Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

But the stupid boy not only failed to perceive that he might have been wrong, he resented what struck him as a challenge to his authority. He meant to show her that he was master. He jerked the reins back with all his might and dug the spurs into her sides.

“Go ahead!” he cried when she fled across the plains as if she had been frightened and were running away, “You can’t go too fast to suit me!”

Before Dora, as she sped, loomed an exceedingly large badger hole, the freshly dug, yellow earth piled high to one side. She was used to badger holes and had long ago learned to cunningly avoid them, no matter how suddenly one appeared in her vision. But despite his tactics the boy was surprised by Dora’s unusually nervous behaviour. He was not at all sure that she wasn’t really trying to run away. In spite of his fear, he could not allow himself to dispense with his bullying proclivities, and as she neared the hole he turned her head sideways and once more plied the spurs without reserve.

Where she would have, without any difficulty, avoided it on her own account, his turning her head drove her upon the mound of earth. Her leg slipped on the loose, newly-dug earth and went down the hole and as the boy attempted to leap from the saddle he was thrown forward six feet from her head, landing with a thud and a shriek.

He was not badly hurt, but he was so badly scared that he yelled like a frightened baby. When he got to his feet there was an expression of murderous intent on his face and he stretched his arms forward as he started for her as if he meant to beat the life out of her when he got hold of her. But he did not get hold of her. She had been frightened, too, and had stood looking at him, unable to decide what to do; but when she saw those hands, she reared high into the air in an effort to prevent his seizing the reins. This time he backed away afraid of the hoofs that rose threateningly before him. She turned with a gracefully defiant toss of her head and bounded away as fast as the dragging reins would allow her to go. She could hear his frantic threatening cries, but that voice had lost its power. Her chance had come at last!

By his futile cries she could tell how far she was leaving him behind her. She dared not stop to look back even when she heard his cries no more. The reins trailing on the ground impeded her flight and she felt as if he were but a short distance behind her and would soon reach her. In her mad race for freedom she kept stepping on the reins and every step tore her lips and battered her palate; but not for a moment did this actually halt her. She endured the pain like one who was aware of the fact that the goal was worth it, till all that was left of the reins dangled a few inches from her muzzle.

A mile farther west from the badger hole was a patch of woodland. When she reached it, Dora stopped for a second to look back; but she did not see the boy. A hill, in between, obstructed her view. She felt somewhat freer not seeing him; but still she went as fast as she could go working her way through the woods. The branches of the trees caught in her saddle and made going very fast impossible. Twigs hooked in the ring of the bit outside of the basket and not only hurt her but frightened her because sometimes she had sensations of being seized by some man. But despite these pulls and digs and impediments, dodging the branches as best she could, she came in half an hour to a large open space. Two or three miles beyond that she saw another patch of woods and headed straight for that. She got through this bit of woodland without much trouble and reaching another open space she followed the wall of trees in its irregular curve to the north.

Still northward she fled, though the north had failed her. It was evening, when after a steady trot for twenty-five miles she came to the strip of forest that borders upon the Saskatchewan and there, coming upon a deer path which was familiar to her, she plunged into the shadows of the woods. She was too tired and still too weary of pursuit to think of food. Coming to a windfall where she had many a time successfully hidden in the days before her captivity, she lay down to rest.

She had been down but a short time when the prodding of the hard wooden stirrup upon which she was lying forced her up. She tried to lie down again, but again the stirrup forced her to get up. Again and again she tried it, but each time with the same result, and finally with the growing fever of a new and threatening fear, she gave up the attempt to rest and went instead for a drink of water at the river. When she reached the river’s edge she stopped to stare across to the wilds beyond. There was a wish in her heart that she could find some way of getting across the moving water, but that wish was dulled by a vague realisation of the fact that now, without her old followers, getting across would not be wholly satisfactory.

A great sad stillness brooded over the river, hanging over the silvery reflections of the sky-line like a dome of mist that rested upon the dreary shadows of the trees and banks on each side. Confinement and toil had sickened Dora’s love of the wilds, though memory sought to exalt it as of old, and the beauty of the wilderness, without her companions, was only desolation. A nameless longing in her heart and a complexity of fears she had never experienced before seized upon her like a disease. It was as if she expected a fatal blow from some hidden enemy that moved about her in every possible direction.