Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

When she got up again she was afraid to move a foot. One of the men pulled on the rope that gripped her neck. Queen expected to be hurt again. She braced herself against the earth with all four legs, and pulled back. A severe lash on the haunch sent her limping to the side. The man behind followed her while the man in front ran off a few paces ahead, and pulled again. Several repetitions of this performance brought her to the open gateway of the fence. Near the gateway was the house and beyond the house was the barn. Experience had taught her to keep away from men’s shacks and the smell of the barn where she had once seen White-black, and her colt had been imprisoned, came back faintly and called upon her to resist. There were the men about her. There was the boy and at his heels, barking ferociously, was the dog. But in spite of them she made another attempt to get away and once more earned a violent throw to the ground.

The fall this time stunned her. She stretched out her head and lay motionless a moment, breathing very heavily and groaning as if she were dying. The man behind her struck her with his rope. Her skin quivered and another groan forced its way out between her clenched teeth. Her consciousness came back slowly. She heard the barking of the dog and the voices of the men and above their voices the shriller voice of the boy. She was sick at her heart and stomach. She felt as if she didn’t care what they did any more. But a very severe blow with the end of the rope striking a tender spot on her flanks brought her to her senses. She felt as if a wave of cold water had swept over her. She managed to get to her feet. As she stood, bewildered, not knowing what to do, and feeling the terrible necessity of doing something, her whole body shook with an uncontrollable tremour.

The injustice of all this torture aroused an insane resentment; and, casting a glance over the silent prairies that stretched away to the hazy horizon, within her grasp, yet cruelly denied her, she leaped toward the open with all her waning strength, so suddenly and so unexpectedly that the man behind her, clinging to the rope, was thrown to the ground and the man in front barely escaped her front legs.

The cries of men and boy and dog broke fearfully upon her ears and the ferocious dog leaped at her throat. He fell back without having touched her but she lifted a hoof to strike him and thus pulling on the rope that tied that foot to a hind leg she threw herself to the ground. She fell outside of the gateway and within a dozen yards of the barn-door which stood gapingly open and black, ready to swallow her.

The man behind her beat her with his rope and kicked her unmercifully; but even if she could have risen she would not have done so; and they finally decided to let her rest a while.

The beating commenced all over again and she was forced to her feet. With another swing of the rope she started off nervously before it struck her. The man in front ran on each time she went forward and in that way they got her to the barn-door. But she was afraid to enter. The boy had brought the man behind her a whip and when that came down upon her back raising a welt, she involuntarily rushed into the barn to escape it.

Thus they got her into a stall and tied her securely. One man got into the manger and against all her fearful protestations managed to force a halter upon her head. With double ropes tied to the ring of the halter they tied two rope ends to each side of the manger, then removed the ropes with which they had first tied her; and she almost killed one of the men in the process. Finally, they left her alone.

It was so dark and damp and dirty in the barn. The foul smells were revolting. When her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she made out a horse, chewing contentedly a short distance away, and the sight of him relieved her immeasurably. She called to him but he went on chewing and ignored her call. Queen was hurt. She looked at him sadly, then half closed her eyes. But in a few minutes she called to him again and more forcibly. This time the old glutton replied to her but with little enthusiasm, rather with annoyance, for he didn’t like it a bit that she made him take time from his chewing to reply to her.

The ropes did not allow her to see him very well, but she watched him a moment out of the corner of her eye and felt as she watched him that somehow he was in league with man, the usurper of her liberty. She hated him and looked no more in his direction. Over her came full force the horror of her bondage and the fearful realisation that her every effort to escape it would prove futile. Yet her thoughts contradicted each other and where some images came out of her memory and experience and supported her fear, others came just as strongly and allayed it. She remembered, for instance, White-black tied in his stall in the sod barn where her colt had been imprisoned and then she saw him coming over the plains tied to the old sorrel work-horse. So she saw him in many happier moods on the open plains long after that. Together with the endless stream of sensations of pain, from the wound on her shoulder and from other wounds on her body, came visions of familiar nooks on the prairies and in the woods. Like ghosts these visions came through the smelling darkness and haunted her.

At times these visions drove her frantic and she would pull and tug and tear and kick till her energy was spent and after every momentary storm there was some new wound to torment her. There was a deep gash on her upper lip that bothered her almost as much as the burn on her shoulder, for blood kept trickling from it into her nose and mouth and the taste and the smell of blood were as tormenting as the pain.