her. What it was to lead to, she did not know. She could not even ask. Death was but a nameless fear and the relief of death was beyond her understanding. The images of those she had known and loved in her happier past came back often in dozing moments, coming into her dreamy vision as imperceptibly as the evening comes into the day; and in going they left in her soul something that resembled hope. That was all that life offered her and it was as uncertain as were the whims of the creatures who dominated and overshadowed her existence; yet never did she reach a hilltop from which she caught a glimpse of the open prairie spaces but the hope that freedom would come to her expressed itself like a hazy light in the dark uncertainty that engulfed her.
THE reaping season passed and threshing time arrived. The farmer was plowing his fields for the next year’s seeding because he had finished reaping before most of the other farmers had finished. He worked himself as hard as he worked his “critters.” That was his reputation among those who did not have anything more serious against him, but they were few. Every fall he, like most of the other homesteaders, left his farm and joined a threshing crew some twenty miles south, remaining with it until winter set in and until the wheat of the last farmer of their circuit had been threshed.
Came the last hot spell of the year. Cold winds and rain and cloud of early autumn gave way to a short Indian summer, so warm that insects long too stiff to appear more than for a few hours during the warmest part of each day, came buzzing back to life as if it were springtime. Nose-flies began to bother the horses and the dirty, old, wire-net nose-baskets were brought back into use.
The sunlit air sponged up the aroma that oozed from the wet earth, and breathing it filled Dora with old longing. Sensations of loping free over the unfenced earth, like spirits, danced enticingly before her yearning eyes. Birds flitting through the sweet air sang with the enthusiasm of spring and urged her to resist the forces of evil that fettered her. But the harness on her back was heavy. The traces that bound her to the plow and the lines that held her to the others who had forgotten what freedom is, were inexorable as the will of the man, whose whip was his only argument.
They had been dragging the unyielding plow for a few hours on the first of these delightful mornings, when, looking up as they turned at the end of a furrow, Dora saw in the distant south a horse and buggy, coming at a good pace. All the way down that furrow she saw the buggy steadily grow larger and clearer. Coming up on the next furrow she could see nothing and then as she turned once more she saw White-black coming. She stopped for just a second and the whip came down with a stinging lash. She sprang forward and pulled along with the rest; but her head was higher than it had been for some time and from her trembling lips came nervous whinnies which White-black did not hear. By the time the two moving objects met, there was a long, melodious and very welcome “whoa,” and the four horses stopped facing the one horse in the buggy.
The three horses relaxed and stood with heads lowered, grateful for this bit of rest, but Dora was too excited to stand still. With head erect, ears pricked she called to her old mate with a call that shook the whole of her weary body. White-black raised his head at the first call, looked at the four horses, sniffed somewhat like a dog and then with all his strength, replied. Hardly had he finished when Dora, exerting herself to the limit of her strength, called again. White-black started forward as he replied this time but the impatient man in the buggy, flaring up with righteous wrath, cruelly jerked the lines. White-black raised his head in pain and moved back a step. He called again but he did not attempt to go to her any more. His head lowered like that of the horses beside Dora and an expression of utter helplessness came over his white face. Dora, too, dropped her head with the full realisation of the futility of trying in any way to overcome the hold man had upon them.
The ploughman left the buggy side where he had been standing, conversing with the visitor, and walked back toward his plow a few feet, then stopped, and continued the conversation.
“Then I can depend upon you?” said the man in the buggy.
“Oh, I’ll unhook right away,” replied the other, taking out his watch, “and I’ll be there by supper time. I’ll start just as soon as I feed the horses and get a bite myself.”
“All right!” said the stranger, striking White-black a blow with the whip that sent him forward at a bound.
Dora called after him. From the distance, even as he was running away at top speed, White-black called back, helplessly. Dora tried hard to keep her eyes on the shrinking buggy and the two white ears that protruded above it, but her eyes were hemmed in by the blinders and she found it difficult. She was obliged to raise her head over the mane of the little bay mare. Forgetting for the moment the man at the plow, she rested her head upon the bay mare’s neck and called and called again.
There was a sudden order to move on and Dora started off, expecting to pull with all her might upon the traces. She was most agreeably surprised to find that they had been unhooked and all the way to the house, stirred by emotions which she had no other way of expressing, she pulled ahead of the others, eager to get to the farmyard as if she expected to be released there so that she could go back to the world and the life for which she longed with old fervour again.
