But with the end of the harvest period came the autumn plowing. Had that been her first experience she would hardly have lived through it. It was not only harder work to drag the plow, that so often struck the rocks in its path and fairly pulled them from their feet, but the dust rising in clouds from under them added to labour and pain the last ounce of endurable agony. Life to Queen, in its endless repetition of toil and pain and abysmal discomfort, relieved periodically by a few hours’ rest, was not only without purpose but without excuse. Queen did not reason her way to such a conclusion, she just felt; and in this feeling there was not even the light of illusionary hope. The knowledge that a given labour will end at a certain time, gave the hope and the courage to her master which the strange ruling of life denied to Queen.
So Queen lived through the days which she could not know were ever to end, enduring labour without compensation, getting food and water that was not as good as that which the wilds had lavishly bestowed upon her. What it was to lead to, she did not know. She could not even ask. Death was but a nameless fear and the relief of death was beyond her understanding. The images of those she had known and loved in her happier past came back often in dozing moments, coming into her dreamy vision as imperceptibly as the evening comes into the day; and in going they left in her soul something that resembled hope. That was all that life offered her and it was as uncertain as were the whims of the creatures who dominated and overshadowed her existence; yet never did she reach a hilltop from which she caught a glimpse of the open prairie spaces but the hope that freedom would come to her expressed itself like a hazy light in the dark uncertainty that engulfed her.
CHAPTER XIV
ONLY JUSTICE HAD BEEN DONE
THE reaping season passed and threshing time arrived. The farmer was plowing his fields for the next year’s seeding because he had finished reaping before most of the other farmers had finished. He worked himself as hard as he worked his “critters.” That was his reputation among those who did not have anything more serious against him, but they were few. Every fall he, like most of the other homesteaders, left his farm and joined a threshing crew some twenty miles south, remaining with it until winter set in and until the wheat of the last farmer of their circuit had been threshed.
Came the last hot spell of the year. Cold winds and rain and cloud of early autumn gave way to a short Indian summer, so warm that insects long too stiff to appear more than for a few hours during the warmest part of each day, came buzzing back to life as if it were springtime. Nose-flies began to bother the horses and the dirty, old, wire-net nose-baskets were brought back into use.
The sunlit air sponged up the aroma that oozed from the wet earth, and breathing it filled Dora with old longing. Sensations of loping free over the unfenced earth, like spirits, danced enticingly before her yearning eyes. Birds flitting through the sweet air sang with the enthusiasm of spring and urged her to resist the forces of evil that fettered her. But the harness on her back was heavy. The traces that bound her to the plow and the lines that held her to the others who had forgotten what freedom is, were inexorable as the will of the man, whose whip was his only argument.
They had been dragging the unyielding plow for a few hours on the first of these delightful mornings, when, looking up as they turned at the end of a furrow, Dora saw in the distant south a horse and buggy, coming at a good pace. All the way down that furrow she saw the buggy steadily grow larger and clearer. Coming up on the next furrow she could see nothing and then as she turned once more she saw White-black coming. She stopped for just a second and the whip came down with a stinging lash. She sprang forward and pulled along with the rest; but her head was higher than it had been for some time and from her trembling lips came nervous whinnies which White-black did not hear. By the time the two moving objects met, there was a long, melodious and very welcome “whoa,” and the four horses stopped facing the one horse in the buggy.
The three horses relaxed and stood with heads lowered, grateful for this bit of rest, but Dora was too excited to stand still. With head erect, ears pricked she called to her old mate with a call that shook the whole of her weary body. White-black raised his head at the first call, looked at the four horses, sniffed somewhat like a dog and then with all his strength, replied. Hardly had he finished when Dora, exerting herself to the limit of her strength, called again. White-black started forward as he replied this time but the impatient man in the buggy, flaring up with righteous wrath, cruelly jerked the lines. White-black raised his head in pain and moved back a step. He called again but he did not attempt to go to her any more. His head lowered like that of the horses beside Dora and an expression of utter helplessness came over his white face. Dora, too, dropped her head with the full realisation of the futility of trying in any way to overcome the hold man had upon them.