THE DOORS OF THE TRAP SHUT
THE years rolled by. Old tragic hurts were dulled by the mists of
passing time and every hour of the unfettered present came bringing some
new joy. New children came to Queen and in the love of each succeeding
one, Queen rejoiced as if it were the first and only one. Carefully she
led them all to the doorway of maturity and there, since life willed it
so, she gave them over to the herd, to live and provide for themselves
and to abide by the unwritten laws of the herd in the finest
exemplification of the Golden Rule on earth. The friends who died or who
suddenly disappeared she would miss for a long while, sometimes spending
months in search of them, then she would transfer her love of them to
some other member of the brotherhood, just as she transferred her
mother-love from the older to the younger of her offspring.
The shadowy creatures of the receding past often came, walking into the
dozing memory at nightfall. Queen would remain lying, chewing
absent-mindedly and watching them, her contentment undisturbed, loving
the sadness that clung to them, as we love the sadness that clings to
our sweetest music.
There came a spring of unusual activity on the part of man, and his
daily appearance intruded so threateningly upon the herd, that they
abandoned the land which had become endeared to them and journeyed north
almost steadily for many days.
They came upon a pleasant valley abounding in delicious, virgin grass
and many small ponds; and they took possession of it. But at midnight,
while they were resting, they were suddenly aroused by a shrieking noise
which was followed by a long-drawn rattle, like distant thunder.
The sound died out and did not come again, but an attenuated cloud of
smoke swept across the valley. Though the rest of that night was
undisturbed and the air, from then on, was clear, they kept awake and
fearfully restless. At dawn they abandoned the valley though they saw
nothing that was alarming; and as they moved northward, they came upon a
railroad track.
On the other side of the track the land stretched away silent and
desolate, merging at the northern horizon in a long, narrow shadow, as
of woodland. The tracks remained perfectly motionless and the herd
slowly ventured near them. While some of the horses looked on curiously,
some of the headstrong young colts to the dismay of their mothers,
walked upon the tracks and sniffed at them. Seeing that nothing happened
to them, the herd started at once to cross.
Half a mile north of that they came upon another elongated slough which
had been hidden by a hill. Always glad to see water, they trotted down
in concert and took possession, once more intending to end the journey.
But toward evening while the colts were expressing the joy of life in a
gambol about the water, they were startled by another shriek like the
one of the night before, and associating it somehow with the tracks,
they tore up the slope to see what it was.
In the distant east glowed a light, like the harvest moon. It gleamed
from the centre of a black, fear-inspiring object from which clouds of
smoke poured into the air and streamed backward into space. They gazed
upon it for a few moments as if transfixed, then when they realised that
it was coming rapidly nearer, they broke down into the valley, splashing
through the slough and sped up the other slope. On the top of that hill,
they stopped to look back. The thing was already thundering past them,
shutting away the whole of the south with a long, black line of smoke in
which sparkled a thousand star-like eyes of fire.
Had they remained to look at that line of smoke, they might have lost
the fear of it. Within a few minutes it went as it had come. The sweet
evening air cleared and settled down to the silence they loved. But such
is the way of destiny that a thing of smoke and illusion may wield a
power greater than that of iron or mind.
They did not wait long enough to see what it really was. An impassable
wall had arisen behind them. A guard of ferocious beasts had rushed
across their path, shutting from them forever the old south world they
knew so well. To Queen it was, in the vaguest sense, somewhat more than
that. The apprehensions of the moment were dispelled by the widening
distance between them and this weird thing they feared; but a new
anxiety crept into Queen’s heart, like a snaky creature, and grew bolder
there as the danger it forecast approached. It was the fear of the
hunted for the cage. It was as if she had entered an enormous trap and
had seen the door shut upon her.
They instinctively kept to a strip of wild prairie several miles in
width. On the eastern and western horizon they saw from time to time
shacks and barns and fences and huge squares of black, plowed earth; and
from the distances came at long intervals the muffled barking of dogs.
The feel and the smell of man was in the air, and they found that air
hard to breathe. They grazed when hunger asserted itself and rested when
the younger colts refused to go on, but continued their migration.
