the reaping season passed and threshing time arrived. the farmer was plowing his fields for the next year’s seeding because he had finished reaping before most of the other farmers had finished. he worked himself as hard as he worked his “critters.” that was his reputation among those who did not have anything more serious against him, but they were few. every fall he, like most of the other homesteaders, left his farm and joined a threshing crew some twenty miles south, remaining with it until winter set in and until the wheat of the last farmer of their circuit had been threshed.
came the last hot spell of the year. cold winds and rain and cloud of early autumn gave way to a short indian summer, so warm that insects long too stiff to appear more than for a few hours during the warmest part of each day, came buzzing back to life as if it were springtime. nose-flies began to bother the horses and the dirty, old, wire-net nose-baskets were brought back into use.
the sunlit air sponged up the aroma that oozed from the wet earth, and breathing it filled dora with old longing. sensations of loping free over the unfenced earth, like spirits, danced enticingly before her yearning eyes. birds flitting through the sweet air sang with the enthusiasm of spring and urged her to resist the forces of evil that fettered her. but the harness on her back was heavy. the traces that bound her to the plow and the lines that held her to the others who had forgotten what freedom is, were inexorable as the will of the man, whose whip was his only argument.
they had been dragging the unyielding plow for a few hours on the first of these delightful mornings, when, looking up as they turned at the end of a furrow, dora saw in the distant south a horse and buggy, coming at a good pace. all the way down that furrow she saw the buggy steadily grow larger and clearer. coming up on the next furrow she could see nothing and then as she turned once more she saw white-black coming. she stopped for just a second and the whip came down with a stinging lash. she sprang forward and pulled along with the rest; but her head was higher than it had been for some time and from her trembling lips came nervous whinnies which white-black did not hear. by the time the two moving objects met, there was a long, melodious and very welcome “whoa,” and the four horses stopped facing the one horse in the buggy.
the three horses relaxed and stood with heads lowered, grateful for this bit of rest, but dora was too excited to stand still. with head erect, ears pricked she called to her old mate with a call that shook the whole of her weary body. white-black raised his head at the first call, looked at the four horses, sniffed somewhat like a dog and then with all his strength, replied. hardly had he finished when dora, exerting herself to the limit of her strength, called again. white-black started forward as he replied this time but the impatient man in the buggy, flaring up with righteous wrath, cruelly jerked the lines. white-black raised his head in pain and moved back a step. he called again but he did not attempt to go to her any more. his head lowered like that of the horses beside dora and an expression of utter helplessness came over his white face. dora, too, dropped her head with the full realisation of the futility of trying in any way to overcome the hold man had upon them.
the ploughman left the buggy side where he had been standing, conversing with the visitor, and walked back toward his plow a few feet, then stopped, and continued the conversation.
“then i can depend upon you?” said the man in the buggy.
“oh, i’ll unhook right away,” replied the other, taking out his watch, “and i’ll be there by supper time. i’ll start just as soon as i feed the horses and get a bite myself.”
“all right!” said the stranger, striking white-black a blow with the whip that sent him forward at a bound.
dora called after him. from the distance, even as he was running away at top speed, white-black called back, helplessly. dora tried hard to keep her eyes on the shrinking buggy and the two white ears that protruded above it, but her eyes were hemmed in by the blinders and she found it difficult. she was obliged to raise her head over the mane of the little bay mare. forgetting for the moment the man at the plow, she rested her head upon the bay mare’s neck and called and called again.
there was a sudden order to move on and dora started off, expecting to pull with all her might upon the traces. she was most agreeably surprised to find that they had been unhooked and all the way to the house, stirred by emotions which she had no other way of expressing, she pulled ahead of the others, eager to get to the farmyard as if she expected to be released there so that she could go back to the world and the life for which she longed with old fervour again.
