THE TRAIL OF THE MOOSE
FOR several days after the woman had relieved her of the racking burden
of straps and iron and wire-net, Dora was troubled by the conflict of
recurrent impulses to go back to the farm yard and the fears that just
as ardently urged her to get far out of the reach of man. Months of
arduous toil followed by weeks of semi-starvation had robbed her of her
strength and her courage; the barn had so enervated her that she found
the cold, out doors, especially at night, very hard to endure; and her
captivity had deprived her of her companions without whom life was not
worth the struggle.
One snow flurry followed another. The last spot of exposed earth
disappeared. The sun did not show itself for days and every hour seemed
to deepen the drifts. Never had the world seemed so bleak and
inhospitable to her.
She was so miserably cold one windy night that she decided at last to go
back to the farmyard where she had been so magnanimously befriended. She
got up toward the end of the long night and started away, lumbering
along for many miles in the dark, driven by the image of the sheltering
barn; and then she stopped suddenly as the other image, that of the
woman driving her away, came into her mind. She stood still, unable to
decide what to do and as she stood the reddish streak in the south east
grew brighter and less red.
She became very cold, having stood so long, and started off again more
for want of exercise than through any definite decision, and as she
neared the top of a wild rose bush that protruded from a deep drift, a
rabbit sprang out of its shadow and bounded away to the south. Dora
stopped through momentary fright, and followed him with her eyes as he
fled. She missed him when he was swallowed up in the great ocean of
whiteness and searching for him suddenly discovered a group of horses on
the ridge of a long hill, their dark bodies cut clearly against the end
of the light streak in the sky.
Dora did not stop for her breakfast. Her eyes lighted up, her nostrils
distended and her thin legs plowed through the snows as if their old
strength had fully come back to them. There were many hills and valleys
lost to the sight in the level whiteness and, crossing them
over-anxiously, she was obliged to stop a few times to rest and to
regain her breath, before at last she reached the horses, by that time
down the side of the hill.
There were about a dozen of them spread out considerably. While yet some
distance from them, she thought she recognised some of her old friends,
but as she came nearer she was overwhelmed with doubt. They were pawing
the snow very energetically and took little interest in her fervent
greetings. One or two heads raised up a moment, then went back to the
business of finding grass which the rest would not interrupt even for
that short time. This reception was a great disappointment to Dora, but
there were other disappointments in store for her.
The three horses to whom she was nearest, watched her approach with
suspicion. They were, all three, hard working horses, who found the
pawing of snow a laborious task. They thought she meant to eat from
their find and drove her off with threats of angry whinnies and laying
ears. One of them, a miserable old nag, a red mare with two naked scars
on her shoulders, jumped across the hole she had dug, ran after Dora and
nipped her haunches several times, as poor Dora fled from her.
Dora stopped running about a hundred yards from there, looked back at
the old nag and, seeing that she had returned to pawing, began to paw
the snow where she was. When she got to the grass and had taken a
mouthful, she raised her head and stared at the group, wondering what
had happened to the beautiful world from which she had been abducted by
man. She could not make out why that old nag had been so intent upon
hurting her. Dora did not know of those differences in temperament which
makes one creature mellow and sympathetic after an experience of great
suffering and another sour and pugnacious.
Her reception was a sad disappointment to Dora, but even that
companionship was better than none. So she clung to it with all her
strength, content to move about on the outer edge of the group. When the
herd had fed well and for exercise started across the snows, Dora always
went with them, running with every ounce of energy in her body, striving
through her old revived habit to get to the lead; but Dora soon realised
that these were not the days of her supremacy. Strive as she would, she
could not keep up with even the poorest plug and long before the others
were ready to quit, she was obliged to drop out of the race, humiliated
and unhappy, puffing and panting for breath.
Nevertheless, she took part in every race. Every time she made the same
strenuous attempt to do the impossible. The youngsters of two and three
years of age fairly laughed at her, reaching her while she struggled
with might and main and leaving her behind with a few easy bounds. But
it is a poor effort that accomplishes no result whatever, and though she
could at no time outrun the younger horses, she daily managed to leave
some older horse behind her.
One day she tried her old trick. Very early in the race she happened to
be in the lead, having started the race. When the younger horses saw her
leading a few of the old plugs, they started after her, soon, of course,
overtaking her. Dora swerved to the side, in the hope that they would
follow her, and found herself alone. They not only refused to follow her
but they did not even look back to see what had happened to her. Dora
was so unhappy she started off again after them, but soon stopped,
realising that she could not catch up to them and that she would soon be
out of breath once more. She stood still a while and watched them
enviously. Then she turned, intending to paw the snow for grass, when
she saw another group of horses coming from the southeast.
