Midnight

by Rutherford G. Montgomery

The spot where Midnight landed was only a few yards below the place where he had landed when the silvertip shoved him over the edge. He got to his feet panting and blowing. For a long time he stood trembling, favoring his pain-raked shoulder. Then with a squeal of defiance he hobbled along the ledge and down to the little meadow where he had lived before the band came to the mesa. He was eager to cross the crevice again and join the horses above, but when he reached the aspen grove he halted to ease the pains shooting through his shoulder. After a bit he moved on. He halted at the edge of the crevice and stood listening. He did not try to leap across the narrow chasm, he would have to wait until the pain left his shoulder. Above he could hear the triumphant snorting and calling of the chestnut stallion. Slowly he turned and walked back to the aspen grove. After a time he lay down on a bed of dead leaves and grass.

He lay still and listened. From the mesa came the sounds of the feeding herd. For a time the chestnut pranced about nickering and snorting. The mares fed eagerly, not paying any attention to him, except when he came close to one of them. The ears of the little horse in the aspen grove followed every sound intently. He snorted and struggled painfully to his feet when the chestnut blasted a warning to the mares. There was a rolling thunder of hoofs as the wild band charged across the mesa and into the timber. Midnight tried to race to the crevice but at the first step he stumbled and almost fell. Slowly he hobbled to the edge where he stood shaking his head and calling loudly. The rhythm of the pounding hoofs died away quickly and Midnight was alone again. He turned back and hobbled at a slow walk toward his bed in the aspen grove.

In the days which followed Midnight listened for the sound of racing hoofs and the whinny of the band, but the big stallion did not lead the mares back to the high mesa. He ranged far up on the side of the Crazy Kills where the trails were steep and broken and the meadows small and surrounded by dense cover. In the barrens close to timber line few cattle ranged and none of Major Howard’s riders cared to make the steep climb, knowing the stray cows that climbed up that high would come down long before roundup time.

Midnight dropped into his former way of living. As soon as his shoulder became sound he began making his usual rounds of the little race course. And many times he charged to the edge of the crevice where he would slide to a halt and stand snorting and shaking his head. His leg was still stiff, too stiff for so long a jump, and he did not have the nearness of mares to fill him with wild excitement. He did not forget the wild band and the pinto filly, but his wild desire for freedom was not hot and driving. His body filled out and his legs and chest took on a ruggedness which made him lose the coltish look.

The old beavers increased their efforts. Helped by a brood of youngsters, they cut trees and peeled bark from early morning until late at night. They had long since ceased to worry about being about by daylight. The seclusion of the little meadow had changed their habits a great deal. Their storehouses were bulging but they worked feverishly anyway, as though they were facing a famine period. And they built houses over the land openings where their runways came to the surface of the meadow, tall piles of mud and sticks, laced together and padded down into a tough, warm masonry which would keep out the biting frosts of winter. Midnight watched them lazily. He could not know they were expecting another hard winter. But he did have an uneasy feeling when the first frosts came. The wild strain in his blood stirred and he would have left the high country had he been free to go. One morning he trotted to the edge of the meadow and found it white with glistening frost. The white carpet disturbed him. He rushed to the edge of the crevice and stood there snorting and pawing. But he did not try the long jump.

The frosts deepened. The aspen leaves swirled down to cover the roots, the bulbs and the seeds bedded under the soft loam. The grass turned brown and the big spruce trees standing close to the wall moaned as a cold wind swept down from the new snow fields high on the barren peaks of the Crazy Kills. The haze of an Indian summer day was swept away by the first snow of winter and again the world turned white and the air became snapping cold. Midnight put on his heavy robe of shaggy hair which turned the sharp blasts whirling downward.

The snow deepened and Midnight dug for grass. He moved his bedground to a needle-padded spot under a giant spruce where the snow never fell. Now he was interested only in a battle to keep his belly filled. He was still growing and his body demanded food for new muscles and sinews as well as for warmth. The storms came and the snow on the meadow became deeper and deeper. The mesa above was lashed by bitter winds but the sheltered meadow did not feel their lash. On its surface the snow settled down in loose, deep smoothness which formed a warm blanket for the grass and the flowers. Great drifts formed along the rim above, fanned out by the wind and the drifting snow on the upper bench. Their white lips thrust far out over the edge of the canyon like the rounded curves of giant mushrooms.

One moonlit night as Midnight lay on his dry bed of needles he heard a strange sound and felt the earth tremble under him. The sound came from the rim above. He peered upward but could see nothing except the protruding snowbanks and the gleaming whiteness of the world outside his shelter. The sound was a deep, grating rumble that reminded him of distant thunder. One of the overhanging lips of snow had broken under the great weight of tons of snow and had settled down. For a few minutes it moved slowly, grinding rocks off the wall, settling, sliding, packing the snow into ice. Then its speed increased and the dull rumble broke into a terrible roar as thousands of tons of snow shot downward. Midnight leaped to his feet and trembled as he watched.

The mass of snow plunged and boiled as it shot downward. It seethed around a stand of spruce. The big trees, many of them several feet through at the butt, jerked and swayed like saplings, then went down to be swallowed up by the maelstrom of ice and snow. Boulders were torn from their beds and from the face of the cliff. They were ground to sand in the maw of the slide. The whole cataract became dirty gray in color. Its roar shook the mesa as it poured into Shadow Canyon. A startled snowshoe rabbit, routed from his bed under a fallen log, leaped into the air, plunged forward, then bounced high as the dirty mass caught him. For a moment he hung above the seething mass, then dropped into it and vanished, ground to nothingness.

The slide struck the lower end of the little mesa. It shot into the deep crevice, filling it full, then boiling over to roll on down into the main canyon. It cut a swath through the spruces and aspens growing on the steep slope of the big gulch. The timber went down like grass before the bar of a mowing machine.