RETRIBUTION
EVERY dawn on the plains is the miracle of creation, and the best
philosophy for man or animal lies in this daily beginning. “Endure
Sorrow’s night,” says the dawn, “then rise with me and plan for the
day.”
Before her on the emerging plain lay a suspicious-looking stone. Without
moving her head, Queen regarded it a long time. It was altogether too
woolly for a stone. Her scrutiny brought strange sensations and her
heart began to beat rapidly. A gust of soft morning breeze swept down
from the hill and the stone moved. Queen sprang to her feet.
With its hungry face turned toward her, the coyote glided away. Sorrow’s
night was over and Queen loped after him with a new notion of life. The
faster and the more fearfully he ran, the more faith Queen acquired in
her own superiority, the more consolation she derived from the hope and
the will to crush him, as she had crushed the other one.
He swung off toward the northwest. She too turned northwest. He stopped
to sit down on his haunches and to look back at her, to learn if
possible the purpose of this uncanny mare. But as soon as he sat down
she seemed to increase her effort to reach him. When she got too near,
he bounded away out of reach. When he tried to turn in a new direction,
she turned and headed him off, forcing him north against his will.
Wherever he went she pursued him doggedly. Over hills, down into
valleys, around sloughs, she went driven by emotions she had never
experienced before. But while these emotions drove her, others retarded
her and the coyote began to leave her farther and farther behind,
growing smaller and smaller in the distance. Finally Queen abandoned the
chase and turned with satisfaction to grazing.
Long after he had disappeared, however, Queen scrutinised the indistinct
spaces in which he had sunk out of sight. She had been grazing a long
while and had almost forgotten about the coyote, when she looked up once
more and discovered a tiny object moving on the sky-line. There was no
doubt in Queen’s mind as to what that object was. She galloped away at
full speed and did not stop till she was out of breath. For a while she
lost sight of the object, because of a deep and winding hollow through
which she was obliged to pass, but when she reached a high place again,
she beheld with great joy a group of horses still so far away that they
did not notice her coming.
She called constantly as she ran, though she did so more to express her
own excitement than with any hope of getting their attention. When at
last they heard her, every head went up and every pair of ears turned
forward. The big, brown colt, her old rival in the race, left the group
first and started for her. As soon as she recognised him, Queen knew
that she had found her old companions. Her joy was insuppressible. She
rushed from one to the other and caressed the little colts till they
fled in terror of her passion.
There was a brown, fuzzy little fellow, the foal of a big, good-natured
sorrel mare. Queen caressed it emotionally. The little fellow endured it
without any kind of manifestation for a little while, then suddenly he
decided to take advantage of the situation. Queen gave him her milk most
willingly, but his mother watched the performance with growing
dissatisfaction. When he had had about all he could have she jumped at
him to prevent him from going back for more and incidentally showed her
jealousy by pretending to bite Queen. Queen sprang out of the way,
manifesting clearly her disinclination to fight over it.
In spite of the big mare’s protests, Queen fed him again before
nightfall. When the mother objected again, she relinquished temporarily
and led the whole group in a merry race round the hill top. Her desire
to be active, born of emotions that would not down within her, was
contagious. She could not rest and every time she started off with a
toss of her head, the herd was at her heels.
In spite of all the weary days of journeying in the tragic period that
had just passed out of her life, so tense was Queen’s joy at meeting her
companions, so full was her life again, now that she had friends to love
life with, and a colt to drink her milk, that she seemed to have lost
the faculty of feeling weariness, and frisked about in the shower of
moonlight like a gratified colt.
Not far off lay the carcass of a dead horse, from which life, tired of
baffling snows all winter and toiling for man all summer, had departed.
Over this carcass a pack of coyotes were savagely feasting and their
hymns to the god of coyotedom disturbed Queen’s revelry. Several times
she ran off a short distance in the direction from which the insane
howling was coming. Every time she started off the herd started with
her. Locating the coyotes half way down the long slope, Queen first
circled around the hilltop, then suddenly turned down the slope at
breakneck speed. Like an ocean wave the herd swept down the incline.
The coyotes were taken completely by surprise. Not until the herd was
almost upon them did they attempt to escape, fleeing then chaotically in
all directions. But the horses also spread out to avoid the carcass; and
with momentum stronger than their fear, they stampeded across the paths
of the fleeing pack. Most of the scavengers escaped but one was struck
down. At the foot of the hill Queen turned back to the dismay of the
herd. They watched her curiously as she trotted, some distance ahead of
them, up the incline.
She came to the miserable creature whose back had been broken. Unable to
move his hind legs, he dragged them along behind as he crept away with
his forelegs. But Queen did not let him get away. The herd had by this
time timorously come after her. Stepping back a moment before the
flashing teeth and the gleaming eyes she rushed at him again and struck
him upon the head with a sharp, front hoof. She struck him again and
again as if moved by the terror of the thing she was doing. The herd had
come up toward her but when they saw her attacking the coyote they got
frightened and ran away. Queen then abandoned the lifeless form and ran
to join them.
Far away on the moonlit sky-line sat the rest of the coyote pack, their
nozzles turning periodically to the moon and baying madly against the
betrayal of their god. Never in all their savage experience had they
come upon such a herd of horses and never again would they expose
themselves to its madness.
Without vote or discussion, without struggle or rivalry, Queen assumed
her regency. Her will became the will of the herd. Queen she became in
earnest, in the highest sense of the word, ruling neither for gain nor
power, ruling solely for love of freedom and her companions. And her
ruling was the salvation of the herd and the consternation of the
homesteaders whose wretched shacks skirted her domains.
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