When these futile attempts to capture her became too annoying, Queen would invariably turn to the north. The ominous barbed wire fences which year after year encroached upon the wild, somehow never appeared on the northern horizon. North, always north, she went, maneuvering with such cunning about the hills and through the deeper valleys, that for every mile she was able to put between herself and her pursuers, they were obliged to travel five.
The Canadian Government embarked upon a campaign of advertisement to urge farmers in the United States to go north and take up homesteads in Alberta. Men sold their farms in the northwestern states and moved across the border. Every year a new crop of homesteader’s shacks appeared to baffle the desolation. To be sure, many a shack built hopefully one year stood gaping like a skull the next; but in spite of the discouraging features of the country, much of the encroachment yearly made upon Queen’s domains was permanent.
Every springtime with the blossoming of the wild rosebushes and the prairie cacti, new fence posts with their glittering lines of barbed wire cut some small portion of her territory on the east, the south and the west. Slowly man crept northward and with an inborn faith in the justice and the security of the wilds, Queen fled at his approach.
CHAPTER X
THE DOORS OF THE TRAP SHUT
THE years rolled by. Old tragic hurts were dulled by the mists of passing time and every hour of the unfettered present came bringing some new joy. New children came to Queen and in the love of each succeeding one, Queen rejoiced as if it were the first and only one. Carefully she led them all to the doorway of maturity and there, since life willed it so, she gave them over to the herd, to live and provide for themselves and to abide by the unwritten laws of the herd in the finest exemplification of the Golden Rule on earth. The friends who died or who suddenly disappeared she would miss for a long while, sometimes spending months in search of them, then she would transfer her love of them to some other member of the brotherhood, just as she transferred her mother-love from the older to the younger of her offspring.
The shadowy creatures of the receding past often came, walking into the dozing memory at nightfall. Queen would remain lying, chewing absent-mindedly and watching them, her contentment undisturbed, loving the sadness that clung to them, as we love the sadness that clings to our sweetest music.
There came a spring of unusual activity on the part of man, and his daily appearance intruded so threateningly upon the herd, that they abandoned the land which had become endeared to them and journeyed north almost steadily for many days.
They came upon a pleasant valley abounding in delicious, virgin grass and many small ponds; and they took possession of it. But at midnight, while they were resting, they were suddenly aroused by a shrieking noise which was followed by a long-drawn rattle, like distant thunder.