Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

The manner in which they loped away, continually looking back as they went, showing that they were afraid that the horses meant to run after them, lessened Queen’s fear of them slightly; and, tired of lying there, she too, rose to her feet and shook the frost from her body. Like the big horses she felt that she wanted exercise so she frisked about her mother, keeping an eye all the while upon the black colt who had by this time awakened and who was now sleepily watching her.

But as her blood began to circulate rapidly, her delight in motion grew apace and in her delight she forgot the black colt and the coyotes. The circle about her mother was altogether too small for the expression of her joy and she undertook to make a circuit about the lake with the two other horses that were running. She had gone only half way when she became aware of the black colt, racing after her.

She did not see him till she had turned and as soon as she spied him she sent an urgent call for help to her mother, and bounded away with eyes aglow. Her call brought her mother to her feet. The old mare galloped away in the opposite direction, intending to meet her before the black colt got to her. The excitement roused the last of the sleepers and soon the air was filled with the thumping of lively hoofs. Only the old sorrel work-horse got safely out of the way and went on, indifferent to the racket, to eat his breakfast.

The buckskin mare got to her daughter in time to prevent the colt from fleeing and nipped him savagely on the hip. In the meantime his white mother had reached him and quite naturally interceded in his behalf. She made an attempt to nip the buckskin mare, but backed away in time to avoid two buckskin legs which had shot into the air. The white mare then turned quickly around and with her hind legs replied in kind.

The rest of the horses seemed to think it just the proper fun to accompany morning exercises and after a few moments of exhilarating kicking there followed a joyous stampede resulting at last in their division into smaller groups, each group in its own corner grazing away peacefully as if nothing had ever happened.

After a preliminary breakfast of milk, little Queen joined her mother in a profitable search for the sweetest blades of grass, and grazing side by side they wandered from the lake shore, up the slope and away over a level bit of prairie to another hollow where a slough had completely dried up, leaving a small, barren, muddy bottom exposed. The grass was exceptionally good around that spot and when little Queen had eaten all she could eat, she stretched out on the ground in the early afternoon and slept a long while.

She awoke suddenly. She was very cold and felt that she had been cold for a long time. A gloomy heaviness hung in the air and the sky was thick with threatening clouds. All the desires in her little soul merged into the one great desire to get to her mother. She jumped to her feet intending to stretch and rid the joints of the sleepy feeling, when there came upon her the fear that she was alone. She looked anxiously and rapidly in several directions and then sprang off into space. A great wave of uneasiness reached up from her heart and confused her.

She had been running around for some time when she discovered four buckskin legs sticking up out of a trough-like hollow in the dried mud. She rushed with fear to her mother who lay motionless upon her back, either unable to get up or strangely unwilling to. She was very glad to see her and much of the fear that she had just experienced left her at the very sight of her beloved mother; but she slowly became conscious of something incomprehensibly dreadful in the situation.

Queen looked at her curiously and called half anxiously, half admonishingly, as if to say, “Why do you lie there like that when I want you, and want you standing up straight as one ought to stand?” Receiving no answer to her calling Queen ceased and gazed at her with growing terror. There was something so frightfully unusual about her. Queen began to shake herself as if she hoped to shake off the something that seemed to cling to her and dim and blur everything for her. She sniffed at the dear old head and sprang away in terror. There was a pool of blood near the open mouth and the beloved lips, always so warm and so soft, were cold and strangely hard. She became more and more alarmed and confused. But in her little soul there was still hope. Her beloved mother, so capable of solving the hardest problems, would solve this one. She approached again and sniffed and sniffed and called and called. But the more she sniffed and called in vain, the more intense grew her fear.

She raised her little head high and gazed anxiously away through the thickening gloom. A last flock of geese was flying south and the familiar honking which before this had only aroused her curiosity, now filled her with foreboding and loneliness. Loneliness was a state of mind heretofore unknown to her; but now it brooded over the plains like a nebulous dragon dropped from some other world, waiting for an opportunity to devour her.