Dora was unharnessed and taken to her stall in the barn. The little bay mare was released in the corral, while the two big horses with their harness on were put into the stall next to Dora and all were fed. In an hour the farmer was ready to depart. He came into the barn and took the two horses out, and soon after, Dora heard the wagon rumbling away.
During the last few weeks, throughout the endless hours of wearing toil, Dora had yearned for the stall; but now as she stood there, fresh from the unexpected meeting with her lifelong companion, the enclosure of the barn was as harassing as the slavery of harness, and without knowing why she did it, realising fully that White-black was far out of hearing, she called and called like a broken-hearted mother from whom her foal had been taken.
Her calling was suddenly answered by the loud voice of the boy, who dashed into the barn and began quickly to saddle her. He tightened the cinch, as he always did, till Dora protested, and then put into her mouth the rider’s bit with its cruel bend. So, too, he put on the wire-net nose basket and fastened it so high that the wire-net pressed against her lips.
As soon as Dora got outdoors she looked for signs of White-black. When the boy jumped to the saddle she started away to the south, but with an angry pull of the reins he turned her to the west. In spite of the fact that she had been working to the limit of her strength, in spite of the pain in her muscles and limbs, she leaped away like a racer, and in spite of the fact that she was already going at her greatest speed, the idiotic boy, as was his habit, kept applying the spurs. On the trail along the wire fences she merely tossed her head with displeasure at every dig, but when they reached the end of the fences and he turned her diagonally across the trackless plains, the sight of the open, unobstructed prairie helped her to make her show of resentment plainer.
But the stupid boy not only failed to perceive that he might have been wrong, he resented what struck him as a challenge to his authority. He meant to show her that he was master. He jerked the reins back with all his might and dug the spurs into her sides.
“Go ahead!” he cried when she fled across the plains as if she had been frightened and were running away, “You can’t go too fast to suit me!”
Before Dora, as she sped, loomed an exceedingly large badger hole, the freshly dug, yellow earth piled high to one side. She was used to badger holes and had long ago learned to cunningly avoid them, no matter how suddenly one appeared in her vision. But despite his tactics the boy was surprised by Dora’s unusually nervous behaviour. He was not at all sure that she wasn’t really trying to run away. In spite of his fear, he could not allow himself to dispense with his bullying proclivities, and as she neared the hole he turned her head sideways and once more plied the spurs without reserve.
Where she would have, without any difficulty, avoided it on her own account, his turning her head drove her upon the mound of earth. Her leg slipped on the loose, newly-dug earth and went down the hole and as the boy attempted to leap from the saddle he was thrown forward six feet from her head, landing with a thud and a shriek.
He was not badly hurt, but he was so badly scared that he yelled like a frightened baby. When he got to his feet there was an expression of murderous intent on his face and he stretched his arms forward as he started for her as if he meant to beat the life out of her when he got hold of her. But he did not get hold of her. She had been frightened, too, and had stood looking at him, unable to decide what to do; but when she saw those hands, she reared high into the air in an effort to prevent his seizing the reins. This time he backed away afraid of the hoofs that rose threateningly before him. She turned with a gracefully defiant toss of her head and bounded away as fast as the dragging reins would allow her to go. She could hear his frantic threatening cries, but that voice had lost its power. Her chance had come at last!
By his futile cries she could tell how far she was leaving him behind her. She dared not stop to look back even when she heard his cries no more. The reins trailing on the ground impeded her flight and she felt as if he were but a short distance behind her and would soon reach her. In her mad race for freedom she kept stepping on the reins and every step tore her lips and battered her palate; but not for a moment did this actually halt her. She endured the pain like one who was aware of the fact that the goal was worth it, till all that was left of the reins dangled a few inches from her muzzle.
A mile farther west from the badger hole was a patch of woodland. When she reached it, Dora stopped for a second to look back; but she did not see the boy. A hill, in between, obstructed her view. She felt somewhat freer not seeing him; but still she went as fast as she could go working her way through the woods. The branches of the trees caught in her saddle and made going very fast impossible. Twigs hooked in the ring of the bit outside of the basket and not only hurt her but frightened her because sometimes she had sensations of being seized by some man. But despite these pulls and digs and impediments, dodging the branches as best she could, she came in half an hour to a large open space. Two or three miles beyond that she saw another patch of woods and headed straight for that. She got through this bit of woodland without much trouble and reaching another open space she followed the wall of trees in its irregular curve to the north.
