Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

He tried very hard to get over the barrier, but could not make it. To show him how to do it, she jumped in again and as she jumped she knocked another layer of sod into the barn. Then as she was about to leap out a second time she heard a familiar whinny behind her. Turning nervously, she made out in the gloom of the other end of the barn, two horses, one of them her mate. Poor White-black was standing listlessly in a cage-like stall, securely tied to the manger. His voice was weaker than it had ever been, and his calling seemed strangely half-hearted. A great desire to touch his nose came over her, though the fear of the barn, the frightfully nauseating odours and the slippery, dirty floor, all urged her to fly before some mysterious force should seize her and hold her there. All she was able to do was to call to him from where she stood trembling near the opening in the wall, ready to jump at the first sign of danger. The sound of her own voice in the confines of the gloomy barn terrified her. With a single bound she leaped over the broken wall, taking so much more of it with her, lowering it so decidedly that the little fellow was able to climb over it.

With a last heartfelt call to White-Black, appealing to him to follow her as he used to follow her in the days that had gone, Queen raced once more toward the haven of the north, ran against all feeble protest of her little son, ran till the loathsome mounds vanished from the undulating plains.

In a hollow where a spring slough had turned much of the earth into mud and then had partially dried up, Queen drank, fed her baby; and, because he would go no further, she grazed while he rested. She felt very unsafe and gazed incessantly and fearfully toward the hilltop behind her. Two images she expected to see coming over the brow every time she looked up. She expected and feared to see the man coming after her and she expected and hoped to see White-black. Neither came, but both haunted her stormy mind and allowed it no peace.

Fear urged her to be off and away but every time she started, her little fellow refused to go with her. He would raise his head painfully from the grass and call to her but he would not get up. He had not taken all the milk there was for him and he acted very peculiarly, but Queen’s fear was implacable. She pretended to leave him and ran all the way up the other slope of the hollow. He called to her in a frenzy of fear, but though her heart beat fast for him, she did not reply and when she began to disappear over the summit of the hill he got up in haste and ran with all his strength till he found her but a few feet from the summit. She whinnied to him lovingly but continued her trot and he wearily followed her.

A peculiar note in his cry, some distance farther on, made her turn round to look at him. She saw him touch his shoulder with his little nose and as he touched it she saw a swarm of insects fly off from the spot. She walked back to him and discovered a deep gash that ran across his breast and up his other shoulder. The hideous cut was covered by lumps of coagulated blood and the insects settled back on it as soon as he withdrew his nose.

She proceeded at once to lick the wound till she found it was bleeding again and stopped, bewildered by the dripping blood. But the bigger problem presented itself anew. She looked up suddenly and spied, on the horizon in the direction from which she had come, a black moving object. She was certain that it was the man coming after her and springing forward a few paces stopped suddenly when she found that her colt was not following her. She stamped her foot frantically, calling to him with more terror than urge.

He started bravely after her, but the more he ran, the more his wound opened, and the coagulation that had taken place and was trying to take place failed to save him. Queen, who loved him with magnificent passion, did not know that her running was killing him. What could she have done if she had known? The man was fast gaining in the chase. Man always gained, save where death entered the race and death was slowly defeating this man.

At last, the little fellow dropped, exhausted. When she hurried back to caress and to urge him on, she knew that he could go no further. The man had disappeared behind a hill. Queen ran back with a mad, desperate impulse to bar his way to her little son. The image of a mother duck flying into the face of a coyote, flashed through her brain. She ran down one hillside and up another, her throbbing sides wet with perspiration, and in the valley below that, she saw him.

He was somewhat to the right of her. Seeing her he turned to the left. She, too, turned left and she ran trying to keep a hill between them. As soon as she heard him coming over the hill that was between them she raced over the next hill. In that way she led him several miles north, then running for the first time as fast as she could go, she fled west.

On the top of one of the hills, she stopped finally and looked back. She saw the man turn homeward and before he should see her, she dropped down into a valley and there she started back to her colt, running now as fast as ever, though her sides were white with foam. When she got to a second hilltop and found that the man had disappeared and that there was no trace of him in the air, she loped along a bit more easily.