So Queen began to learn. She learned to eat the dead hay even though the dirt often mixed with it was revolting. She learned to drink the water though the taste and the smell of it was nauseating. “You’ll get over your fussiness,” the man often said to her when he came into the barn. Fortunately Queen did not understand what he said and the resentment she would have experienced, had she understood, never interfered with her “getting over it.” It was really better for Queen, as it is in similar circumstances sometimes better for us, to “get over it.”
But her “getting over it” was always a matter of weights and measures. Every pain set itself against some other pain and the stronger pain conquered her aversions. When so weary standing that her legs ached in the joints, carrying the weight of her body, she lay down the first time. The smell of the floor was so loathsome that she got up again after a few minutes. She remained standing till the pain became more tormenting than the smell of the floor, and then lay down again, learning to endure the smell. And it proved to be a valuable lesson in so far as it divided the endlessly dragging hours in half. Instead of standing all day and all night shifting the weight of her body from foot to foot, she would stand one hour and lie down for one hour and thus broke the killing completeness of the excruciating monotony.
The hay was constantly replaced when she had eaten what was in her manger and the pail was always refilled with water when she had drained it. This in time seemed to assure her that they did not mean to destroy her or that destruction was not going to take place immediately. Her hatred for man did not lose its intensity but her experience relegated it to some more distant corner of her soul, moved it from where it had dominated the whole of her consciousness so that she could endure her bondage as she waited for the opportunity to escape it.
CHAPTER XII
THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK
ONE day while Queen, for want of something better to do, was dozing over her empty manger from which she had eaten up every spire of hay, she heard the dog, outside, bark with unusual excitement. By the increasing rapidity with which his barks succeeded each other, she knew that something was coming. She soon heard the rumbling of a wagon and when that sound came very close and stopped it was followed by the clatter of many voices. She had allowed herself to worry about many sounds that had resulted in no harm to her and experience was teaching her not to worry. So she soon went back to her dozing, especially since the rapid patter of hoofs, as the horses drawing the wagon pulled into the yard, had quickened her memory of life with the herd.
In the midst of her dreaming she was suddenly disturbed by the entrance of two strange horses whose heavy feet beat the floor of the barn so hard that she felt every beat. The harness on these two huge horses was massy and bits of metal on it flashed with the reflection of the light of the doorway. They were led into the stall next to Queen and with absolute indifference to her they began to rummage in the manger and the oats boxes, calling greedily for food. Queen watched them with no little interest. She was afraid of the men who had come in with them but in spite of the men she could not resist the desire to touch noses with the horse nearest to her. She pushed her nose anxiously through an opening in the partition and the big horse touched it with his nose a moment, but immediately returned to his voracious search for oats. But the touch of the big nose had only intensified the burning desire in her heart for companionship, and she called more loudly and with greater appeal.
Suddenly, she felt a slap upon her back and when she almost flounced into her manger in fright, she heard laughter behind her. The man who had slapped her then went round to the front of the manger and when Queen’s eyes fell upon him she recognised him. It was he who had helped the man of the place capture and brand her. The smell of him was most repellent and she backed away as far as she could go; but he untied her ropes and pulling their ends together, around a steading of the back wall of the manger, he pulled on them, dragging her forward till her knees struck the manger, and her head was over his shoulder as he stooped. He held on to the ropes keeping her head immovable; while her owner, coming from the other end of the barn with a bunch of straps, threw them upon her head.
She struggled desperately to pull her head away but the ropes were relentless. The evil-smelling hands of her owner moved all over her face and she was powerless even to show her resentment. His big thumb forced its way between her teeth and while her jaws were apart a piece of iron slipped in between her teeth; and before she could dislodge it, the straps were forced over her ears and fastened around her neck.