Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

There followed a long period of fair weather in which the snows hardened and shrank and then one day, as they were digging for grass, they were surprised by three men on horseback on a hill to the south and east, less than a quarter of a mile away. The horsemen had come upon them so suddenly that Queen, confounded, stood looking at them a few minutes, transfixed with fear. She recognised the man who had captured her on the big horse that had worked beside her in the plow. Next to him was the boy on the little bay mare and his cry of “There she is!” fully aroused Queen.

The little herd, however, had no difficulty in getting away from them, because they had no burdens on their backs and they were now more used to the deep snows on the open plains than the horses that were chasing them. The horsemen kept behind them for a long while and then disappeared. But Queen was too wise to end her flight there. She knew that even though the men gave up the chase that day they would appear again the next, or soon after that.

Out of the misery and discomfort of her captivity she had just emerged. She had found her companions and the life for which she had hungered all through those unhappy months. Hardly had she realised the full extent of her good fortune when man reappeared to take it all away from her. But Queen was in no submissive mood. She had fought for her freedom and she would fight again. She would watch with such care that she would not again be caught at a disadvantage. She hardly gave herself time to eat. Her ears were constantly pricked high. Her eyes, afire with her emotions, never for a moment abandoned their vigilance. But her nervous dread of man soured the sweetness of the wilds and Queen moved over the snows with the old feeling of the trap beating in her heart, moved without resting and, out of habit, moved northward.

They came next day to the strip of woodland whose heroic poplars silently guard the Saskatchewan. There they stopped and there the full horror of the trap took possession of Queen. She was afraid of her own shadow and the slightest sound startled her. A partridge drumming in the woods sent her madly loping through space.

The winter evening came early. The distant sun lowered in the southwest with a sad, yellow glare; and in the north a gleaming, pearly streak foretold a brilliant display of northern lights. That streak interested Queen and she watched it as the darkness thickened, and as she watched it, looking up from time to time, it grew brighter. Faint shimmering colours appeared at the eastern end of the streak and slowly moved across it to the west, vanishing in the west and reappearing brighter in the east. Many times she had seen these lights, but only once, somewhere in her half-forgotten childhood, had she seen them so bright and so fascinating.

They were standing directly in front of a cleft in the shadowy wall of trees. The cleft led like a roadway to the banks and the river below. There they could see more of the lights, the portion that glowed in the lower part of the sky and danced about over the shadowy tops of the trees on the other shore.

It was during a moment when the lights were so compelling that all of them had stopped to look when there appeared in the cleft the giant body of a moose, his antlers like a magnificent oak cut clearly against the scintillating colours of the aurora borealis. His coming had been so swift, so sudden and so imperceptible that it took them some time to realise that a living thing stood within a few yards of them, looking at them. The herd hastily retreated a short distance; but as soon as they stopped to look back the enormous animal got frightened, turned and vanished down the banks.

Queen was very curious. She trotted carefully after him and the rest of the herd kept to her tracks. When Queen’s head appeared where the plains turn over the banks, the moose looked up at her a moment and then like a rabbit shot straight across the river. Beyond the centre of the frozen river he stopped for a moment to look back once more, then leaped on and vanished in the woods beyond, leaving behind him, across the ice of the erstwhile invincible Saskatchewan the defiant shadow of his trail.

An overwhelming impulse flared up in Queen’s soul. A great confusion of fear and hope seized upon her heart. So nervous that every muscle in her body trembled, she made her way down the banks and with infinite fear and caution she took the trail of the moose. She walked along slowly and very carefully and stopped often to take bites of the snow on the ice as if she were testing it and at the same time trying to quench the fires that were burning within her. The others hesitated a moment, but when they saw her nearly half way across, they faithfully followed her.

In the woods north of the river, they camped for the night. Next day they went on, penetrating the woods and following the trail of the moose till they came upon an open space a mile beyond the river. There they remained for the rest of the winter, feeding upon grass the like of which they had only at rare times come upon.