ROPE, IRON AND FIRE
QUEEN was branded! A large letter _B_ had been burned through the hair
and almost through the skin on her right shoulder. The red hot metal had
broken through the skin in several spots on the curves and from these
spots oozed drops of blood. The air constantly passing over the wound
kept the pain of it at its original intensity.
The ropes gave way. The two men stepped away quickly. Queen thought for
a moment that she was free. The ropes were still hanging from her neck
but they were hanging loosely. She sprang to her feet. A hasty look
around made her think, foolishly, that she could now get away. She
leaped forward eagerly and at once realised her mistake. The ropes
became taut. A front leg was drawn back to one of the hind legs and she
went down on one side with a shock that seemed to have disturbed every
organ in her body.
She remained lying down but raised her head. With large round eyes,
radiating fear and hate, she looked from one to the other of her little
captors as if she were seeking some vulnerable point for attack; but
they were standing calmly and their calmness bespoke their power. Nearby
the fire that had heated the irons was still smouldering, poisoning the
air with its pungent significance.
For a few moments Queen remained comparatively still. Their obvious
power over her crushed and confused her. From her shoulder came the
painful reminder of her captivity; and somehow, this gnawing pain, more
than the ropes that gripped her neck and feet, brought her the
overwhelming conviction that she was as much their property as the body
of her first beloved colt had been the property of the coyote that had
sat and feasted over it.
That the rest of her flesh would be torn from her body as she felt a
piece had already been torn from her shoulder, there was no doubt in her
mind. But Queen had fought many battles and though the pain of the brand
was inescapable and unforgetable, though that moment she was well-nigh
hopeless, she still watched for her chance to get away.
When she got up again she was afraid to move a foot. One of the men
pulled on the rope that gripped her neck. Queen expected to be hurt
again. She braced herself against the earth with all four legs, and
pulled back. A severe lash on the haunch sent her limping to the side.
The man behind followed her while the man in front ran off a few paces
ahead, and pulled again. Several repetitions of this performance brought
her to the open gateway of the fence. Near the gateway was the house and
beyond the house was the barn. Experience had taught her to keep away
from men’s shacks and the smell of the barn where she had once seen
White-black, and her colt had been imprisoned, came back faintly and
called upon her to resist. There were the men about her. There was the
boy and at his heels, barking ferociously, was the dog. But in spite of
them she made another attempt to get away and once more earned a violent
throw to the ground.
The fall this time stunned her. She stretched out her head and lay
motionless a moment, breathing very heavily and groaning as if she were
dying. The man behind her struck her with his rope. Her skin quivered
and another groan forced its way out between her clenched teeth. Her
consciousness came back slowly. She heard the barking of the dog and the
voices of the men and above their voices the shriller voice of the boy.
She was sick at her heart and stomach. She felt as if she didn’t care
what they did any more. But a very severe blow with the end of the rope
striking a tender spot on her flanks brought her to her senses. She felt
as if a wave of cold water had swept over her. She managed to get to her
feet. As she stood, bewildered, not knowing what to do, and feeling the
terrible necessity of doing something, her whole body shook with an
uncontrollable tremour.
The injustice of all this torture aroused an insane resentment; and,
casting a glance over the silent prairies that stretched away to the
hazy horizon, within her grasp, yet cruelly denied her, she leaped
toward the open with all her waning strength, so suddenly and so
unexpectedly that the man behind her, clinging to the rope, was thrown
to the ground and the man in front barely escaped her front legs.
The cries of men and boy and dog broke fearfully upon her ears and the
ferocious dog leaped at her throat. He fell back without having touched
her but she lifted a hoof to strike him and thus pulling on the rope
that tied that foot to a hind leg she threw herself to the ground. She
fell outside of the gateway and within a dozen yards of the barn-door
which stood gapingly open and black, ready to swallow her.
The man behind her beat her with his rope and kicked her unmercifully;
but even if she could have risen she would not have done so; and they
finally decided to let her rest a while.
The beating commenced all over again and she was forced to her feet.
With another swing of the rope she started off nervously before it
struck her. The man in front ran on each time she went forward and in
that way they got her to the barn-door. But she was afraid to enter. The
boy had brought the man behind her a whip and when that came down upon
her back raising a welt, she involuntarily rushed into the barn to
escape it.