They came to a country where there were no shacks and no fences, where
the evenness was broken only by promising patches of woodland. There the
earth seemed destitute of living things and in the moaning of the winds
as they blew through the swaying trees, the spirit of loneliness assured
them of safety. The grass on the open spaces grew high as if no living
thing had ever touched it, and swaying with the trees, it subtly
testified to the authenticity of that assurance. In Queen’s mind,
however, the shacks and the fences and the barking of dogs were as yet
too distinct to allow her to feel entirely secure; and she continued the
flight, fear urging her to go on till the last trace of man had faded
from the air and a wall of solitude and wilderness had covered it. But
they came one day to a very steep slope. Tall trees rose from the foot
of the slope and beyond their tops Queen saw the reflecting waters of
the Saskatchewan pouring along rapidly from west to east.
The river was very wide and the darker waters beneath the brighter
surface indicated a perilous depth. The fear of the trap that had been
vague in Queen’s mind now became distinct as she gazed at the obscure
distance from which the river came and at the shadowy spaces into which
it rushed. Her faith in the north had given her a decade of precarious
freedom and had taken her two hundred miles from her birthplace. The
sight of those impassable volumes of water staggered that faith. She
grew nervous and restless and when the herd had drunk the treacherous
water, she led them away to the west.
A half day’s journey brought them to where the Vermillion River tearing
along between high banks comes pouring down from the south and the west
and breaks into the Saskatchewan, with a threatening roar. Again Queen
felt that she had come to another wall of the trap and turning, led the
herd back toward the east. A few days of grazing and moving east along
the Saskatchewan brought them to a barbed wire fence that ran down the
banks to the very edge of the river. Ever as she had followed the
slightly winding river, she had searched in vain for a ford. The doors
of the north, too, had closed to them, and their freedom now depended
upon a battle of wits, the wits of the herd in the limited wilds against
the wits of man in his protecting civilisation.
They returned to the middle of the unsettled belt and there Queen spent
a happy week of freedom, disturbed only by the promptings of the canker
within her which derived its sustenance from the frequent appearance of
men on horseback.
Seeding time arrived and the homesteaders who lived south of the
railroad tracks went forth to hunt for the horses they had released the
preceding fall. The homesteaders who lived on the outskirts of these
wilds, in the hope of capturing some of the unclaimed horses, joined
them. But with a cunning that exasperated the hunters, Queen went from
one hiding place to another, detecting every approach so long before the
horsemen appeared that in the first full week of searching she was seen
only on two occasions.
The homesteaders became desperate. The snows were fast disappearing and
the land was in best condition for their work. They appealed to the
Canadian Government and half a dozen members of the Royal Northwest
Mounted Police came out to reinforce them in the war to the knife that
was declared upon Queen and her followers.
Several times a day Queen would run down the banks of the Saskatchewan.
At the river she would take a few sips of water as if she had come to
drink and then she would stand and look longingly across the roaring
deeps to the wilds beyond, suppressing the constantly rising impulse to
plunge into the rapid waters and beat her way to the freedom of the
north, which seemed, after half a lifetime of benefaction, to have
abandoned her. Then one day the impulse came with overwhelming
suddenness and she struck out madly for the other shore. But when she
felt the bottom drop away from under her feet, she became frightened.
The remnants of the huge snow drifts that were still melting kept the
river swollen to twice its volume. The current lifted her and carried
her several rods downstream, fortunately for her, hitting a bar and
depositing her there.
Puffing and snorting and registering the promise that she would never
try it again, Queen finally clambered back upon the shore where she
shook the water from her body. Some of the horses who had watched the
whole performance with anxiety, came trotting toward her. Queen joined
them dejectedly, grateful to be out of the treacherous water, but
remembering that she was being hunted and realising now that there was
no chance of getting across the river and that her only hope lay in her
delicate legs and the cunning that many years of resistance to man had
developed.
A few days passed by in which all hostilities on the part of the
homesteaders and the Mounted Police seemed to have ceased. Queen began
to feel that the war had been abandoned; but she was surprised one very
early morning by a formidable group of horsemen, less than a quarter of
a mile to the east from where the herd was grazing, who were coming at
full speed. A strong wind had been blowing from the west and had carried
the scent and sound of them away. A lull in the wind apprised her of the
enemy’s approach.
They had been moving along the edge of a patch of dense woodland, the
wall of which stretched from the Saskatchewan to a point a little more
than a mile south of the river. There was no opening between the trees
and the brush. The only chance for escape lay in a wild dash south and
in reaching the end of the wooded wall before the horsemen could reach
it. That chance they took.
The horsemen divided into groups. One group sped away southwest at an
angle, while another, going straight west, spread out on a long line to
prevent the herd from going back to the river.
