She was lying right against his back. Slowly she lowered her head upon his neck, testing his willingness by degrees. When her head was finally resting fully on his neck, he only whinnied softly, and Queen tried her best to reply gratefully. A feeling of ineffable gratitude swept over her with the warmth of his body.
All through the night she thought of her mother, when awake, and dreamed of her when asleep. A thousand times she broke from her light snatches of slumber, from her horrible dreams of coyotes, to pierce the storm-filled gloom with her terrified eyes, expecting hopefully to find her mother standing over her and looking down upon her; but only the emptiness of the night, obliterating the world she had known, shrieked with an uncertainty that filled up her soul.
CHAPTER IV
A SEEKING THAT FOUND
IT is only the foolish who bewail the inevitable with wasting passion; it is after all the wise who accept it and make the most of things. Because the inevitable is so much more the ruling force in animal life, animals adjust themselves more quickly to new conditions. Conceited man attributes that early adjustment to a lack of feeling. Yet when little Queen awoke on the first morning of her orphanage, there had already come into her eyes and upon her head a perceptible sadness, the sadness of resignation.
A great change had come over the world in that single night and so different did it seem from what she had known it to be, that as far as she could think, the night might have been a space of years; that years might have elapsed since her mother, who hitherto had always warmed and fed and protected her, now had ceased to warm and feed and protect her.
How white the world was! The little white flakes that had fluttered about in the air at nightfall had covered up all things with a heavier whiteness than that of any frosty morning in her experience. And she expected that with the coming of the warmth of day it would all disappear. Yesterday it had taken the forms of the things it had covered, this morning only the heads of the horses stuck up out of the drifts of it; while stones and coyote dens had been completely wiped out of existence. Her own feet were out of sight. She jumped up to see whether it would interfere with her jumping up, and was glad to note how easily it was shaken from her body. She took a few steps, discovered that it was disagreeable to wade through and stopped. On the white rim of the bowl stood a flock of prairie chickens as if they had been discussing the great change. She watched them half interestedly. They were birds, and birds were not to be feared. She looked over them and beyond them. There, somewhere, she felt was her mother. She took a hasty step in that direction and stopped again. She was afraid to go.
She lowered her head and listlessly tasted some of the snow. It was not food, she knew that at once; and it turned into water in her mouth. One wants water badly when one wants it, but one cannot live on water. How was one to eat when there was no grass in sight and no mother about with the more substantial milk? She looked and looked away over the whiteness till her eyes, taxed by its reflection, ceased seeing altogether for a few minutes. But as soon as she could see once more, Queen began to search for her mother and this search, each succeeding day with less hope and enthusiasm, she never wholly abandoned. She sniffed at every mare about her, calling plaintively and knowing her mistake in the indifference with which some of them listened to her appeal or the annoyance which others were too ready to show.
The old sorrel got up at last and shook the snow from his back. She watched it falling in showers of white dust and through the sides of her eyes she saw a number of other horses do as he had done. She saw him take big bites of snow and shake his head quickly as he did so, so she too ate some more of it and shook her head up and down. When he lumbered away, sinking into the deep drifts as he went, she followed him.