SLOWLY MAN CREPT NORTHWARD
THE prairie grass began once more to wither and grow grey. The winds
assumed again their autumnal sadness and moaned with an aimless
complaint. Again dead thistles began rolling over the plains, expressing
somehow in their helpless rolling the relentlessness of change. Frosts
rewhitened the morning earth and geese honked again on their flight to
the south.
The herd was grazing on a hillslope. On the top of the hill stood Queen.
The wind was tugging away at her mane and tail, but otherwise she was as
motionless as the hill she was standing on. Her eyes were fixed upon two
horses coming from the southeast and more than a mile away.
Once or twice the brown colt, now a full grown stallion, fat and almost
clumsy, raised his head to look as she was looking; but most of the
others were busy seeking better grasses and wild plants they liked,
until Queen, with a partially suppressed whinny of excitement trotted
away to meet the newcomers. At once the peaceful scene broke into
activity.
But when they had come within a quarter of a mile of the two horses,
they stopped. A white horse that made Queen think of White-black, tied
to a sorrel horse that made her think of the old sorrel work-horse,
running as fast as they could under the circumstances, were coming
toward them, by fits and starts. The white horse, as he came, kept
stepping backward and raising his head every once in a while, only to
leap forward again a few paces. Always as he leaped forward something
dragged him back by the head. They would run on together for a short
distance and then the same thing would happen again.
When they got very near, in spite of her interest, Queen’s fear of the
scent of man which clung to them got the better of her and she led away
till the apparition was out of sight. There the herd waited for its
reappearance. When they did appear the herd fled again. This they kept
up for the greater part of the day. Toward evening Queen made another
attempt to find out just what was wrong. By this time she was convinced
that there was no man with them anywhere, and the labourious manner in
which these miserable creatures followed them mitigated her fear of
their being dangerous.
She went round on a curve and stopped some fifty feet from the two weary
animals. The sorrel, now about a foot behind the white horse, snorting
as if he had great difficulty in breathing, took the opportunity during
the moment’s rest to brace his body with his front legs against the
pulling of the white one. The white one, driven by some fear, began
pulling and tugging as soon as he had caught his breath; but he couldn’t
budge the old fellow an inch. Queen advanced fearfully. The scent of
man, despite the fact that there was no man about, worried her even as
the growing certainty that these were her old companions drew her toward
them. Finally she ventured near enough to touch the white nose that came
forward a few inches to meet hers. White-black it was! Poor, abused
White-black, covered with barn dirt, his sides fallen in through
struggle and lack of sufficient food.
A touch of the old sorrel’s nose brought him to his proper place in her
mind and Queen ran from one to the other, feeling vaguely that the spell
of the dirty barn was still holding both of them in captivity, and
trying to arrive at some plan of helping them, yet not having the
faintest idea of what to do.
The old sorrel was by far the weaker one of the two. He was evidently
just about exhausted. His poor old sides expanded and contracted rapidly
and his dirty flanks were literally wet with foamy perspiration. Though
White-black took advantage of their halt and grazed as far as the
entanglement of straps that held him fast to his mate would allow; the
old sorrel made no attempt to eat. His harness had slipped down his side
and one of his front legs was caught in a loop in one of the straps that
hung from his neck.
The weary old sorrel had hardly regained his breath, when Queen spied a
man on horseback coming after the pair. The herd dashed away to the
north while White-black, dragging the exhausted sorrel behind him,
brought up the rear. The old sorrel did the best he could. The lines
tying his bridle to White-black’s bridle pulled painfully at his lips,
the corners of which were red with blood. Strength was ebbing rapidly
from him and he moved through space as if he were dazed.
Suddenly one of his front legs went into a badger hole. The old fellow
went down with a groan. The groan was immediately followed by several
sharp, successive snaps and White-black was free from his poor,
wretched, old mate. And the poor old sorrel, too, was free, free from
all future agony.
The hanging straps impeded White-black’s flight, but the darkness came
to his rescue. The herd had ceased running. The hoof-beats of the man’s
saddle pony were dying away in the distance. By morning when the man
reappeared on the horizon, White-black, still burdened by his heavy
harness, was free enough to be able to keep up with the herd, for what
was left of the lines, stepped upon so many times during the night, now
hung above his knees.