It was a close race. Every animal, pursuing or pursued, groaned in the
terrible exertion of it. The younger and the stronger of the herd led
the race, with Queen’s magnificent head in front. Behind the group of
fastest runners came the mothers with their colts, and the old work-worn
horses brought up the rear. Though spurs dug unmercifully into wet,
throbbing sides, staining them with small red spots, the forepart of the
herd, unencumbered by riders, won the end of the wall and broke away to
the west in safety. Not until the wall point was almost out of sight did
they stop to look back and when Queen finally felt it safe to do so and
swung round a knoll, she saw no sign of her pursuers; but the far
greater portion of the herd was gone with them.
About a mile southwest of where they were, they knew of a slough. It was
down in a deep hollow and though they would rather have remained on the
hills where they could more easily spy any one coming after them, they
were very thirsty and trotted away for water. At the rim of the hollow
some of them stopped to look about before going down, others broke down
on a run.
Queen drank very little. She was worried and very nervous. While most of
the horses walked into the pond, looking for deeper and clearer water,
she took a few hasty sips of the warm, muddy stuff on the edge and then
ran up the slope to take another look. There seemed to be nothing
untoward on the plains, but to make sure she remained there a while and
grazed.
She had not been grazing more than a few minutes when she was startled
by a frantic splashing in the pond. She looked down in time to see
White-black whose forelegs had sunk into a mud-hole, attempt to turn
round. Half a dozen of the others began to struggle just as frantically.
Some of them managed to reach hard ground, but White-black and two
others seemed to sink deeper the harder they struggled.
At first all this violent effort to get out made her think that some
awful danger had suddenly arisen in the centre of the pond, but the
light grey mud on the flanks of those who did get out, apprised her of
the fact that they had struck an alkali mud-hole. She had had her
experience with alkali mud-holes before. They had been in the habit of
drinking at the other end of the slough and had come to this end now
only because the other end was somewhat nearer to the territory from
which they had just escaped.
She hurried down to the side of White-black and as he resumed his
struggling, she called to him anxiously. Finally the three of them
ceased struggling for a while and set up a helpless neighing to which
those on the shore responded just as helplessly.
There was little danger of drowning for the water was very shallow, but
the fear of being caught, the fear of the pursued creature still warm in
their throbbing hearts, kept them struggling and their struggles tired
them out and drove them down deeper into the mud. Queen was perplexed.
It seemed as if everything were combining for their destruction, that
even the mud joined man in his effort to torture them. She called to the
helpless creatures ceaselessly, running up and down the slope in a
frenzy of fear.
Suddenly while she was down at the edge of the pond, urging White-black
to exert himself and White-black was groaning for want of strength, the
wind shifted and brought from the northwest a message of danger. The
horses who were free ran up the slope to the southeast. Queen, who was
this time behind the others, suddenly stopped half way up the slope and
turning back called frantically to White-black. Her life long
association with White-black had endeared him more strongly to her than
the other two and it seemed hard for her to leave him in distress.
She ran back to the edge of the water, stamping her foot and calling
with all her strength; but White-black only weakened himself. One of the
two other horses, in a violent last effort, pulled himself half way out,
and dropped back, but White-black ceased trying.
The hoof beats of the free horses faded away in the distance and their
rhythmic patter was followed by those of the enemy’s horses. A man’s
head appeared at the rim of the hollow and with a last call to
White-black, Queen shot up the slope and away to the southwest. The men
had seen the other horses first and had veered to go after them, when
they discovered Queen. Trying to head her off, one man started down the
slope and as he did so he discovered White-black and his two companions
struggling in the mud.
As Queen fled she heard the one man whistling to the others. She could
not hear anyone behind her but she did not stop to find out whether she
was being followed or not. In the distant west she saw the shadowy blue
of a clump of trees and she made for that with every bit of strength
left in her. When she reached the trees she first shot under cover, then
investigating to make sure that no dangerous animal was hidden there, or
that no men were coming from any other direction, she pushed her way out
to a thicket of buffalo berries, and stopped to scan the plains she had
covered.
Not a living thing stirred on the monotonous level of the prairies. Only
heat waves danced above the narrow, blue strips of woodland shadows.
Within a few minutes she was convinced that no one was coming after her
and then despite her fear and restlessness, and her anxiety to get back
to the other horses that had escaped, she sank down to the ground,
snorting and panting like a dog. But within half an hour she was off
again in pursuit of the remnant of the herd.
