Beyond Rope and Fence

by David Grew

Here at last they rested, though the buckskin mare kept anxious vigil for the first sign of any one pursuing them. The mothers began grazing slowly while their young, moving with them, strove to get the milk they felt belonged to them. As soon as the colts had had all the milk there was for them they went leisurely in search of tender grasses and soon all were grazing as if nothing had ever happened.

But the buckskin mare was still worried. She walked to the two wires that barred her way and with her head above the upper wire she gazed to the north. A quarter of a mile away, the coulee ended. Its floor curved upward like the bottom of a ship. Where it ended and the prairie floor began there was a cluster of sagebrush. The evening was rapidly turning the sage into a silhouette against the bright background of the sky. Fear of pursuit came back with the coming of the night and the old mare roused herself. With a sudden impulse she backed away from the wires and dropped to her knees. Pushing her head under the lower wire she moved cautiously forward, an inch at a time. Slowly she felt the wire move backward over her body and each time the barb dug through her skin she stopped and tried to crouch lower. With a sharp scratch it rolled over her withers and stuck painfully into her back. She tried again to crouch down lower, but failing to rid herself of the barb, she rested a moment.

The barb hurt her considerably and she made a strenuous effort to lower herself out of its reach, and in so doing pressed her outstretched muzzle right into a rosebush. While the pain of thorns still pricked her lips there was a sudden flash of white right before her eyes and a thump on the ground as if a rock had been thrown at her. With all the strength in her body, forgetting in her fright the wire on her back, she sprang backward to her feet, snapping the lower wire and stretching the upper one as if it had been a string.

Her frightened jump, the momentary struggle with the upper wire that had caught in her mane, and the cry that escaped her, set the group into a stampede, and she herself, when finally freed from the entangling wire, dashed off to the rear for a dozen rods. The slopes of the coulee were dotted with the mares and colts who had fled in every direction. Outside the range and on the rim of the coulee lay a silly rabbit, stretching himself and gazing down with foolish eyes.

There was nothing dangerous visible and nothing in the air to worry her, so the old mare started slowly and cautiously back again toward the one wire now hanging limply, and, in one place, less than two feet from the ground. There she sniffed about carefully and suddenly raising her head, she caught sight of the rabbit, as he was bounding away.

There were many things that the old buckskin was afraid of, but a rabbit was not one of them. Realising that she had allowed herself to become alarmed at nothing, she went at her task with greater determination. She was about to get down to her knees again when she realised that the remaining wire was now low enough for her to step over it. Carefully lifting each leg, her skin quivering with her excitement, the buckskin mare stepped over the wire into freedom; and little Queen, frightened to see her mother beyond the fence, made it with a single leap.

The old buckskin was for running now as fast as she could for the north, but she wanted the rest of the mares to go with her. She turned to look at them. There they were grazing at various points with absolute indifference to the great achievement she had consummated. She called to them to follow, but beyond a busy reply they paid no heed to her. When, however, they heard the sound of her tearing the more abundant grass outside the range, they awoke to the fact that they were not getting all they might get. Whereas the ideal of liberty had been an abstraction to them, the fact of abundant grass was a reality, and it was not many minutes before, one by one, they had all made their way over the hanging wire.

The late autumn nights had steadily grown colder and, since hollows are colder than the higher portions of the prairie at night, they moved rapidly to the plains above. Round about them lay the silent night, dark and infinite, and the stars looked down upon its hidden desolation. Closely together they grazed, lips fairly touching lips, without protest or impatience. As they grazed, they moved on to the north, and the rhythmic tear-tear of grass interspersed with rhythmic footfalls was the accompanying cadence of their half-unconscious flight.

Some four miles from the range, they slept for the night on a low round hill and when dawn came they found the earth covered white with frost. The sun rose, putting a slight tinge of red into the whiteness, and Queen was so curious about it she went looking for the spots where it was thickest and licked it off the sage or rosebushes.

To warm up they raced for half an hour, following the old buckskin to the north, then spent the rest of the morning grazing and moving leisurely. It was well on toward the middle of the day when an open triangle of honking geese, high in the air, made them look up. The old mare watched the geese move across the sky till they were lost in the south and was just about to return to her grazing when she saw two small objects appear on the horizon. They were so far away that they were indiscernible, but she did not wait to make certain what they were. With a call that frightened the little herd she turned north and fled.