For more than a week, the man persisted in his futile attempt to catch
the white horse; then, because his saddle pony was completely exhausted,
racing daily with the weight on his back, he gave up the chase with a
vicious hope that White-black would strangle himself in the harness he
carried with him, and a curse upon the wild western broncos that were
“no good anyway.”
But White-black had no inclination to pass out of existence that way,
nor did his notion of value coincide with that of his would-be owner. He
did everything he could think of doing to rid himself of his trying
encumbrance. He would lie down every once in a while and roll in the
hope of thus rubbing the harness off. In time, he managed to loosen the
crupper so that it let the greater part of the harness, the part that
covered his back and sides, slip down on one side of him and drag on the
ground.
This only intensified his discomfort, for every horse that went near him
was sure to step on some strap. Every time some one stepped upon a
strap, however, there was one strap less dragging after him, and in a
few days the whole network of straps was torn from the hames. One day
while he was grazing, the hames suddenly loosened and fell off and the
collar fell down upon his head. A little help with one hoof got it
completely off his head, and so he was free from all but the bridle. The
bit was tormenting enough but since it did not entirely prevent his
grazing and his drinking, and the straps hanging down did not interfere
with his running, he was virtually free again.
It was during the middle of the winter that he was relieved of this last
link in the chain of his captivity. There came a severe blizzard that
kept them lying huddled into each other with nothing to do for a long
time. Queen had always been annoyed by these straps that clung to
White-black and lying close to him, she stretched her neck and began to
chew at them. While she chewed at the straps, White-black ground his
teeth in his persistent effort to dislodge the bit, and suddenly it fell
from his mouth.
When next spring the homesteader, in another vain attempt to recapture
his valuable white horse, got near enough to the herd to see that
White-black did not have on him a piece of all the harness with which he
had run away, he could hardly believe his eyes. That night he told his
neighbours:
“That mare’s got the devil in her. She just took them there harness
right off him. I know it. How else could he get ’em off? When the
critters ran away they both had all their harness on. How in thunder did
he get his bridle off? Tell me that! She’s a devil, that mare! I’ll tell
y’u she went for me like a witch the day I got her colt. I went away and
left her round the barn thinkin’ I’d get her with the help of Colter;
but I reckoned on her bein’ a mare—not a devil! She opened her mouth
just like a wolf. I swear it!”
Because she was able to defend herself against man’s tyranny, they
accused her of having the devil in her; because she was wise enough to
retain her liberty, they cursed and hated her. Yet they had ample reason
for hating her. Within two years after the loss of White-black, not a
homesteader dared release his horses in the fall as they had been in the
habit of doing. To release them was in all probability to lose them.
But keeping them in the barns all winter meant the necessity for
gathering much greater quantities of hay than they were accustomed to
gather, and, worse than that, it meant horses with less energy for
seeding time in the spring.
Every spring, all manner of attempts were made to capture Queen but
every attempt ended in costly failure. Some of the older and weaker
horses were taken from the herd each year, but Queen and all the younger
horses remained free. Once Queen learned that she was being pursued, it
was impossible for them to get within a mile of her.
When these futile attempts to capture her became too annoying, Queen
would invariably turn to the north. The ominous barbed wire fences which
year after year encroached upon the wild, somehow never appeared on the
northern horizon. North, always north, she went, maneuvering with such
cunning about the hills and through the deeper valleys, that for every
mile she was able to put between herself and her pursuers, they were
obliged to travel five.
The Canadian Government embarked upon a campaign of advertisement to
urge farmers in the United States to go north and take up homesteads in
Alberta. Men sold their farms in the northwestern states and moved
across the border. Every year a new crop of homesteader’s shacks
appeared to baffle the desolation. To be sure, many a shack built
hopefully one year stood gaping like a skull the next; but in spite of
the discouraging features of the country, much of the encroachment
yearly made upon Queen’s domains was permanent.
Every springtime with the blossoming of the wild rosebushes and the
prairie cacti, new fence posts with their glittering lines of barbed
wire cut some small portion of her territory on the east, the south and
the west. Slowly man crept northward and with an inborn faith in the
justice and the security of the wilds, Queen fled at his approach.
------------------------------------------------------------------------