in the fall of the year, the farmers and the ranchers of the northwest prairies of canada release their horses for the winter. strange as it may seem to those of us who shudder at the very thought of raging blizzards on the open plains, the horses that are left free to roam over unsheltered space and are obliged to dig down through feet of snow for their grass, not only survive the severest winters but are generally found fat and strong the next spring.
if while you are out riding you happen upon a group of these free horses, they will stare at you curiously until they begin to fear that you have come to gather them up and to take them back to the farm yard, then with angry, defiant tossing of heads they will turn and gallop out of reach, going so fast that you will not see them for snow dust. the horse you are riding, if he has ever enjoyed a winter of that freedom, will struggle to get away from you so that he may join them. because you will not let him go, he will show his displeasure like a petulant child and long after you have forced him to abandon the attempt to get loose, long after the happier group has disappeared, he will keep turning his head back and calling yearningly to them.
the farmer who releases his horses in the fall rarely loses any of them. every farmer knows every horse within a radius of twenty-five miles or more, knows them by name and colour, knows their histories and peculiarities. when the farmer is in doubt as to who some distant rider may be, you can hear him think aloud thus:
“that’s skinner’s sorrel, billy. skinner’s goin’ for his mail.” or: “that’s spicer’s white nag, madge. i’ll bet spicer’s comin’ to see about them oats.”
so in the spring of the year, when the farmers are all out searching for their horses, they know those they come upon, and if some farmer sees skinner’s sorrel, billy, he will drive him in the direction of skinner’s homestead, talking to billy as he does so, in some such fashion as this:
“well, billy, you little devil, you ain’t any the worse for the worst winter in twenty years. you’re fat as a pig. go on now, get home! i know you don’t like the idea of gettin’ back to work, but it’s soon seedin’ time, you know!”
the farmer who works beside his horses daily, who gets to understand every expression of these beautiful, intelligent creatures, always talks seriously to them. this sounds strange to us until we have come in contact with these animals for a short time, when, hardly being conscious of it, we soon start talking to them ourselves. they certainly understand many words and i have seen evidences of horses recognising at once what sort of temper or mood men happen to be in as soon as they approach them.
just as they learn to understand us, we learn to understand them. every neigh or whinny takes on the meaning of a word, and their scowling or angry shaking of heads, and their protests against certain discomforts we impose upon them appear as clearly as the similar expressions of people. the most amazing fact, however, that slowly dawns upon us, is the fact that these lovely animals live in a conscious world of their own, not half so different from ours as we had allowed ourselves to think.
the rancher is not as intimate with the horses he breeds and rears in virtual wildness on the vast ranges which he leases from the government and about which he builds his barbed wire fences. naturally so. he has from several hundred to several thousand horses and they are virtually in a wild state until he sells them, when they are broken-in and most of the untamed spirit is crushed out of them by heavy labour.
a rancher can rarely tell you how many horses he has. during the spring when colts are most often born, his stock may double for all he knows. he does not attempt to find out until the fall, when he rounds them up. the young colts are separated from their mothers and branded. the poor young things are tied and thrown and the red hot iron, with the shape of each rancher’s particular brand, is pressed upon the shoulder till the insignia is burned through hair and skin, where the mark remains as long as the creature lives.
the ranch horses are wilder and more spirited than the farm horses, but when the latter are released for the winter, they often mix with the former, breaking up into groups of those who seem to feel themselves more congenial to each other. every animal has a character and personality of his own, and while he will get along beautifully with one horse, he will fight all the time with another. from my observation, it seems to me that the wild free horse does much less quarrelling than the horse that has toiled on the farm, which would indicate quite clearly how much like ours his nature is.
very few of the great herds that rustle for themselves all winter long die while they are away. those that die are horses that either have been kept in the barn too late in the season or else that were in a starved condition when they were released. a horse that has been kept in the barn till after the cold season has set in and has been inured to the warmth of the barn, when suddenly exposed to the unsheltered open plains, if the weather happens to be severe, will sometimes die because it finds it is unable to adjust itself to the change in temperature.
but there is one peculiarity of horse nature which sometimes kills the best horse, not only in the wilds but in the pasture or barn yard, if no one is about to come to its assistance. every horse loves to roll. he will lie down on a sandy spot or on the snow and roll over from side to side. it sometimes happens that he selects a spot that has a deep rut, or that is near a wall, a stone, or a straw-stack. he will roll over and strike the wall or the straw-stack or get caught in the rut in such a way that he cannot force himself back. he will remain helpless on his back till some one comes to his rescue. if he gets no assistance he will die in a very short time, sometimes within less than an hour.
but i am interested in the horse as a fellow being, subject as we are to limitations; and, to a degree less perhaps than we are, capable of joy and sorrow. in so far as these beautiful creatures are able to communicate to others an indication of the emotions out of which their lives are built, i have taken my story directly from them. my story, too, comes fresh from the prairies. i did most of its planning while riding on horseback over hundreds of miles of rolling alberta plains, often coming upon hills from which i could see a perfectly circular horizon without a sign of human life, save perhaps some telltale arrangement of stones, laid on the hilltop by indians whom fate had long since swept from the plains of their fatherland. at such times my pony, whose wild and exciting history forms the greater part of this story, seemed as much moved by the open vastness and the stillness as i; and, each in his own way, we held communion with the spirit of the wilderness.
d. g.
langmark, alberta, canada.
