Day after day man’s curse grew heavier to bear and the strangle-hold it had upon her life contracted with more telling effect. It was only a matter of a short time when its contracting hold would finally and mercifully put an end to her misery.
The short Indian summer passed away. The nights became cold and the frosts froze the mud into rock. When in lying down the stirrup pressed into some tender spot, she would endure the pain, then rise next morning and go limping over the plains. A layer of thick ice which no longer melted by the middle of the day now covered the pond. What little frozen dew that she could get, with the little grass she could crop, only intensified her thirst and the desire for water drove her to desperation. She tried to break a hole in the ice but she did not have the necessary strength. The irresistible desire for water sent her out upon the slippery ice in the hope of finding a weaker spot. A dozen feet from the edge she slipped and fell with a crash, breaking through and falling into the icy water. She was obliged to rest a while before she could summon enough energy to get up. When she did get up she was aching from head to foot and on her leg was an open, bleeding wound. She drank, however, all she could hold, then she turned and looked helplessly to the shore, afraid to step over the broken ice, falling again when at last she ventured toward it, but finally getting back.
Her sides pained her terribly and her open wound smarted and itched. She tried to lick it but only hurt it with the wire-net. She stood stolidly for a few moments, her addled brain trying to clarify the great confusion that came over it. What was she to do? What was going to become of her? Life was almost unendurable, and instincts of terrifying force guarded against the death that would have relieved her. Paroxysms of fear swept over her, filling the shadows of the desolation with beasts of prey who, leering and licking their chops, waited with terrifying patience for the weaker moment when they expected to pull her down.
Geese flew southward constantly and their ominous honking sang dirges to the death of all that life had been to her in its happier past. The skies grew grey and remained chronically grey and the atmosphere seemed filled up with a great cosmic sorrow, like the face of a child suppressing the impulse to cry. The winds reaching out from the frozen north wailed with maddening grief.
A taciturn old coyote began to worry her. He would sometimes pass her while she grazed or struggled in her attempts to graze, each time seemingly coming nearer. He filled her soul with terror. Sometimes he woke her at night with his demoniac howling and she would spring to her feet and shake and tremble with fear and cold, only to find that he was sitting on the rim of the hollow, looking down at her, his black, hateful form cut clearly against the dark grey sky. Then one morning, she awoke to find him less than a rod away, sitting on his haunches and watching her. He fled when she sprang weakly toward him with a fearful cry in which she tried desperately to be defiant; but she decided then to abandon the horror-infested basin.
The great weakness was upon her. The coyote had long recognised it and she knew it now. Whither she was to go or what she was to do, she did not know. Only she felt the need of going and she went, limping slowly and painfully, sick in body and soul, all her defiance of man crushed out of her. Thus the erstwhile Queen of the wilds lumbered painfully over the plains that seemed to no longer sustain her, going humbly back to man to dumbly beg for mercy, for even in that state of mind she felt that as man had placed his curse upon her only man could remove it.
It was a dreary, dull afternoon. The sun struggled to show itself and its weakest warmth was driven from her protruding bones by a cold, cutting gale. In her lumbering along over the plains that seemed strangely dim and uncertain she stopped every once in a while and stared like a decrepit old woman. She came at last to an open space between two patches of woodland and stopped to gaze wild-eyed upon a black shanty covered with tar-paper, and a sod barn.
The smells that came from that farmyard made it very hard for her to advance, but the intense feeling of her desperation conquered each wave of fear and step by step she made her way toward the house, stopping at last, a hundred feet away, unable to go any farther. There was no sign of life. Fear held her motionless yet hunger and thirst and weakness urged her to call for help. Her call sounded weak and hollow. She called again with greater exertion and in that call a note of conciliation was unmistakably audible.
Suddenly she saw the door of the shanty open and a woman came out. Had it been a man, all her unworded resolution would have gone to naught and Dora would have turned and fled; but a woman was a different experience. She turned nervously and walked off a short distance, but when the woman advanced toward her holding out a hand and calling with a most winning voice, she stopped and waited. When the woman came nearer Dora heard her own name. The recognition of that sound gave her so much hope and courage that she deliberately turned toward the woman who by that time was near enough to take hold of one of the pieces of strap that still hung from the bit-ring.
For a few minutes the woman patted her forehead lovingly and talked to her in a way that warmed poor Dora as if the woman had placed a blanket over her cold aching body. When the woman began leading her toward the house she followed willingly till the door opened and a little girl came out, then she stopped as if afraid; but when the woman urged she went on, keeping her eyes upon the little girl.