She walked off slowly and listlessly to where she had been asleep, intending to while away the time by grazing until her mother should wake up; but she could not eat. It was not many minutes before she was walking right back again, calling more loudly than ever. Getting no response, she stood still, and looked at the body she loved, trying very hard to understand.
All the while the day waned. The sky grew blacker. The wind blew stronger and in the air the something that had been threatening all day seemed to have come nearer. Grass blades and rosebushes nodded mournfully over all the lonely earth, and little Queen imagined, as she turned round and round to look into every gloomy direction, that the prairie had become peopled with dangerous forms who always fled from sight just as she turned her eyes toward them.
She made several attempts to graze; but she could not eat. A sickening feeling like a lump in her throat barred the way for food and she had strangely lost all desire to eat. At her mother’s side she remained as the long, fearful moments dragged, sniffing at her occasionally, calling to her at times in the tone of one who expects no response and looking off into the desolate wastes with a half-formed wish that something would arrive to help her, yet fearfully worried of what might come.
Darkness began lowering more rapidly and the wind swept over the plains moaning with disturbing sadness. Little Queen became desperate. She pushed at her mother with her nose in passion born of fear, then realising how useless that effort was, called with all her strength and ran about her without plan or purpose.
Flakes of snow had been falling now and then for some time. They began to fall more rapidly and to choke up the atmosphere, whirling through it with a sort of light indifference and cruelly, boastingly foreshadowing the approach of a more heartless blizzard. Queen decided at last that there was nothing for her to do but to lie down beside her cold mother and to wait for morning. She was whimperingly lowering herself to the ground when she caught sight of the skulking form of a coyote in the gloom to her side and sprang back upon her feet.
Again she began to urge her mother to get up. She pushed the rock-like side with her little nose, but she stopped very soon with the conviction that it was useless and that she had better keep her eyes on the coyote. She centred her attention now upon the form that moved about in the dark grey gloom and discovered a second form behind the first. In an effort to move nearer to her mother, she stepped on the hard side, tripped and fell; and as she got up to her feet again, there came out of the boundless horror of the wind-swept night a blood-curdling howl. Leaping clearly over her mother’s body she fled from it, and loped away in the direction of the bowl-like valley and the lake.
Some of the horses were still grazing near the lake, as if they realised that a blizzard was coming and desired to store away in their bodies all the food they could gather. They cropped the grass most rapidly as the wind tore at their tails and manes. Most of the mares were lying down with their colts and one horse was drinking at a hole in the ice; while the old sorrel work-horse stood near him patiently waiting for his turn at the water. With an anxious whimper she sidled up to the old sorrel who replied at once with his soft, tremulous whinny of good will. When at last he drank, she cautiously lowered her head too, and seeing that he had no objections, she drank as if there were fires in her little heart that she would quench. When he raised his head and started away, she pulled her head out of the water and ran after him as if it had been her mother that had started away and was about to leave her behind.
The old sorrel lumbered off to the spot where he had slept the night before and Queen forlornly followed him, stopping several times as she went to look into the darkness where she had left her mother and where she still hoped to find her when the day came again.
The old fellow painfully lowered his body, groaning like a rheumatic old man. Many years had he toiled in the harness and his limbs were stiff. Queen waited till he was at rest, then she approached him humbly and whinnied questioningly. From the ugly old head came a soft, barely audible neigh which was different from that of any horse she had ever heard. It encouraged and consoled her little heart with a friendliness without which she might have died that stormy night.
She whimpered like a baby that was cold and lay down beside him. Then as the wind annoyed her she moved as near to him as she could get. There came upon the cold, stinging, moaning wind another coyote howl, long-drawn, shrill, mad, and lustful. It seemed far away but inexpressibly terrifying. Little Queen raised her trembling head. The old sorrel pricked his ears. But she saw the big pointed ears go back into place again and the big shadowy head take its former sleepy position. He was not afraid, she was glad of that; but she was afraid. Strange images, visions she sought to drive from her mind by closing her eyes, tormented her.