Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

Terrified so that the very muscles in her body quivered, she sprang toward her mother and pushed her way in between the two mares. Fire had been part of the horrible process in the corral, but that fire had been as nothing to this. She was afraid! She wanted to run, and she worried about their standing still.

The black colt on the other side of his white mother was not the least bit frightened. He had as yet met with nothing baneful in fires and they only interested him. At that moment, having slept well and fed well and feeling unusually good, he wanted very much to frisk about and play. He trotted over to Queen and mischievously butted her from behind, pushing her half way out from between the two mares. Queen was much too nervous to tolerate his playfulness. With an impatient toss of her head she moved back against her mother and called for help. The old buckskin herself was in no mood for trifling and drove the black colt away with an angry threat. The white mare, who was as indulgent a mother as the buckskin, took the matter so seriously that there would have been trouble but for a sudden blast of wind, loaded with smoke.

There was a hurried clatter of hoofs and the herd started away as with one impulse. Down slopes, through wide hollows, up hills, leaping over badger holes and stones, they ran, half enjoying the excitement. Occasionally they stopped to look back with glaring eyes upon the flames that swept along in their wake, still far, but unmistakably nearer every time they stopped.

With the coming of full daylight the flames lost their brilliance and the colts, tired of running, would stop every once in a while and noisily protest to their mothers, who kept a short distance ahead of them. They would then walk slowly and whinny till a new gust of wind with a new offensive cloud of smoke would frighten them and send them on again with renewed energy.

But their endurance was rapidly giving out and toward the middle of the day they refused to run any more. Their mothers, a few paces ahead of them, called to them solicitously, ran on as if they meant to desert them, then seeing that that did not move them, they came back calling coaxingly and tried to encourage them. A step at a time, their heads bobbing wearily, their sides wet, they lumbered along complainingly.

The prairie fire kept gaining upon them. The mothers’ anxiety turned into desperation. They came back to them and getting behind them fairly pushed them along. Suddenly a blazing thistle, driven by the gale, rolled into their midst. All weariness, all aches and pains were at once forgotten. As if they were controlled by a single mind, they bounded forward, re-entering the race for life with an energy which they themselves did not know they had.

The sun with smiling indifference moved rapidly down the lower half of its diurnal arc. The wind tore along behind them with irregular force and with a constant changing of direction. The smoke it had borne all day had grown less and less perceptible. The weight of Queen’s body dragged more and more irresistibly downward. Her head began swimming in waves of weariness that were inundating the whole of her body; but she struggled on bravely, though she vaguely felt that it would not be long before she would be forced to give up the struggle. Then, as she reached the top of a hill, she beheld through the film of moisture on her eyes, the mares and the stronger colts who had gone on ahead, now grazing on the other side of a long, black, dried mud spot down in the hollow.

That the wind had veered decidedly, taking smell and smoke and fire off to the east, they had not even noticed. They had been running unnecessarily for some time, impelled by the fear of the burning thistle. The sight of the herd grazing with apparent fearlessness reassured them. Most of the stragglers walked on ahead to join them, but Queen selected a soft spot on the grass and dropped to the ground with a sigh.

Hunger had no power over her now. She stretched out her legs and her head and relaxed, sinking willingly into the stupor that swept over her. Her mother near her cropped the delicious grass with avidity; but the long-drawn sighs that came from her little one and the rapid sinking and swelling of her wet sides, worried her. She walked over to Queen, whinnied softly and licked the perspiration from her little body. Little Queen continued to breathe heavily but a note of relief entered the sound of her breathing, and now more comfortable she fell asleep.

But if Queen had gone to sleep thinking that her exhausting journey was over, she was doomed to disappointment. She woke shortly after she had fallen asleep, with a most intense desire to drink. On the hill above the hollow she saw the greater part of the herd already moving on. Some of the mares and their colts near Queen were starting away and her mother was calling her, very evidently moved by the same urge. There was nothing behind them forcing them to go. There was no discussion of any sort to make clear the need for going. In the mind of each of them there was the image of a slough. It was a sort of composite image of all the sloughs they had ever drunk from and with that image like a mirage on the prairie distance before them, they doggedly hit once more the unbroken trail to the north.