All through the afternoon she hunted them, stopping often to graze and
to drink, now trotting, now loping, going fast when something on the
horizon made her think that she had found them or walking slowly when
she realised that she had been mistaken; calling often, sometimes with
all her strength as if she hoped they would hear her and sometimes
calling softly and hopelessly only because she felt an urge to express
the feeling that had taken complete possession of her.
Toward evening when the light began fading and the shadows grew long,
she trotted cautiously to the pond where she had left White-black in the
mud. The desire to find him grew stronger as the evening progressed
toward night and Queen went at full speed.
The unruffled surface of the pond was brightly reflecting the last rays
of daylight when she turned over the rim of the hollow and stopped there
to make sure that the men were gone. Even those thoughtless men who
hated her—they were not many—if they had been able to see her as she
slowly came walking over the rim a step at a time, would have admired
that beautiful head in the evening silhouette with its touch of
magnificence and the cunning that had kept her out of their greedy
reach.
A few ducks were moving about in the glitter. Immediately upon seeing
her they rose into the air and flew away. Queen trotted down to the
muddy edge where White-black had been trapped. The mud that was not
covered with water was stippled with countless hoof prints. Here and
there on the stippled surface she saw impressions of the whole side of a
horse and she knew that the horses had fallen many times after coming
out of the mud-hole. Some of these impressions still bore the scent of
White-black and Queen excitedly read the story of his struggle with his
captors. For some time she walked round the slough, stopping now and
then to sniff or to break the heavy silence by long and nervous
whinnies, then realising the futility of her going round the slough and
feeling suddenly a sense of confinement in the hollow, she went up the
slope and on the rim began to feed.
The ducks came back. They flew directly over her to see just what she
was. Assured that she was neither man nor coyote, they swept down to the
water’s surface, touching it gracefully with a melodious splash. Queen
lifted her head a trifle above the grass and stared at them
thoughtfully. The sight of the little black objects sailing about in the
bright reflection of the sky and the occasional murmur that came from
them out of the stillness, gladdened her. She felt somewhat less alone.
It was a hard night for Queen. She needed rest very badly but she was
much too apprehensive and too lonely to rest well. When the ducks late
in the night flew away, the hollow became unbearable to her and she
wandered off over the plains searching and calling and tiring herself
out.
During the day she rested some, then from one end of the wilds to the
other she rambled, searching for her companions and finding only fences
and lifeless shacks which stood on the level distances, stony sentinels
forever barring her way with threat of captivity. Along the east side of
her desolated domains she followed fence after fence for days without
coming upon a trace of the herd. With eyes alert for the first sign of
man, she stuck to the east, because she knew that her captured followers
had all been taken in that direction.
She came to where the fence broke into two parts leaving an open roadway
between. She entered the roadway cautiously and walked farther and
farther, scanning the distances as she went. But when she had gone half
a mile, the feeling of having fences on both sides and so near to her,
began to worry her and she turned and raced back for the wilds.
When she saw, however, that the avenue had not closed upon her, she
walked in again. She went about a mile this time and spied a group of
horses in one of these wiry enclosures. She started away in great haste,
but soon stopped still. There was a man’s shack only a quarter of a mile
away from where the horses were and she was afraid to go. She called to
them emotionally but besides raising their heads to look her way, they
made no attempt to come to her, and when she called again a dog came out
of the shack and started in her direction barking ferociously.
On her way out of the avenue through which she had come, she noticed
half a mile from the furthest point she had reached, that the wires
turned leaving her another open avenue through which she could approach
the group of horses on the other side of the fence and very much farther
from the shack. Very cautiously and very nervously she followed that
avenue, stopping very often to make sure that she hadn’t already been
trapped, and when she reached the other side of the fence, some of the
horses who had been watching her, came forward to meet her. Here the
fence ended completely and when she saw the plains stretch from there
unfenced, she lost a good deal of her fear and trotted in their
direction, calling eagerly as she ran.
Queen was so excited when a dozen noses reached over the wires to greet
her that she cut herself several times on the barbs without knowing that
she had cut herself. Having greeted her, however, the confined horses
went on grazing; while Queen capered about on the outside, calling again
and again and reaching over the wires recklessly, to the consternation
of the strangers who would just raise their heads a moment, look at her
curiously and go on about their business.
White-black was not there and those whom she recognised were all horses
that had but the fall before attached themselves to her herd. But she
was happy to see them and to be with them and grazed with a better
appetite than she had had for a long time. She grazed just outside of
the fence, moving along as they moved within.