Still northward she fled, though the north had failed her. It was evening, when after a steady trot for twenty-five miles she came to the strip of forest that borders upon the Saskatchewan and there, coming upon a deer path which was familiar to her, she plunged into the shadows of the woods. She was too tired and still too weary of pursuit to think of food. Coming to a windfall where she had many a time successfully hidden in the days before her captivity, she lay down to rest.
She had been down but a short time when the prodding of the hard wooden stirrup upon which she was lying forced her up. She tried to lie down again, but again the stirrup forced her to get up. Again and again she tried it, but each time with the same result, and finally with the growing fever of a new and threatening fear, she gave up the attempt to rest and went instead for a drink of water at the river. When she reached the river’s edge she stopped to stare across to the wilds beyond. There was a wish in her heart that she could find some way of getting across the moving water, but that wish was dulled by a vague realisation of the fact that now, without her old followers, getting across would not be wholly satisfactory.
A great sad stillness brooded over the river, hanging over the silvery reflections of the sky-line like a dome of mist that rested upon the dreary shadows of the trees and banks on each side. Confinement and toil had sickened Dora’s love of the wilds, though memory sought to exalt it as of old, and the beauty of the wilderness, without her companions, was only desolation. A nameless longing in her heart and a complexity of fears she had never experienced before seized upon her like a disease. It was as if she expected a fatal blow from some hidden enemy that moved about her in every possible direction.
She bent down and drank at her feet. It was hard and disagreeable to drink with the wire-net on her muzzle and the iron bit in her mouth. She lashed the fast flowing stream with her muzzle in the hope that somehow the nasty basket would be washed away by the water, but she gave up the attempt and drank as best she could. Suddenly she lifted her head and stared away into the dark spaces. In the far distance a small shadowy form swooped from the top of a tall poplar, like a bit of shadow breaking away from the body of the night, and disappeared in the whiteness of the sky, leaving behind the melancholy echo of its cry. She followed it with her eyes till it was no more visible, then suddenly turned and ran for the open.
It was not only the open prairie she sought, because the open prairie was the world she knew and loved best; but something else was driving her. A fear that seemed to have been born of shadow and water and the lonely cry of the loon. It was the sudden realisation that though she had escaped from the detestable slavery of man and toil and dirty barn, she had carried away from her bondage man’s inescapable curse.
Her first act upon reaching the open was to search the shaded distances, then out of the depths of her embittered, fear-infested heart, she sent into the wilds she had longed for her earnest appeal for companionship; but only the mocking echo of her own voice came back from the motionless tree-walls on each side of her. She lowered her head to graze but raised it at once again. Now she knew what she had feared. Now she grasped something of the extent of man’s curse. The wire-net on her muzzle, like a trap, forbade her to eat until she returned humbly to man and submitted to his tyranny.
In a frenzy of fear and anger she loped about in a circle for the greater part of an hour, then she attempted to rub the cursed thing from her lips. But rubbing on the ground pushed back the levers of the rider’s bit and hurt her with every move. She stopped to think a moment, gazing helplessly about. She lowered her head, pushing it along between her hoofs, and pulling it forward, trying to rub it off that way; but all that she did was to bend the strong wire of the basket, which after that pressed painfully into her nose. She tried rubbing her muzzle against the bark of a tree. A small twig point pierced the skin of her lip and as she hastily pulled her head back the lever of the bit caught in some way and she struggled for some time before she freed it. Then she gave up, running off into space as if she were trying to flee from some fearful thing she had just seen.
The cinch was still tight and though it did not bother her much when she was up on her feet, it seemed to grow tighter and cut into her skin when she tried to lie down; and if, for want of rest, she lay down anyway, the stirrups always fell in such a way as to press into some tender spot as she lay upon one of them. She would endure that for a few minutes and then she would get up again with a groan.
The poplar woods about the Saskatchewan are not continuous. Patches and strips covering spaces of from one to fifty acres cut up the rolling plains. By running round about these she could keep herself invisible to approaching enemies. Her old power to detect man’s approach seemed to come back to her. Once that day she thought she detected some one coming, and hid in the trees without even making sure, then coming out on the other side and taking a roundabout run, left that section of the country. Yet as she hastily put distance between herself and this danger, she half realised that she might have to go back at last to the man from whom she had escaped, who she knew could save her from the iron grip on her muzzle. Two days later she saw some one coming on the eastern horizon. She was certain that it was the boy pursuing her and first going north to get under cover of a patch of woods, she fled west for many miles.