dora was unharnessed and taken to her stall in the barn. the little bay mare was released in the corral, while the two big horses with their harness on were put into the stall next to dora and all were fed. in an hour the farmer was ready to depart. he came into the barn and took the two horses out, and soon after, dora heard the wagon rumbling away.
during the last few weeks, throughout the endless hours of wearing toil, dora had yearned for the stall; but now as she stood there, fresh from the unexpected meeting with her lifelong companion, the enclosure of the barn was as harassing as the slavery of harness, and without knowing why she did it, realising fully that white-black was far out of hearing, she called and called like a broken-hearted mother from whom her foal had been taken.
her calling was suddenly answered by the loud voice of the boy, who dashed into the barn and began quickly to saddle her. he tightened the cinch, as he always did, till dora protested, and then put into her mouth the rider’s bit with its cruel bend. so, too, he put on the wire-net nose basket and fastened it so high that the wire-net pressed against her lips.
as soon as dora got outdoors she looked for signs of white-black. when the boy jumped to the saddle she started away to the south, but with an angry pull of the reins he turned her to the west. in spite of the fact that she had been working to the limit of her strength, in spite of the pain in her muscles and limbs, she leaped away like a racer, and in spite of the fact that she was already going at her greatest speed, the idiotic boy, as was his habit, kept applying the spurs. on the trail along the wire fences she merely tossed her head with displeasure at every dig, but when they reached the end of the fences and he turned her diagonally across the trackless plains, the sight of the open, unobstructed prairie helped her to make her show of resentment plainer.
but the stupid boy not only failed to perceive that he might have been wrong, he resented what struck him as a challenge to his authority. he meant to show her that he was master. he jerked the reins back with all his might and dug the spurs into her sides.
“go ahead!” he cried when she fled across the plains as if she had been frightened and were running away, “you can’t go too fast to suit me!”
before dora, as she sped, loomed an exceedingly large badger hole, the freshly dug, yellow earth piled high to one side. she was used to badger holes and had long ago learned to cunningly avoid them, no matter how suddenly one appeared in her vision. but despite his tactics the boy was surprised by dora’s unusually nervous behaviour. he was not at all sure that she wasn’t really trying to run away. in spite of his fear, he could not allow himself to dispense with his bullying proclivities, and as she neared the hole he turned her head sideways and once more plied the spurs without reserve.
where she would have, without any difficulty, avoided it on her own account, his turning her head drove her upon the mound of earth. her leg slipped on the loose, newly-dug earth and went down the hole and as the boy attempted to leap from the saddle he was thrown forward six feet from her head, landing with a thud and a shriek.
he was not badly hurt, but he was so badly scared that he yelled like a frightened baby. when he got to his feet there was an expression of murderous intent on his face and he stretched his arms forward as he started for her as if he meant to beat the life out of her when he got hold of her. but he did not get hold of her. she had been frightened, too, and had stood looking at him, unable to decide what to do; but when she saw those hands, she reared high into the air in an effort to prevent his seizing the reins. this time he backed away afraid of the hoofs that rose threateningly before him. she turned with a gracefully defiant toss of her head and bounded away as fast as the dragging reins would allow her to go. she could hear his frantic threatening cries, but that voice had lost its power. her chance had come at last!
by his futile cries she could tell how far she was leaving him behind her. she dared not stop to look back even when she heard his cries no more. the reins trailing on the ground impeded her flight and she felt as if he were but a short distance behind her and would soon reach her. in her mad race for freedom she kept stepping on the reins and every step tore her lips and battered her palate; but not for a moment did this actually halt her. she endured the pain like one who was aware of the fact that the goal was worth it, till all that was left of the reins dangled a few inches from her muzzle.
