Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

Where he had been, how he had got up there, what he was doing, these were facts Queen could not find out, nor did she experience any desire to find out. Life to her was somewhat of an abysmal night with beautiful, star-like gleams of understanding. The past to her was an ally of death not to be thought about and the future became important only when it turned into the present. The sole value of the impressions that she carried in her memory lay in the help they offered for the understanding of the impressions that the present was making and Queen never wept over them.

There was the old sorrel before her! The memory of what he had been to her, inundated by floods of time and other experiences, had gone out like the stars at dawn. But now, certain odours and sounds and qualities too delicate for words, like the evening that follows every dawn, brought the stars back to her sky and she strove to express the almost inexpressible satisfaction she experienced.

The other horse was a stranger and so Queen was wary of him. She sniffed noses with him suspiciously and kept away, refusing to allow him to go near her colt whereas the old sorrel sniffed all over him without her protest.

But the pleasure she derived from the momentary satisfaction of the longing for companionship, inadequate as it was, had its price. Her excitement was so great that she did not notice the coming of another horse with a man on his back, till he was already dangerously close. With an anxious call to her little one she dashed away in the direction from which she had come. The two horses went with her.

It was not long however before she saw the man through the corner of her eye, urging his straining horse, apparently to get ahead of her. Queen was not running as fast as she could, for she knew that her baby could not keep up with her. But the sight of the man at the side of her bewildered her. She leaped out of his way, leaving him a hundred feet behind only to realise at once that her colt was not with her. She swung off to the side and turned to see the man driving the old sorrel, his companion, and her own colt off towards the black mounds.

Her eyes fairly bulging out of her head, her lips frothing, Queen leaped back after him, calling frantically to him as she ran. As soon as the little thing heard her, he turned to run back, but instantly the man threw a rope and caught him round the neck, hurling him to the ground. The two horses ran on toward the mounds, but the man stopped, dismounted and battled with her frightened, crying baby.

The desire to hurt was foreign to Queen’s nature, but when she saw her foal on the ground struggling with the man who was apparently getting the better of it, she ran toward the monster with murder in her heart. The man saw her coming and with the other end of his long rope he struck her head a terrible blow. She jumped back in terror. Before she had aroused enough courage to make another attack, the man had completely tied the little thing so that it could not move a limb and, mounting his horse again, he rode away.

Queen rushed to her little son with a sense of relief but that feeling soon gave way to one of painful solicitude. She had her baby and the man had left, but the baby was helplessly tied. It was changed with a change like death. The monstrous two-legged creature had cast a spell upon it. She ran around it frantically, called to it encouragingly, licked it tenderly, then ran off a few paces, urging it to exert itself and follow her.

Then to her horror, she saw the man coming back. This time he had the sorrel and his companion with him. She grew desperate. She bit at the rope with nervous haste, trying to drag her colt away with her, but her efforts resulted only in hurting it and at the first cry of pain, she stopped. Until the man was so near that he struck her with the long binder whip which he had brought with him, she would not leave her baby and then she only kept out of reach of the whip. Finally, in desperation, unable to decide upon anything that she might try to do, she stood and watched; while the man was busy, preparing the ropes on the stone boat which the two horses had been dragging after them.

One thing at once hurt and puzzled her, and that was the nonresistance of the old sorrel. There he stood covered with the bewildering straps with their glittering buckles, making no attempt to run from the man nor to help her. He did not even call to her.