She came late in the afternoon to the pond in the wilderness where White-black had been trapped in the mud. She remembered clearly White-black’s floundering in the mud and avoided that side of the pond. She walked leisurely around it, gazing over the silent water from whose brightness she missed the remembered sight of ducks. Many a time in her slavery she had had visions of this bit of water with its reflections smiling up to the heavens. It seemed hard for her to believe that she was really there. She had longed so often to be there; yet, now, she experienced something like a feeling of disappointment. What it was or why, she did not know.
She was crossing a muddy spot when she slipped and fell on her side. She was not hurt but slightly stunned and remained lying down. As she lay there it occurred to her that the stirrup was not hurting her. She did not think of its sinking into the mud, but thenceforth when she wanted to lie down she came to that muddy spot. The pond came to her assistance in another way. She had gone in some distance to get a drink of clear water where the pond bottom was quite hard and as she drank, some of the lower rushes penetrated the basket through the meshes of the net. She lowered her muzzle carefully, keeping her jaws open; and when she felt some of the rushes in her mouth, she cropped them quickly, chewing them triumphantly as the water dripped from her muzzle.
The rushes grew tallest in the centre of the pond. She was afraid to go in very far, feeling constantly, as she would move inward, that this time she was going to stick there. It was not long before what rushes she could reach had all been cropped. She learned to get some grass by doing with the grass what she had done with the rushes, but though this was better food she could not get as much of the grass as she had gotten of the rushes. She managed in that way, however, to keep life burning in her bedraggled body.
The fear of being pursued and captured again left her as the days went by without a sign of man, but as this fear left came hunger. All day she struggled to obtain enough grass to keep her alive and when the stirrup resting on frozen mud kept her awake at night, she only thought of grass and how to get more and more of it. The sweetness of the wilds she had loved was gone, leaving them hollow and desolate and so cruelly unresponsive as to be almost mocking.
Day after day man’s curse grew heavier to bear and the strangle-hold it had upon her life contracted with more telling effect. It was only a matter of a short time when its contracting hold would finally and mercifully put an end to her misery.
The short Indian summer passed away. The nights became cold and the frosts froze the mud into rock. When in lying down the stirrup pressed into some tender spot, she would endure the pain, then rise next morning and go limping over the plains. A layer of thick ice which no longer melted by the middle of the day now covered the pond. What little frozen dew that she could get, with the little grass she could crop, only intensified her thirst and the desire for water drove her to desperation. She tried to break a hole in the ice but she did not have the necessary strength. The irresistible desire for water sent her out upon the slippery ice in the hope of finding a weaker spot. A dozen feet from the edge she slipped and fell with a crash, breaking through and falling into the icy water. She was obliged to rest a while before she could summon enough energy to get up. When she did get up she was aching from head to foot and on her leg was an open, bleeding wound. She drank, however, all she could hold, then she turned and looked helplessly to the shore, afraid to step over the broken ice, falling again when at last she ventured toward it, but finally getting back.
Her sides pained her terribly and her open wound smarted and itched. She tried to lick it but only hurt it with the wire-net. She stood stolidly for a few moments, her addled brain trying to clarify the great confusion that came over it. What was she to do? What was going to become of her? Life was almost unendurable, and instincts of terrifying force guarded against the death that would have relieved her. Paroxysms of fear swept over her, filling the shadows of the desolation with beasts of prey who, leering and licking their chops, waited with terrifying patience for the weaker moment when they expected to pull her down.
Geese flew southward constantly and their ominous honking sang dirges to the death of all that life had been to her in its happier past. The skies grew grey and remained chronically grey and the atmosphere seemed filled up with a great cosmic sorrow, like the face of a child suppressing the impulse to cry. The winds reaching out from the frozen north wailed with maddening grief.
