Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

Most of the afternoon it took before all the colts in the first section had been branded and mutilated. It was a noisy, dusty, cruel process; and the men, perspiring heavily, their faces wet and black with the dust that settled on them, looked like tormenting imps of hell; but they were no more to be blamed for the cruelty that was theirs to do than were their helpless victims.

All that clamour of pain and struggle could not disturb the mist-like loneliness that brooded over the far-reaching distance. On the other side of the river, visible beyond less rugged banks, stretched a lifeless country of hills and plains, so desolate and so motionless that the very stones that dotted them seemed with their feeble reflections to be futilely protesting against their destitution.

A pause came to the torturous struggle. The gate of the first corral was opened and the sickened little colts shambled out into the open where their frantic mothers caressed them, then led them away to the east. The men walked off and disappeared in the house. Taking advantage of the silence and the respite, the still captive colts, one after another, took to sucking. It was not very long, however, before they were interrupted by the reappearance of the men. The skin on every captive began to tremble and the eight mothers with their eight colts packed into one corner.

One man, carrying a long stick, entered the section and advanced to the middle while the other stationed himself at the gate. First the man with the stick forced the group to move into the opposite corner, then, after a long struggle, he singled out the buckskin mare. He had driven her toward the gate but a few feet, when little Queen, bending so low that she passed under the stick, rushed out of reach of it and gained her mother’s side. Had it not been for the vigilance of the man at the gate they would have both escaped. It was getting to be late in the afternoon and the man was tired and impatient. As with most impatient people, his common sense gave way to his impatience. He was not only determined to get the buckskin mare out first, but he was even more anxious to punish her. He singled her out again and reaching her, struck her with his stick. In pain and fright, the mare rushed for the gate. It was partially opened and she was half way out when a cry from little Queen, who saw her leaving her, brought her to her senses.

Rebelliously, she reared and fell with full force upon the gate. It swung violently backward, striking the man who held it so severely that it knocked him off his feet and sent him rolling to the wall. The second man who was trying to prevent Queen from following her mother was away over at the other end of the corral. The gateman’s cry and the image of him on the dusty ground, so confused the other that for a few moments he stood still, unable to move a muscle. When he saw his partner pick himself up, he realised that he should have hurried to the gate and closed it; but by that time the whole group had escaped and were racing for the hills, the buckskin mare in the lead and her precious Queen eagerly behind her.

With a majestic toss of her head, conscious of having scored a victory, and determined to keep it, the buckskin mare fled across the flats. It was now not only the overwhelming desire to get away. Vaguely she realised that she had crossed the man’s will and that that was a punishable offence.

The mothers whose foals had been branded were off on a field at the foot of the hills. The field had yielded a crop of oats and the oats had been reaped and taken from the field; but there was still enough grain left to make it worth their while to remain there. If, when they followed the fugitives with their eyes, they had any desire to go along, they knew that their sickened colts would not go with them.

The buckskin mare gave them hardly a glance. She struck up the steep incline with risky speed, bent upon getting out of the men’s reach, as soon as was possible. The men, on the other hand, were at a disadvantage. Before they could saddle their ponies, the mares, they knew, would be off somewhere at the other end of the range. They realised, too, that the mares were now so excited that they would have very great difficulty in rounding them up. They were angry at the rebellious mare, but these animals were their property and they did not want to hurt them. Another struggle at that time, they felt, might even endanger their own lives. The man who had been knocked over was not only as tired as the other fellow was, but he was aching from head to foot. Besides, the afternoon was rapidly giving way to early evening. They decided to finish the branding on the following day.

But to the buckskin mare the spaces behind her seemed peopled with imaginary pursuers, and she struggled up the slippery incline as if her very life depended upon getting to the top and away. The rest of the mares that fled with her and their little ones seemed to find greater difficulty in getting to the top, but they followed as eagerly. Rocks and sand rolled thunderously down behind them and the dust rose from the mouth of the canyon like volcanic smoke.

When they finally reached the level plains above, the old mare was white with foam. They had that afternoon been rounded up in a hollow toward the northeast of where they now were and fear of being rounded up again sent the buckskin mare to the west. Her usual fear of man, many times intensified by the feeling that now she would be severely punished for breaking loose, aroused in her old head the instinctive desire of the animal that is pursued, to get under cover. Though there was neither sight nor sound of any one behind her, she ran with might and main for the coulee that she knew was a mile and a half to the west, and until she had turned over the lip of the coulee and had reached the very end of its slope, she did not slacken her pace, several times almost breaking a leg in badger holes that she avoided by only a hair’s breadth. Down in the gulch there was a path, made by the water of the melted snow in spring as it had wound its way to the river. Along this path, which led northward, they trotted without stopping till they came to where the range fence forced them to halt.