Dora raised her head and looked with absorbed interest. The wind lifted
her mane and fluttered it gracefully in the air. For a few moments,
absorbed in the creatures that moved toward her in single file, she
looked like Queen once more in all the glory of her regency. When they
were a hundred yards away, Queen neighed with all her strength. At once
the marching line stopped and all heads went up high in the air. Then
from the rear of the line a white horse broke from the path he had been
following and with a call of recognition started hastily toward her. It
was White-black and, with a strength born of the very sight of him,
Queen loped to meet him.
Four of the other horses recognized her, too, and the air vibrated with
the music of that happy reunion. Noses touched noses and happy whinnies
greeted happy whinnies. With the five of them had come a young mother, a
sorrel mare with a fuzzy little colt who had been born in the spring.
When the others had gone to meet Queen she remained in her tracks,
hesitating to get into any kind of an assembly where through joy or
anger her colt might be hurt. He stood right behind her, his fuzzy
little head against her haunch, his eyes filled with wonderment.
When Dora had greeted her old friends, she went to greet the mother and
her colt, running her old muzzle, on which were still the marks of her
struggle with the basket, down the fuzzy little fellow’s forehead,
murmuring tremulously. The proud young mother looked on almost eagerly
and commented softly and good-naturedly.
But when the big group returned there was dissention at once. The ugly
red mare seemed to think that there was entirely too much fuss made over
Queen, and turned upon her with open mouth. White-black, right behind
the old nag, nipped her severely. A quarrel followed which spread to the
rest of the group and finally ended in a race which divided the two
groups, Dora going off with her friends. All day the two groups dug the
snow a goodly distance apart and in the evening came the worst storm of
the season.
The storm approached quite suddenly, though all day there had been vague
signs of its coming. A northern gale blew up, tearing the weaker
branches from the trees and sending them sliding over the surface of the
snow, tearing up the looser snow and blowing it into their eyes and ears
and nostrils. Queen led her group to a fairly sheltered spot in among
the trees near by and together they lay down.
The warmth of their bodies, one touching the other, was so comforting
that the slightest move on the part of any one of them brought a low,
patient protest from the rest. The night came rapidly. The wind grew
more and more furious, howling and shrieking overhead, and the tall
poplars groaned as they bent with its lashing. Gusts of wind, loaded
with snow, which it raised on the open, struck the trees and the snow
fell in powder upon them below, covering them as with a blanket.
In the open the savage north wind went mad. It tore along at a terrific
rate, taking everything that was loose with it, then, as if it had in
its savage eagerness fallen over itself, there was a pause for a moment,
after which, picking itself up again, it went on with even greater
ferocity, shrieking as with some ineffable, primordial pain. It seized
the fallen snow and whirled it around with the falling snow, scattered
it high in the air, lifting it again when it had fallen and sending it
like waves across the plains, gathering great showers of it and hurling
them against the wall of the woods, sending these showers down upon the
tree tops, tearing it all up again as soon as it had fallen into drifts
below and once more hurling the restless dust into space—a display of
insane, futile effort—a cosmic passion bereft of purpose.
But if this wild night could have been wilder and had raved with even
more threat in its raving, it could not have diluted the contentment in
Queen’s heart. The touch and the subtler feeling of the presence of her
companions did as much to keep her warm as the heat of their bodies,
and, like a light, illumined the long trail of life behind her. She
moved through the corridor of her past like a curious child, walking in
its sleep and dreaming of a beautiful, incoherent fairyland. The light
was silvery as that of the moon and in the shadows detached images which
she only half recognised glistened like reflections on the snow. And
when dawn ushered in a calm day, Queen rose with a feeling like that of
having returned home from a long visit and shook the snow from her body.
Queen knew the country there as none other knew it. Leading the little
group to the best feeding grounds, she took her place once more at the
head, for at the head only could Queen be happy. In spite of the deep
snows through which they were obliged to plow to get their food, Queen
began to fill out rapidly and the greater part of her old strength came
back to her. With the return of her strength came the old fear of man.
Every move was accompanied by an investigation and in every sound of
wind and tree she seemed to hear the sound of a voice.
There followed a long period of fair weather in which the snows hardened
and shrank and then one day, as they were digging for grass, they were
surprised by three men on horseback on a hill to the south and east,
less than a quarter of a mile away. The horsemen had come upon them so
suddenly that Queen, confounded, stood looking at them a few minutes,
transfixed with fear. She recognised the man who had captured her on the
big horse that had worked beside her in the plow. Next to him was the
boy on the little bay mare and his cry of “There she is!” fully aroused
Queen.