a mile farther west from the badger hole was a patch of woodland. when she reached it, dora stopped for a second to look back; but she did not see the boy. a hill, in between, obstructed her view. she felt somewhat freer not seeing him; but still she went as fast as she could go working her way through the woods. the branches of the trees caught in her saddle and made going very fast impossible. twigs hooked in the ring of the bit outside of the basket and not only hurt her but frightened her because sometimes she had sensations of being seized by some man. but despite these pulls and digs and impediments, dodging the branches as best she could, she came in half an hour to a large open space. two or three miles beyond that she saw another patch of woods and headed straight for that. she got through this bit of woodland without much trouble and reaching another open space she followed the wall of trees in its irregular curve to the north.
still northward she fled, though the north had failed her. it was evening, when after a steady trot for twenty-five miles she came to the strip of forest that borders upon the saskatchewan and there, coming upon a deer path which was familiar to her, she plunged into the shadows of the woods. she was too tired and still too weary of pursuit to think of food. coming to a windfall where she had many a time successfully hidden in the days before her captivity, she lay down to rest.
she had been down but a short time when the prodding of the hard wooden stirrup upon which she was lying forced her up. she tried to lie down again, but again the stirrup forced her to get up. again and again she tried it, but each time with the same result, and finally with the growing fever of a new and threatening fear, she gave up the attempt to rest and went instead for a drink of water at the river. when she reached the river’s edge she stopped to stare across to the wilds beyond. there was a wish in her heart that she could find some way of getting across the moving water, but that wish was dulled by a vague realisation of the fact that now, without her old followers, getting across would not be wholly satisfactory.
a great sad stillness brooded over the river, hanging over the silvery reflections of the sky-line like a dome of mist that rested upon the dreary shadows of the trees and banks on each side. confinement and toil had sickened dora’s love of the wilds, though memory sought to exalt it as of old, and the beauty of the wilderness, without her companions, was only desolation. a nameless longing in her heart and a complexity of fears she had never experienced before seized upon her like a disease. it was as if she expected a fatal blow from some hidden enemy that moved about her in every possible direction.
she bent down and drank at her feet. it was hard and disagreeable to drink with the wire-net on her muzzle and the iron bit in her mouth. she lashed the fast flowing stream with her muzzle in the hope that somehow the nasty basket would be washed away by the water, but she gave up the attempt and drank as best she could. suddenly she lifted her head and stared away into the dark spaces. in the far distance a small shadowy form swooped from the top of a tall poplar, like a bit of shadow breaking away from the body of the night, and disappeared in the whiteness of the sky, leaving behind the melancholy echo of its cry. she followed it with her eyes till it was no more visible, then suddenly turned and ran for the open.
it was not only the open prairie she sought, because the open prairie was the world she knew and loved best; but something else was driving her. a fear that seemed to have been born of shadow and water and the lonely cry of the loon. it was the sudden realisation that though she had escaped from the detestable slavery of man and toil and dirty barn, she had carried away from her bondage man’s inescapable curse.
her first act upon reaching the open was to search the shaded distances, then out of the depths of her embittered, fear-infested heart, she sent into the wilds she had longed for her earnest appeal for companionship; but only the mocking echo of her own voice came back from the motionless tree-walls on each side of her. she lowered her head to graze but raised it at once again. now she knew what she had feared. now she grasped something of the extent of man’s curse. the wire-net on her muzzle, like a trap, forbade her to eat until she returned humbly to man and submitted to his tyranny.
in a frenzy of fear and anger she loped about in a circle for the greater part of an hour, then she attempted to rub the cursed thing from her lips. but rubbing on the ground pushed back the levers of the rider’s bit and hurt her with every move. she stopped to think a moment, gazing helplessly about. she lowered her head, pushing it along between her hoofs, and pulling it forward, trying to rub it off that way; but all that she did was to bend the strong wire of the basket, which after that pressed painfully into her nose. she tried rubbing her muzzle against the bark of a tree. a small twig point pierced the skin of her lip and as she hastily pulled her head back the lever of the bit caught in some way and she struggled for some time before she freed it. then she gave up, running off into space as if she were trying to flee from some fearful thing she had just seen.