A taciturn old coyote began to worry her. He would sometimes pass her while she grazed or struggled in her attempts to graze, each time seemingly coming nearer. He filled her soul with terror. Sometimes he woke her at night with his demoniac howling and she would spring to her feet and shake and tremble with fear and cold, only to find that he was sitting on the rim of the hollow, looking down at her, his black, hateful form cut clearly against the dark grey sky. Then one morning, she awoke to find him less than a rod away, sitting on his haunches and watching her. He fled when she sprang weakly toward him with a fearful cry in which she tried desperately to be defiant; but she decided then to abandon the horror-infested basin.
The great weakness was upon her. The coyote had long recognised it and she knew it now. Whither she was to go or what she was to do, she did not know. Only she felt the need of going and she went, limping slowly and painfully, sick in body and soul, all her defiance of man crushed out of her. Thus the erstwhile Queen of the wilds lumbered painfully over the plains that seemed to no longer sustain her, going humbly back to man to dumbly beg for mercy, for even in that state of mind she felt that as man had placed his curse upon her only man could remove it.
It was a dreary, dull afternoon. The sun struggled to show itself and its weakest warmth was driven from her protruding bones by a cold, cutting gale. In her lumbering along over the plains that seemed strangely dim and uncertain she stopped every once in a while and stared like a decrepit old woman. She came at last to an open space between two patches of woodland and stopped to gaze wild-eyed upon a black shanty covered with tar-paper, and a sod barn.
The smells that came from that farmyard made it very hard for her to advance, but the intense feeling of her desperation conquered each wave of fear and step by step she made her way toward the house, stopping at last, a hundred feet away, unable to go any farther. There was no sign of life. Fear held her motionless yet hunger and thirst and weakness urged her to call for help. Her call sounded weak and hollow. She called again with greater exertion and in that call a note of conciliation was unmistakably audible.
Suddenly she saw the door of the shanty open and a woman came out. Had it been a man, all her unworded resolution would have gone to naught and Dora would have turned and fled; but a woman was a different experience. She turned nervously and walked off a short distance, but when the woman advanced toward her holding out a hand and calling with a most winning voice, she stopped and waited. When the woman came nearer Dora heard her own name. The recognition of that sound gave her so much hope and courage that she deliberately turned toward the woman who by that time was near enough to take hold of one of the pieces of strap that still hung from the bit-ring.
For a few minutes the woman patted her forehead lovingly and talked to her in a way that warmed poor Dora as if the woman had placed a blanket over her cold aching body. When the woman began leading her toward the house she followed willingly till the door opened and a little girl came out, then she stopped as if afraid; but when the woman urged she went on, keeping her eyes upon the little girl.
At the well, the little girl chopped a hole in the ice on the trough while the woman removed the basket, bridle, halter and what was left of the saddle and Dora lowered her head quickly into the water and drank as rapidly as she could.
“That dirty brute!” said the woman.
“He never feeds his critters,” piped in the little girl.
“He doesn’t feed his wife,” added the woman, not because she wanted to tell this to the little girl, but rather because she wanted to express the hatred of an old and bitter feud.
“Take these rotten things,” said the woman, pointing to the bridle and the halter, while she seized the remains of the saddle. “Let’s get them out of the way, and don’t you ever open your mouth to tell any one, no matter who it is, that his mare was here. I don’t want his rotten old saddle and bridle. He never keeps anything looking decent enough for any one to want any of his rotten things. Anyway it is a sin to send this poor mare back to him. It ain’t up to me to catch his runaway critters for him and I just can’t let the poor critter go off like this and die. When Dad gets back from threshin’, he’ll take these things and drop ’em on the road near his place where he will be sure to find them.”
When Dora had drunk all she could, she turned immediately to some grass near by and began voraciously to pull at it. The woman had befriended her and she was not afraid of her. But to her surprise, when she came back, the woman rushed at her with something in her hand which she waved threateningly at her, clearly ordering her away. Dora ran off as fast as she could go and when she got well out of the way, she turned to look back with a puzzled expression on her face. Both the woman and the little girl were calmly entering the shanty.
Without an attempt to get at the motive behind the woman’s strange conduct, Dora went on grazing there, moving off and looking back when her mouth was too full to crop, eating so rapidly and so absorbedly that she had no time to think about the phenomenal change that had thus miraculously come over her. If she was not thinking gratefully, she did feel grateful and possibly some higher intellectual force than hers, in some way, realised for her that only justice had been done.