The little herd, however, had no difficulty in getting away from them,
because they had no burdens on their backs and they were now more used
to the deep snows on the open plains than the horses that were chasing
them. The horsemen kept behind them for a long while and then
disappeared. But Queen was too wise to end her flight there. She knew
that even though the men gave up the chase that day they would appear
again the next, or soon after that.
Out of the misery and discomfort of her captivity she had just emerged.
She had found her companions and the life for which she had hungered all
through those unhappy months. Hardly had she realised the full extent of
her good fortune when man reappeared to take it all away from her. But
Queen was in no submissive mood. She had fought for her freedom and she
would fight again. She would watch with such care that she would not
again be caught at a disadvantage. She hardly gave herself time to eat.
Her ears were constantly pricked high. Her eyes, afire with her
emotions, never for a moment abandoned their vigilance. But her nervous
dread of man soured the sweetness of the wilds and Queen moved over the
snows with the old feeling of the trap beating in her heart, moved
without resting and, out of habit, moved northward.
They came next day to the strip of woodland whose heroic poplars
silently guard the Saskatchewan. There they stopped and there the full
horror of the trap took possession of Queen. She was afraid of her own
shadow and the slightest sound startled her. A partridge drumming in the
woods sent her madly loping through space.
The winter evening came early. The distant sun lowered in the southwest
with a sad, yellow glare; and in the north a gleaming, pearly streak
foretold a brilliant display of northern lights. That streak interested
Queen and she watched it as the darkness thickened, and as she watched
it, looking up from time to time, it grew brighter. Faint shimmering
colours appeared at the eastern end of the streak and slowly moved
across it to the west, vanishing in the west and reappearing brighter in
the east. Many times she had seen these lights, but only once, somewhere
in her half-forgotten childhood, had she seen them so bright and so
fascinating.
They were standing directly in front of a cleft in the shadowy wall of
trees. The cleft led like a roadway to the banks and the river below.
There they could see more of the lights, the portion that glowed in the
lower part of the sky and danced about over the shadowy tops of the
trees on the other shore.
It was during a moment when the lights were so compelling that all of
them had stopped to look when there appeared in the cleft the giant body
of a moose, his antlers like a magnificent oak cut clearly against the
scintillating colours of the aurora borealis. His coming had been so
swift, so sudden and so imperceptible that it took them some time to
realise that a living thing stood within a few yards of them, looking at
them. The herd hastily retreated a short distance; but as soon as they
stopped to look back the enormous animal got frightened, turned and
vanished down the banks.
Queen was very curious. She trotted carefully after him and the rest of
the herd kept to her tracks. When Queen’s head appeared where the plains
turn over the banks, the moose looked up at her a moment and then like a
rabbit shot straight across the river. Beyond the centre of the frozen
river he stopped for a moment to look back once more, then leaped on and
vanished in the woods beyond, leaving behind him, across the ice of the
erstwhile invincible Saskatchewan the defiant shadow of his trail.
An overwhelming impulse flared up in Queen’s soul. A great confusion of
fear and hope seized upon her heart. So nervous that every muscle in her
body trembled, she made her way down the banks and with infinite fear
and caution she took the trail of the moose. She walked along slowly and
very carefully and stopped often to take bites of the snow on the ice as
if she were testing it and at the same time trying to quench the fires
that were burning within her. The others hesitated a moment, but when
they saw her nearly half way across, they faithfully followed her.
In the woods north of the river, they camped for the night. Next day
they went on, penetrating the woods and following the trail of the moose
till they came upon an open space a mile beyond the river. There they
remained for the rest of the winter, feeding upon grass the like of
which they had only at rare times come upon.
Succeeding snowfalls covered their tracks and when spring came, melting
the snows and filling the desolate hollows with quivering, rippling
ponds, loading the lonely air with the whir of duck wings and the
happier honking of geese, the roar of the swollen Saskatchewan had
placed the final seal upon their emancipation.
And here the story of Queen Dora must end, for in that new world beyond
the trail of the moose her struggle against the usurpation of man was
over. It was long after her generation that man ventured into that
desolate region where she found perfect happiness, as perfect a
happiness as may come to living things. Grass and water, leisure and
activity, companionship and security, these were all Queen asked of
life, and these were as free in those unfenced wilds as the air and as
limitless in their abundance. No enemies, no contention, preferences
without hatred, joyous play and eternal good will, she looked toward
each coming moment with no fear; while the glowing sensations of fading
yesterdays only sweetened the music of her existence.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).