She spent the night there outside of the fence and though the group of
horses kept walking away considerably they were yet near enough to
dispel the gloom and the loneliness that had been hanging over her world
since the herd had been taken from her. It was the pleasantest night she
had had for some time. Queen intended to remain there outside that
fence; but she was discovered next morning by a man who came for some of
the horses and his dog went after her. At first for fear of the man, she
ran as fast as she could go, the dog at her heels; but when she got to
where she was no longer afraid of the man, she turned upon the dog,
striking at him with a lifted foot. She did not hit him but he did not
wait for her second attempt. He fled surprised and badly frightened,
yelping for help.
She experienced a good deal of satisfaction over his cowardly departure;
but she was afraid of the man who seemed to be coming in her direction
and who was calling loudly to the dog; and so she ran away. The
experience of the night was like a clue to her in her search for her
companions. From there she went to other fences. Fences were hateful
things but they were also hopeful affairs and she expected to find her
friends in one of them. Thus she penetrated farther and farther into
man’s dominion. Over the endless, deviating roadways, between the
endless lines of fence posts and the treacherous barbed wire, always
alert, she went, confident that she could find her way out in case of
danger. When she would come upon a group of horses in some fence she
would follow them on the outside, grazing as they grazed and lying down
when they were near her.
She did not find those of her companions whom she was most anxious to
find, and those that she did come upon, though they always replied to
her, did not always come to her when she called. Queen began to feel
vaguely and painfully that her influence was gone, that her regency was
over. Like the dethroned leader that she was, she accepted the censure
that was due her for having failed, with almost evident humility.
Her loneliness became harder to bear. She wearied of the life of
interminable limitations and the fence posts on all sides of her began
to hurt her as if the roadways had steadily grown narrower and the barbs
had penetrated her skin.
So she started back toward the west, toward the wilds she loved, hoping
that there she might find the rest of the herd where the herd by the
natural right of things belonged. When she was back again upon the
unsettled wilds she was happier for a while; but as she went from one
familiar spot to another—the pond where White-black had been trapped,
the various patches and strips of woodland where they used to hide or
spend their nights, and the river—the loneliness grew heavier in her
heart and Queen began to lose interest in life. Grass and water there
was plenty, but the taste could no longer derive complete satisfaction
from grass and water. After every mouthful she cropped she would lift
her head and look so wistfully over the spaces that she would forget to
chew the grass between her teeth. She would start off and gallop away
over the prairie as if she had suddenly thought of some place where she
was sure she would find her companions and just as suddenly she would
stop and continue to graze.
Her loneliness became unendurable. It seemed to have peopled the
solitudes with invisible creatures bent upon harming her. She was afraid
to rest, afraid even to graze or drink. Once more she took to the
labyrinthine avenues between fence posts, penetrating with impassioned
eagerness the very heart of the homesteading district, seeing many
homesteaders’ shacks and fighting many dogs, becoming reckless as she
became accustomed to them. Often as these remote farmers plowed their
fields, they would hear her call, sometimes finding her only a few rods
behind them; and their horses fettered as they were in their harness
would turn their heads and reply to her. When a farmer set his dog upon
her she would fight him; but when the farmer himself started for her,
she would lope away and he would not see her again for many days.
She came upon a small group of horses in an enclosed pasture, one day,
among whom she spied the brown stallion and a little bay mare who had
nestled close to her many a cold winter night. This pasture was farther
in the area of wire fences than Queen had ever gone before. As soon as
she called, the group started in her direction. She was so overwhelmed
by the familiar scents of those she knew that she could not control
herself. First she ran along the fence a while, then she deliberately
trotted away from the fence. Going off for a few rods and coming back at
full speed she leaped over the wires. Though she was slightly cut on one
of her hind legs, she landed safely in the midst of the group.
They were as happy to see her as she was to see them and the expression
of their excitement and joy attracted the attention of the farmer and
his dog in the shack a quarter of a mile away. She was sniffing noses
with a grey horse whom she had mistaken in the distance for White-black,
when she caught sound of the barking of the farmer’s dog, and turned to
see him coming toward her.
He was a big, ferocious-looking, wolf-like dog, much bigger than the
average coyote and many times as savage. At his approach, the other
horses started away but Queen, who was not ready to part from her
companions again so soon, stopped to fight him. He remained a short
distance away from her, barking angrily, turning his head backward now
and then as if he waited for reinforcement, his eyes glaring at her
threateningly. The other horses had turned about and stopped to watch
the battle, and Queen, feeling encouraged by their watching, waited for
him to come nearer.