FOR several days after the woman had relieved her of the racking burden of straps and iron and wire-net, Dora was troubled by the conflict of recurrent impulses to go back to the farm yard and the fears that just as ardently urged her to get far out of the reach of man. Months of arduous toil followed by weeks of semi-starvation had robbed her of her strength and her courage; the barn had so enervated her that she found the cold, out doors, especially at night, very hard to endure; and her captivity had deprived her of her companions without whom life was not worth the struggle.
One snow flurry followed another. The last spot of exposed earth disappeared. The sun did not show itself for days and every hour seemed to deepen the drifts. Never had the world seemed so bleak and inhospitable to her.
She was so miserably cold one windy night that she decided at last to go back to the farmyard where she had been so magnanimously befriended. She got up toward the end of the long night and started away, lumbering along for many miles in the dark, driven by the image of the sheltering barn; and then she stopped suddenly as the other image, that of the woman driving her away, came into her mind. She stood still, unable to decide what to do and as she stood the reddish streak in the south east grew brighter and less red.
She became very cold, having stood so long, and started off again more for want of exercise than through any definite decision, and as she neared the top of a wild rose bush that protruded from a deep drift, a rabbit sprang out of its shadow and bounded away to the south. Dora stopped through momentary fright, and followed him with her eyes as he fled. She missed him when he was swallowed up in the great ocean of whiteness and searching for him suddenly discovered a group of horses on the ridge of a long hill, their dark bodies cut clearly against the end of the light streak in the sky.
Dora did not stop for her breakfast. Her eyes lighted up, her nostrils distended and her thin legs plowed through the snows as if their old strength had fully come back to them. There were many hills and valleys lost to the sight in the level whiteness and, crossing them over-anxiously, she was obliged to stop a few times to rest and to regain her breath, before at last she reached the horses, by that time down the side of the hill.
There were about a dozen of them spread out considerably. While yet some distance from them, she thought she recognised some of her old friends, but as she came nearer she was overwhelmed with doubt. They were pawing the snow very energetically and took little interest in her fervent greetings. One or two heads raised up a moment, then went back to the business of finding grass which the rest would not interrupt even for that short time. This reception was a great disappointment to Dora, but there were other disappointments in store for her.
The three horses to whom she was nearest, watched her approach with suspicion. They were, all three, hard working horses, who found the pawing of snow a laborious task. They thought she meant to eat from their find and drove her off with threats of angry whinnies and laying ears. One of them, a miserable old nag, a red mare with two naked scars on her shoulders, jumped across the hole she had dug, ran after Dora and nipped her haunches several times, as poor Dora fled from her.
Dora stopped running about a hundred yards from there, looked back at the old nag and, seeing that she had returned to pawing, began to paw the snow where she was. When she got to the grass and had taken a mouthful, she raised her head and stared at the group, wondering what had happened to the beautiful world from which she had been abducted by man. She could not make out why that old nag had been so intent upon hurting her. Dora did not know of those differences in temperament which makes one creature mellow and sympathetic after an experience of great suffering and another sour and pugnacious.
Her reception was a sad disappointment to Dora, but even that companionship was better than none. So she clung to it with all her strength, content to move about on the outer edge of the group. When the herd had fed well and for exercise started across the snows, Dora always went with them, running with every ounce of energy in her body, striving through her old revived habit to get to the lead; but Dora soon realised that these were not the days of her supremacy. Strive as she would, she could not keep up with even the poorest plug and long before the others were ready to quit, she was obliged to drop out of the race, humiliated and unhappy, puffing and panting for breath.
Nevertheless, she took part in every race. Every time she made the same strenuous attempt to do the impossible. The youngsters of two and three years of age fairly laughed at her, reaching her while she struggled with might and main and leaving her behind with a few easy bounds. But it is a poor effort that accomplishes no result whatever, and though she could at no time outrun the younger horses, she daily managed to leave some older horse behind her.
One day she tried her old trick. Very early in the race she happened to be in the lead, having started the race. When the younger horses saw her leading a few of the old plugs, they started after her, soon, of course, overtaking her. Dora swerved to the side, in the hope that they would follow her, and found herself alone. They not only refused to follow her but they did not even look back to see what had happened to her. Dora was so unhappy she started off again after them, but soon stopped, realising that she could not catch up to them and that she would soon be out of breath once more. She stood still a while and watched them enviously. Then she turned, intending to paw the snow for grass, when she saw another group of horses coming from the southeast.
