Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

The ploughman left the buggy side where he had been standing, conversing with the visitor, and walked back toward his plow a few feet, then stopped, and continued the conversation.

“Then I can depend upon you?” said the man in the buggy.

“Oh, I’ll unhook right away,” replied the other, taking out his watch, “and I’ll be there by supper time. I’ll start just as soon as I feed the horses and get a bite myself.”

“All right!” said the stranger, striking White-black a blow with the whip that sent him forward at a bound.

Dora called after him. From the distance, even as he was running away at top speed, White-black called back, helplessly. Dora tried hard to keep her eyes on the shrinking buggy and the two white ears that protruded above it, but her eyes were hemmed in by the blinders and she found it difficult. She was obliged to raise her head over the mane of the little bay mare. Forgetting for the moment the man at the plow, she rested her head upon the bay mare’s neck and called and called again.

There was a sudden order to move on and Dora started off, expecting to pull with all her might upon the traces. She was most agreeably surprised to find that they had been unhooked and all the way to the house, stirred by emotions which she had no other way of expressing, she pulled ahead of the others, eager to get to the farmyard as if she expected to be released there so that she could go back to the world and the life for which she longed with old fervour again.

Dora was unharnessed and taken to her stall in the barn. The little bay mare was released in the corral, while the two big horses with their harness on were put into the stall next to Dora and all were fed. In an hour the farmer was ready to depart. He came into the barn and took the two horses out, and soon after, Dora heard the wagon rumbling away.

During the last few weeks, throughout the endless hours of wearing toil, Dora had yearned for the stall; but now as she stood there, fresh from the unexpected meeting with her lifelong companion, the enclosure of the barn was as harassing as the slavery of harness, and without knowing why she did it, realising fully that White-black was far out of hearing, she called and called like a broken-hearted mother from whom her foal had been taken.

Her calling was suddenly answered by the loud voice of the boy, who dashed into the barn and began quickly to saddle her. He tightened the cinch, as he always did, till Dora protested, and then put into her mouth the rider’s bit with its cruel bend. So, too, he put on the wire-net nose basket and fastened it so high that the wire-net pressed against her lips.

As soon as Dora got outdoors she looked for signs of White-black. When the boy jumped to the saddle she started away to the south, but with an angry pull of the reins he turned her to the west. In spite of the fact that she had been working to the limit of her strength, in spite of the pain in her muscles and limbs, she leaped away like a racer, and in spite of the fact that she was already going at her greatest speed, the idiotic boy, as was his habit, kept applying the spurs. On the trail along the wire fences she merely tossed her head with displeasure at every dig, but when they reached the end of the fences and he turned her diagonally across the trackless plains, the sight of the open, unobstructed prairie helped her to make her show of resentment plainer.