Thus they got her into a stall and tied her securely. One man got into
the manger and against all her fearful protestations managed to force a
halter upon her head. With double ropes tied to the ring of the halter
they tied two rope ends to each side of the manger, then removed the
ropes with which they had first tied her; and she almost killed one of
the men in the process. Finally, they left her alone.
It was so dark and damp and dirty in the barn. The foul smells were
revolting. When her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she made out a
horse, chewing contentedly a short distance away, and the sight of him
relieved her immeasurably. She called to him but he went on chewing and
ignored her call. Queen was hurt. She looked at him sadly, then half
closed her eyes. But in a few minutes she called to him again and more
forcibly. This time the old glutton replied to her but with little
enthusiasm, rather with annoyance, for he didn’t like it a bit that she
made him take time from his chewing to reply to her.
The ropes did not allow her to see him very well, but she watched him a
moment out of the corner of her eye and felt as she watched him that
somehow he was in league with man, the usurper of her liberty. She hated
him and looked no more in his direction. Over her came full force the
horror of her bondage and the fearful realisation that her every effort
to escape it would prove futile. Yet her thoughts contradicted each
other and where some images came out of her memory and experience and
supported her fear, others came just as strongly and allayed it. She
remembered, for instance, White-black tied in his stall in the sod barn
where her colt had been imprisoned and then she saw him coming over the
plains tied to the old sorrel work-horse. So she saw him in many happier
moods on the open plains long after that. Together with the endless
stream of sensations of pain, from the wound on her shoulder and from
other wounds on her body, came visions of familiar nooks on the prairies
and in the woods. Like ghosts these visions came through the smelling
darkness and haunted her.
At times these visions drove her frantic and she would pull and tug and
tear and kick till her energy was spent and after every momentary storm
there was some new wound to torment her. There was a deep gash on her
upper lip that bothered her almost as much as the burn on her shoulder,
for blood kept trickling from it into her nose and mouth and the taste
and the smell of blood were as tormenting as the pain.
The man came back. She heard him coming and her eyes began to blaze
again and her sides throbbed for fear. He walked around to the front of
the manger and approaching her head, extended a hand carefully. She
pulled her head back as far as the ropes would allow her and snorted
with fright. He said something to her angrily and she listened in terror
to the sound of his voice. He made another attempt to touch her with his
hand, but this time she threateningly bared her teeth. He withdrew his
hand quickly and lifting the long end of one of her ropes he struck her
with it. It hit the sore on her upper lip and Queen pulling on the ropes
with all her might, cried out for pain.
Then the second man appeared and the boy and the dog came behind him.
Queen expected a new battle, but they only brought her hay and water.
They stood near the manger watching her and talking. They took handfuls
of hay and touched her lips with it but she only shook her head
violently and whinnied fearfully. So, too, she disdained the water they
gave her. The man seemed to know that she wanted the water, however, and
so he set the pail down into the manger. When they finally went out
Queen looked after them anxiously.
Night came down. The man came back again and offered her some oats in
his hands; but even if she had desired to eat the oats, the smell of his
hands would have destroyed that desire. Seeing that she had touched
neither hay nor water he threw the oats into the hay and walked away.
Suddenly as she looked sideways, she saw the man lead the horse out of
the barn. It was too dark to see clearly but she could feel that the
horse was going out and she could hear the tread of his heavy feet.
Forgetting all her previous emotions, Queen shamelessly begged him to
return and the terror in her voice seemed to break up the shadows that
filled the barn into monstrous creatures which she felt were surrounding
her. She called again and again till the fear of the sound of her own
voice finally hushed her. She hoped that the horse would return and
waited and listened for his coming, but he did not return. Faint queer
sounds of scratching came from above and behind her. Chickens roosting
somewhere in the darkness tortured her with their sleepy peeping. And a
bat flying around the barn, buzzing every few moments near her head,
kept her nerves on edge. But when the dog came into the barn, Queen went
mad. She had fought coyotes and dogs but she had never been helplessly
tied before. She pulled at her ropes and kicked with her legs till she
shattered one of the crate-like sides of her stall and tore the top
board of her manger loose at one end.
The frightened dog ran out of the barn and barked so loud he brought the
man from the house. Queen heard him coming and when she saw rays of
light break through the cracks in the walls, she almost jumped over the
manger. He opened the door and a flood of light poured into the barn and
when he began to talk to her she calmed down a bit.