Dora raised her head and looked with absorbed interest. The wind lifted her mane and fluttered it gracefully in the air. For a few moments, absorbed in the creatures that moved toward her in single file, she looked like Queen once more in all the glory of her regency. When they were a hundred yards away, Queen neighed with all her strength. At once the marching line stopped and all heads went up high in the air. Then from the rear of the line a white horse broke from the path he had been following and with a call of recognition started hastily toward her. It was White-black and, with a strength born of the very sight of him, Queen loped to meet him.
Four of the other horses recognized her, too, and the air vibrated with the music of that happy reunion. Noses touched noses and happy whinnies greeted happy whinnies. With the five of them had come a young mother, a sorrel mare with a fuzzy little colt who had been born in the spring. When the others had gone to meet Queen she remained in her tracks, hesitating to get into any kind of an assembly where through joy or anger her colt might be hurt. He stood right behind her, his fuzzy little head against her haunch, his eyes filled with wonderment.
When Dora had greeted her old friends, she went to greet the mother and her colt, running her old muzzle, on which were still the marks of her struggle with the basket, down the fuzzy little fellow’s forehead, murmuring tremulously. The proud young mother looked on almost eagerly and commented softly and good-naturedly.
But when the big group returned there was dissention at once. The ugly red mare seemed to think that there was entirely too much fuss made over Queen, and turned upon her with open mouth. White-black, right behind the old nag, nipped her severely. A quarrel followed which spread to the rest of the group and finally ended in a race which divided the two groups, Dora going off with her friends. All day the two groups dug the snow a goodly distance apart and in the evening came the worst storm of the season.
The storm approached quite suddenly, though all day there had been vague signs of its coming. A northern gale blew up, tearing the weaker branches from the trees and sending them sliding over the surface of the snow, tearing up the looser snow and blowing it into their eyes and ears and nostrils. Queen led her group to a fairly sheltered spot in among the trees near by and together they lay down.
The warmth of their bodies, one touching the other, was so comforting that the slightest move on the part of any one of them brought a low, patient protest from the rest. The night came rapidly. The wind grew more and more furious, howling and shrieking overhead, and the tall poplars groaned as they bent with its lashing. Gusts of wind, loaded with snow, which it raised on the open, struck the trees and the snow fell in powder upon them below, covering them as with a blanket.
In the open the savage north wind went mad. It tore along at a terrific rate, taking everything that was loose with it, then, as if it had in its savage eagerness fallen over itself, there was a pause for a moment, after which, picking itself up again, it went on with even greater ferocity, shrieking as with some ineffable, primordial pain. It seized the fallen snow and whirled it around with the falling snow, scattered it high in the air, lifting it again when it had fallen and sending it like waves across the plains, gathering great showers of it and hurling them against the wall of the woods, sending these showers down upon the tree tops, tearing it all up again as soon as it had fallen into drifts below and once more hurling the restless dust into space—a display of insane, futile effort—a cosmic passion bereft of purpose.
But if this wild night could have been wilder and had raved with even more threat in its raving, it could not have diluted the contentment in Queen’s heart. The touch and the subtler feeling of the presence of her companions did as much to keep her warm as the heat of their bodies, and, like a light, illumined the long trail of life behind her. She moved through the corridor of her past like a curious child, walking in its sleep and dreaming of a beautiful, incoherent fairyland. The light was silvery as that of the moon and in the shadows detached images which she only half recognised glistened like reflections on the snow. And when dawn ushered in a calm day, Queen rose with a feeling like that of having returned home from a long visit and shook the snow from her body.
Queen knew the country there as none other knew it. Leading the little group to the best feeding grounds, she took her place once more at the head, for at the head only could Queen be happy. In spite of the deep snows through which they were obliged to plow to get their food, Queen began to fill out rapidly and the greater part of her old strength came back to her. With the return of her strength came the old fear of man. Every move was accompanied by an investigation and in every sound of wind and tree she seemed to hear the sound of a voice.
There followed a long period of fair weather in which the snows hardened and shrank and then one day, as they were digging for grass, they were surprised by three men on horseback on a hill to the south and east, less than a quarter of a mile away. The horsemen had come upon them so suddenly that Queen, confounded, stood looking at them a few minutes, transfixed with fear. She recognised the man who had captured her on the big horse that had worked beside her in the plow. Next to him was the boy on the little bay mare and his cry of “There she is!” fully aroused Queen.
