IT WAS midwinter and “bad pony weather”—that is, the atmospheric
conditions were likely to upset the less hardy and the younger members
of the herds. For a month there had been a succession of torrential
gales from the south-west blotting out the “Wight,” so that the thickest
pony thatch was drenched, and when, as had happened several times, a
hard frost followed a heavy downpour, the ponies suffered severely from
cold, and the youngsters’ constitutions were sorely tried.
Skewbald’s mother sheltered herself and him all ways that an old forest
pony knew. In the heaviest storms she took him to the shelter of thick
hollies or dense spruce groves, but even a forest pony must eat, and in
spite of wet, they had to leave the protection of the woods for the open
ground, where most of their provender was to be obtained. Skewbald, from
some inherited strength of fibre, suffered less than other youngsters,
many of whom were “caught in” with their mothers by the more careful
owners, and given food and shelter.
The chestnut and her foal were among those left out all the winter.
Continued frost meant little to them, protected as they were by their
thick coats. Skewbald, especially, had done his best to keep himself
warm. A great shock of hair came over his eyes, his mane hung in a thick
mass on his neck, his tail nearly reached the ground and kept his thighs
warm, while his body and legs looked half as thick again, from the
growth of long hair which covered him right down to the hoofs. Only his
nose was soft and velvety much as in summer.
After a heavy fall of snow, the mare showed her son how to kick and
scrape away until the herbage was reached. She taught him to nibble at
the gorse, hard and prickly though nutritious; with retracted lips
nipping off the spikes full of aromatic buds, and grinding the prickles
to shreds before swallowing. When the foresters cut down hollies, she
was soon on the spot, showing the youngster how to tear off the sweet
bark of the branches hacked from the poles.
On sunny mornings after sharp frost, he would lie down in the bracken,
tuck his legs under him, and doze, warm and comfortable, for hours. If
it rained, he followed his mother, and learned the trick of keeping his
back to the wind, thus lessening the surface exposed.
* * * * *
The agister riding across the moorland heard a mare neighing, and when
she repeated her call several times, trotted his mount towards her. She
was a bay roan, and after another plaint ran a little way, and stopped.
As the rider came to a clump of high gorse, he saw a foal lying in a
sheltered nook. One glance showed him it was dead, a poor thin “sucker”
with legs outstretched stiffly. “Should have been taken in before,” he
muttered to himself; “that’s the youngster I told Sam Evett about a week
ago. Some people aren’t to be trusted with animals.” On his way back he
came across first one and then another young pony looking “seedy,” and
these with their mothers were gently guided to the nearest farmyard,
where they would be taken care of until their owners fetched them away.
That night the weather became worse than ever. The storm raged through
the woods, roaring in the pines and swaying the birches and beeches,
while dead branches snapped off with cracks like rifle-fire. Skewbald
and his mother were sheltering on the lee side of a giant beech. If it
had been day, the trail of dead oyster fungus up its trunk would have
told its tale of inner decay. The mare became uneasy, and moved away
from the shelter of the vast column. She called to Skewbald, who
followed, but feeling the bite of the freezing wind, backed behind the
trunk again. There was a tremendous crack, a tearing and rending, and
the great bole snapped off above the colt’s head, and crashed to the
ground, the trunk still poised at its line of fracture, held by bark and
sound wood, so that Skewbald was untouched and unhurt.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]