The Biography of a Prairie Girl

by Eleanor Gates

In the early afternoon, as they worked steadily, the clouds began to mass darker across the gray sky; and the air, warm throughout the morning, became chill. A rain-storm seemed on the way, and the big brothers hurried so as to get the house covered before a shower came to wash the walls. Two were left to lay the sods, and the other set about sawing scantlings into lengths for the framework of the hip-roof, while their mother came out and bound straw into flat bunches for the thatch.

Up in the river meadows, the little girl, secure in her seat on the pinto, rode to and fro along the southern edge of the herd, in front of the lowered foreheads and tossing horns of the cattle. Behind her came the blind black colt, switching his tail and whinnying fretfully; but, despite his pleading, the little girl, eager to win the reward she had been promised, never paused in her sentry duty. The pinto fretted, too, for she also was hungry. But the little girl held the short bridle-reins tight and did not let the mare get her nose to the ground lest they slip over her head and out of reach.

The dogs were stretched lazily on some soft badger mounds not far away. The St. Bernard was not with them, for the big brothers were afraid that Napoleon, the white bull, would gore him, and had chained him up at home; and the collie was watching the sheep around the sloughs to the south. So only the wolf-dogs, with Luffree at their head, helped the little girl turn an animal back when it broke from the rest and started toward the grain.

The little girl rode faithfully before the herd, not even stopping to join the dogs in their chase after a kit-fox that was boldly passing among the cattle. And when the hunt was over and the cows went down the runway to the river, she followed in their train, with the pinto still tugging hard at the reins. But at the bank she forgot how tired her arms were, for the pack had returned and were amusing themselves by barking and biting at the snakes that were lying along the strip of sand, and by pursuing them as they scattered to the water or to the shelter of the willows at its edge. When the herd had drunk their fill, she slowly rode eastward, watching them carefully as they spread out across the meadow.

It was then that the clouds came up and the air turned cool. And it was then that, accidentally, and in one unhappy moment, the little girl brought all her faithful work to naught, imperiled her birthday hopes, and cast herself adrift upon the prairie like a voyager in a rudderless boat. For, in stooping to pull the sheepskin saddle-blanket over her bare legs, she unthinkingly let go of the bridle, and, the pinto putting her head down to graze, the short reins slipped along her mane until they rested just behind her ears—far out of reach.

The little girl slapped her as hard as she could with her hands; but, even when the mare raised her head and walked about, the little girl could not get at the reins because she was tightly fastened to the girth. So the pinto went where she pleased, paying no attention to angry commands, or to the pounding inflicted upon her flanks by the fists of the irate little girl.

All this time the herd, too, fed where it chose and had moved out of the meadows toward the farm. The little girl was powerless to turn it, and when she set the pack at the cattle they only ran faster than ever toward the fields. So she called the dogs off. Slowly, but surely, the cows led the forbidden way, and as the little girl moved about on the pinto, powerless to go where she wished or to turn them back, she watched them, swelling with very rage in her helplessness, and wept bitterly.

When the herd was out of sight over the rise south of the meadow, the pinto, with her reluctant rider, again went riverward. This time the mare took a good drink, wading in so far that the little girl's anger turned to fear and she cried harder than ever. As the horse came out of the stream, the loud yur, yur, of a frightened crow, whose nest was in the willow fringe, startled the blind black colt, and he started on a run up the river. His mother, whinnying loudly, followed him and broke into such a hard gallop that the little girl was bounced rudely about and would have fallen to the ground had not the hame-straps firmly held her.

Away they went, the colt in the lead and the pinto after, until they reached the bunch of cottonwoods far up the stream where the yanging wild geese had their nests. Then the colt came to a halt and waited tremblingly for his anxious mother.

The black colt had a wild fear of crows, for it was due to them that he had been blind ever since, a few days after his birth, he had accompanied his mother across the reservation road to the sloughs beyond. He had trotted happily at her side as they went, but late in the evening had run one knobby leg into a hole in the prairie-dog village and taken a bad tumble. He had not been able to rise again, and, in struggling had got wedged upon his back between two mounds, so that he had to lie, feet up, all night. His mother had fed near him till dark came on, and had stood over him through the night; and not till the sun was well up did she leave him to go for water. It was then that he had been blinded, for some crows, flying by to the stubble-fields around the farm-house, had thought him dead and had alighted beside him with inquiring cries.