Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

He was a big, ferocious-looking, wolf-like dog, much bigger than the average coyote and many times as savage. At his approach, the other horses started away but Queen, who was not ready to part from her companions again so soon, stopped to fight him. He remained a short distance away from her, barking angrily, turning his head backward now and then as if he waited for reinforcement, his eyes glaring at her threateningly. The other horses had turned about and stopped to watch the battle, and Queen, feeling encouraged by their watching, waited for him to come nearer.

But suddenly, taking her eyes off the beast for just a moment, she saw two men lead two saddle ponies into the barbed wire enclosure and she made a dash for the fence, hoping to jump over it before they arrived. Just as soon as she started off the dog rushed at her with a bark and a snarl. In terror of him, she turned to strike at him with her hoof, but as soon as she turned the dog sprang out of reach. When she turned once more for the fence the dog seized her tail. She struck him with a hind leg. He let go his hold of the tail and dug his fangs into her leg.

Had there been no men coming, she might have fought it out with him. As it was they were already racing toward her and in desperation, Queen loped after the rest of the horses who were now stampeding away to the other end of the pasture. When she reached her companions she plunged into their midst as if she expected them to protect her.

The men first drove the entire group to the corner nearest to the shack and there setting the dog upon her they separated her from the other horses. They continued to urge the dog to go at her and his ferocious teeth and the nerve wracking noise he was making so confused her that she stopped to fight him almost disregarding the two men, whose ropes, as she faced the dog, sailed over and dropped upon her head.

The ropes so alarmed her that she paid no more attention to the dog. She reared in an effort to pull her head from the loops but this only tightened their hateful grip. While she was uselessly struggling the men slipped from their saddles and fastened the ends of their ropes to a fence post on each side of the corner. Then slowly they pulled the ropes in, forcing her back. Despite the pain it gave her, Queen tugged and pulled and reared. The men then got some more ropes from a boy who came with them from the shack and with these new ropes they first caught a front leg and after a long struggle caught a hind one, then pulling on the ropes they threw her to the ground.

She fell with a sickening thud. A spell of dizziness came upon her and she half shut her eyes as consciousness began slipping from her. But fear and assailing odours brought her to her senses. She made a violent effort to continue the struggle, but a man leaped for her head and seized her nose bone with both his hands. With a quick twist he turned her nose upward and she lay absolutely helpless. She snorted and groaned but she could not rise. She felt the bony fingers of the man gripping her nose bone and felt the other man winding ropes about her legs.

What they wanted with her she could not know. She thought of the coyote as she had seen him sitting over and feasting upon her colt. Her skin quivered all over her body and she tried once more to throw off the appalling weights that kept her down; but her attempts only proved to her how hopelessly she was in their power, how easy it was for them to do just what they liked with her. She expected them at any moment to begin tearing the flesh from her body.

The smell of man was nauseating, their voices were terrifying and it seemed as if she just could not endure the pain that the man’s fingers gave her as they dug round her nose bone; yet worse than all this was the smoke and the smell of fire that suddenly filled the atmosphere, bringing terrors out of her darkened past to help in her torture.

Suddenly she felt a pain that was worse than any pain she had ever experienced in her life before. They were pressing some terrible instrument into her shoulder, an instrument that penetrated the skin like the teeth of a dog but a thousand times more painfully. All her hatred, all her fear combined, and with a strength that the greedy men admired she began to struggle again. As she struggled, the man gripped tighter on her nose bone and the pain of his digging fingers took her mind off the burning pain in her shoulder.

When she least expected it, the man sprang away from her head, leaving it free. She made an attempt at once to get back upon her feet, but her legs were still tied and she fell back again to the ground. She raised her head and glared fearfully at her tormentors. In the far distance she caught a glimpse of the other horses, grazing indifferently. The two men stood a few feet away, looking down upon her and talking to each other.