He retied her and fixed the broken board of the manger. She seemed to
fear him less now than before and as he talked she listened, her eyes
fixed as if fascinated on the lantern he had hung up not far from her
head. Suddenly the dog reappeared. Queen jumped involuntarily. The man
kicked the dog and the dog ran out of the barn crying for pain. It was
then that the first slight sense of gratefulness came over Queen; but it
left her with the man’s going out and gave way to the puzzle of his
strange light, which for some time obscured everything else in her mind.
The night dragged horribly and when dawn came at last she was exhausted.
She saw the barn-door open and was relieved by the shower of daylight.
Though the man came into the barn and seemed to have much to do there,
he did not come near her. Chickens moved around her, some of them even
jumping up on her manger to pick the grains of oats that she had
refused, and Queen watched them with interest. For a while she was
afraid of them, but their contented sing-songs as they ceaselessly
searched for food bespoke their harmlessness.
The man had gone out and Queen was dozing from sheer exhaustion when the
boy appeared. He came over to Queen’s manger and seized the ropes,
drawing her head toward him. She resisted as best she could and because
she bared her teeth when he tried to touch her with his hand, opening
her mouth as with the intention of biting him just as soon as the hand
was near enough, he let go his hold on the rope and picking up a stick
began to prod her with it. At first she just struggled to pull her head
out of reach of the stick but when he persisted she became furious.
Snorting and whinnying she kicked right and left against her stall and
the boy, afraid that his father would come in, quietly sneaked out of
the barn.
All day she stood stolidly without touching the hay, drinking a little
of the ill-tasting water only when alone and when she could not resist
the desire for it. When night came again Queen began feeling most uneasy
about the shadows and the strange nocturnal sounds; yet she seemed more
able to endure this night than the first. When the second dawn appeared
she was partially resigned to her evil-smelling confinement; but the
monotony of standing on her feet in one place, standing, standing,
standing endlessly, like a new kind of pain was far more distracting
than bodily pain.
The pain of the brand seemed to grow dull and then it bothered her only
when the healing wound touched something. The other pains in the many
places about her body also kept growing less tormenting; but these
tortures of the first days of her captivity gave way to the less
perturbative, more gnawing anguish of imprisonment.
Calls of distant horses sometimes penetrated her prison and Queen would
make the very walls surrounding her tremble with the agony of her
aimless replies. So, too, wafts bearing familiar fragrance often strayed
into the smelling atmosphere of the barn, rekindling smouldering fires.
The love of the plains, the desire to lope over them with the freedom
she had retained so long would at those times seize upon her with
maddening hold and she would kick and pull till she hurt herself or
until she realised once more, each new time more forcefully than the
last, that all her storming was as futile as it was hurtful.
So Queen began to learn. She learned to eat the dead hay even though the
dirt often mixed with it was revolting. She learned to drink the water
though the taste and the smell of it was nauseating. “You’ll get over
your fussiness,” the man often said to her when he came into the barn.
Fortunately Queen did not understand what he said and the resentment she
would have experienced, had she understood, never interfered with her
“getting over it.” It was really better for Queen, as it is in similar
circumstances sometimes better for us, to “get over it.”
But her “getting over it” was always a matter of weights and measures.
Every pain set itself against some other pain and the stronger pain
conquered her aversions. When so weary standing that her legs ached in
the joints, carrying the weight of her body, she lay down the first
time. The smell of the floor was so loathsome that she got up again
after a few minutes. She remained standing till the pain became more
tormenting than the smell of the floor, and then lay down again,
learning to endure the smell. And it proved to be a valuable lesson in
so far as it divided the endlessly dragging hours in half. Instead of
standing all day and all night shifting the weight of her body from foot
to foot, she would stand one hour and lie down for one hour and thus
broke the killing completeness of the excruciating monotony.
The hay was constantly replaced when she had eaten what was in her
manger and the pail was always refilled with water when she had drained
it. This in time seemed to assure her that they did not mean to destroy
her or that destruction was not going to take place immediately. Her
hatred for man did not lose its intensity but her experience relegated
it to some more distant corner of her soul, moved it from where it had
dominated the whole of her consciousness so that she could endure her
bondage as she waited for the opportunity to escape it.
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