But suddenly, taking her eyes off the beast for just a moment, she saw
two men lead two saddle ponies into the barbed wire enclosure and she
made a dash for the fence, hoping to jump over it before they arrived.
Just as soon as she started off the dog rushed at her with a bark and a
snarl. In terror of him, she turned to strike at him with her hoof, but
as soon as she turned the dog sprang out of reach. When she turned once
more for the fence the dog seized her tail. She struck him with a hind
leg. He let go his hold of the tail and dug his fangs into her leg.
Had there been no men coming, she might have fought it out with him. As
it was they were already racing toward her and in desperation, Queen
loped after the rest of the horses who were now stampeding away to the
other end of the pasture. When she reached her companions she plunged
into their midst as if she expected them to protect her.
The men first drove the entire group to the corner nearest to the shack
and there setting the dog upon her they separated her from the other
horses. They continued to urge the dog to go at her and his ferocious
teeth and the nerve wracking noise he was making so confused her that
she stopped to fight him almost disregarding the two men, whose ropes,
as she faced the dog, sailed over and dropped upon her head.
The ropes so alarmed her that she paid no more attention to the dog. She
reared in an effort to pull her head from the loops but this only
tightened their hateful grip. While she was uselessly struggling the men
slipped from their saddles and fastened the ends of their ropes to a
fence post on each side of the corner. Then slowly they pulled the ropes
in, forcing her back. Despite the pain it gave her, Queen tugged and
pulled and reared. The men then got some more ropes from a boy who came
with them from the shack and with these new ropes they first caught a
front leg and after a long struggle caught a hind one, then pulling on
the ropes they threw her to the ground.
She fell with a sickening thud. A spell of dizziness came upon her and
she half shut her eyes as consciousness began slipping from her. But
fear and assailing odours brought her to her senses. She made a violent
effort to continue the struggle, but a man leaped for her head and
seized her nose bone with both his hands. With a quick twist he turned
her nose upward and she lay absolutely helpless. She snorted and groaned
but she could not rise. She felt the bony fingers of the man gripping
her nose bone and felt the other man winding ropes about her legs.
What they wanted with her she could not know. She thought of the coyote
as she had seen him sitting over and feasting upon her colt. Her skin
quivered all over her body and she tried once more to throw off the
appalling weights that kept her down; but her attempts only proved to
her how hopelessly she was in their power, how easy it was for them to
do just what they liked with her. She expected them at any moment to
begin tearing the flesh from her body.
The smell of man was nauseating, their voices were terrifying and it
seemed as if she just could not endure the pain that the man’s fingers
gave her as they dug round her nose bone; yet worse than all this was
the smoke and the smell of fire that suddenly filled the atmosphere,
bringing terrors out of her darkened past to help in her torture.
Suddenly she felt a pain that was worse than any pain she had ever
experienced in her life before. They were pressing some terrible
instrument into her shoulder, an instrument that penetrated the skin
like the teeth of a dog but a thousand times more painfully. All her
hatred, all her fear combined, and with a strength that the greedy men
admired she began to struggle again. As she struggled, the man gripped
tighter on her nose bone and the pain of his digging fingers took her
mind off the burning pain in her shoulder.
When she least expected it, the man sprang away from her head, leaving
it free. She made an attempt at once to get back upon her feet, but her
legs were still tied and she fell back again to the ground. She raised
her head and glared fearfully at her tormentors. In the far distance she
caught a glimpse of the other horses, grazing indifferently. The two men
stood a few feet away, looking down upon her and talking to each other.
The smell of her burnt flesh in the welter of nauseating odours, the
pain in her shoulder growing momentarily worse, the lack of excitement
on the part of the men, the cool deliberateness with which they seemed
to have gone about her torture, together with the fear of what they were
yet to do, bewildered Queen; and out of this bewilderment emerged a
feeling that was worse than fear or pain, a feeling that was an ally of
both, the feeling of submission. But Queen’s submission was not a
servile one. Rather was it like the retreat of the general who hopes for
a more propitious moment in which to strike again and strike with all
his rallied force.
The man who was, without any further doubt, stronger than she was might
burn her flesh; he might tie her legs so that she could not get up; he
might force his sharp fingers about her nose bone and torturously twist
her head so that she would be helpless; but he could not control or
limit her hate. And hate boiled in her blood and burned like a fever in
her body, restraining itself only as the tiger restrains his desire
before he springs upon his prey.
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