The little herd, however, had no difficulty in getting away from them, because they had no burdens on their backs and they were now more used to the deep snows on the open plains than the horses that were chasing them. The horsemen kept behind them for a long while and then disappeared. But Queen was too wise to end her flight there. She knew that even though the men gave up the chase that day they would appear again the next, or soon after that.
Out of the misery and discomfort of her captivity she had just emerged. She had found her companions and the life for which she had hungered all through those unhappy months. Hardly had she realised the full extent of her good fortune when man reappeared to take it all away from her. But Queen was in no submissive mood. She had fought for her freedom and she would fight again. She would watch with such care that she would not again be caught at a disadvantage. She hardly gave herself time to eat. Her ears were constantly pricked high. Her eyes, afire with her emotions, never for a moment abandoned their vigilance. But her nervous dread of man soured the sweetness of the wilds and Queen moved over the snows with the old feeling of the trap beating in her heart, moved without resting and, out of habit, moved northward.
They came next day to the strip of woodland whose heroic poplars silently guard the Saskatchewan. There they stopped and there the full horror of the trap took possession of Queen. She was afraid of her own shadow and the slightest sound startled her. A partridge drumming in the woods sent her madly loping through space.
The winter evening came early. The distant sun lowered in the southwest with a sad, yellow glare; and in the north a gleaming, pearly streak foretold a brilliant display of northern lights. That streak interested Queen and she watched it as the darkness thickened, and as she watched it, looking up from time to time, it grew brighter. Faint shimmering colours appeared at the eastern end of the streak and slowly moved across it to the west, vanishing in the west and reappearing brighter in the east. Many times she had seen these lights, but only once, somewhere in her half-forgotten childhood, had she seen them so bright and so fascinating.
They were standing directly in front of a cleft in the shadowy wall of trees. The cleft led like a roadway to the banks and the river below. There they could see more of the lights, the portion that glowed in the lower part of the sky and danced about over the shadowy tops of the trees on the other shore.
It was during a moment when the lights were so compelling that all of them had stopped to look when there appeared in the cleft the giant body of a moose, his antlers like a magnificent oak cut clearly against the scintillating colours of the aurora borealis. His coming had been so swift, so sudden and so imperceptible that it took them some time to realise that a living thing stood within a few yards of them, looking at them. The herd hastily retreated a short distance; but as soon as they stopped to look back the enormous animal got frightened, turned and vanished down the banks.
Queen was very curious. She trotted carefully after him and the rest of the herd kept to her tracks. When Queen’s head appeared where the plains turn over the banks, the moose looked up at her a moment and then like a rabbit shot straight across the river. Beyond the centre of the frozen river he stopped for a moment to look back once more, then leaped on and vanished in the woods beyond, leaving behind him, across the ice of the erstwhile invincible Saskatchewan the defiant shadow of his trail.
An overwhelming impulse flared up in Queen’s soul. A great confusion of fear and hope seized upon her heart. So nervous that every muscle in her body trembled, she made her way down the banks and with infinite fear and caution she took the trail of the moose. She walked along slowly and very carefully and stopped often to take bites of the snow on the ice as if she were testing it and at the same time trying to quench the fires that were burning within her. The others hesitated a moment, but when they saw her nearly half way across, they faithfully followed her.
In the woods north of the river, they camped for the night. Next day they went on, penetrating the woods and following the trail of the moose till they came upon an open space a mile beyond the river. There they remained for the rest of the winter, feeding upon grass the like of which they had only at rare times come upon.
Succeeding snowfalls covered their tracks and when spring came, melting the snows and filling the desolate hollows with quivering, rippling ponds, loading the lonely air with the whir of duck wings and the happier honking of geese, the roar of the swollen Saskatchewan had placed the final seal upon their emancipation.
And here the story of Queen Dora must end, for in that new world beyond the trail of the moose her struggle against the usurpation of man was over. It was long after her generation that man ventured into that desolate region where she found perfect happiness, as perfect a happiness as may come to living things. Grass and water, leisure and activity, companionship and security, these were all Queen asked of life, and these were as free in those unfenced wilds as the air and as limitless in their abundance. No enemies, no contention, preferences without hatred, joyous play and eternal good will, she looked toward each coming moment with no fear; while the glowing sensations of fading yesterdays only sweetened the music of her existence.