the cinch was still tight and though it did not bother her much when she was up on her feet, it seemed to grow tighter and cut into her skin when she tried to lie down; and if, for want of rest, she lay down anyway, the stirrups always fell in such a way as to press into some tender spot as she lay upon one of them. she would endure that for a few minutes and then she would get up again with a groan.
the poplar woods about the saskatchewan are not continuous. patches and strips covering spaces of from one to fifty acres cut up the rolling plains. by running round about these she could keep herself invisible to approaching enemies. her old power to detect man’s approach seemed to come back to her. once that day she thought she detected some one coming, and hid in the trees without even making sure, then coming out on the other side and taking a roundabout run, left that section of the country. yet as she hastily put distance between herself and this danger, she half realised that she might have to go back at last to the man from whom she had escaped, who she knew could save her from the iron grip on her muzzle. two days later she saw some one coming on the eastern horizon. she was certain that it was the boy pursuing her and first going north to get under cover of a patch of woods, she fled west for many miles.
she came late in the afternoon to the pond in the wilderness where white-black had been trapped in the mud. she remembered clearly white-black’s floundering in the mud and avoided that side of the pond. she walked leisurely around it, gazing over the silent water from whose brightness she missed the remembered sight of ducks. many a time in her slavery she had had visions of this bit of water with its reflections smiling up to the heavens. it seemed hard for her to believe that she was really there. she had longed so often to be there; yet, now, she experienced something like a feeling of disappointment. what it was or why, she did not know.
she was crossing a muddy spot when she slipped and fell on her side. she was not hurt but slightly stunned and remained lying down. as she lay there it occurred to her that the stirrup was not hurting her. she did not think of its sinking into the mud, but thenceforth when she wanted to lie down she came to that muddy spot. the pond came to her assistance in another way. she had gone in some distance to get a drink of clear water where the pond bottom was quite hard and as she drank, some of the lower rushes penetrated the basket through the meshes of the net. she lowered her muzzle carefully, keeping her jaws open; and when she felt some of the rushes in her mouth, she cropped them quickly, chewing them triumphantly as the water dripped from her muzzle.
the rushes grew tallest in the centre of the pond. she was afraid to go in very far, feeling constantly, as she would move inward, that this time she was going to stick there. it was not long before what rushes she could reach had all been cropped. she learned to get some grass by doing with the grass what she had done with the rushes, but though this was better food she could not get as much of the grass as she had gotten of the rushes. she managed in that way, however, to keep life burning in her bedraggled body.
the fear of being pursued and captured again left her as the days went by without a sign of man, but as this fear left came hunger. all day she struggled to obtain enough grass to keep her alive and when the stirrup resting on frozen mud kept her awake at night, she only thought of grass and how to get more and more of it. the sweetness of the wilds she had loved was gone, leaving them hollow and desolate and so cruelly unresponsive as to be almost mocking.
day after day man’s curse grew heavier to bear and the strangle-hold it had upon her life contracted with more telling effect. it was only a matter of a short time when its contracting hold would finally and mercifully put an end to her misery.
the short indian summer passed away. the nights became cold and the frosts froze the mud into rock. when in lying down the stirrup pressed into some tender spot, she would endure the pain, then rise next morning and go limping over the plains. a layer of thick ice which no longer melted by the middle of the day now covered the pond. what little frozen dew that she could get, with the little grass she could crop, only intensified her thirst and the desire for water drove her to desperation. she tried to break a hole in the ice but she did not have the necessary strength. the irresistible desire for water sent her out upon the slippery ice in the hope of finding a weaker spot. a dozen feet from the edge she slipped and fell with a crash, breaking through and falling into the icy water. she was obliged to rest a while before she could summon enough energy to get up. when she did get up she was aching from head to foot and on her leg was an open, bleeding wound. she drank, however, all she could hold, then she turned and looked helplessly to the shore, afraid to step over the broken ice, falling again when at last she ventured toward it, but finally getting back.
her sides pained her terribly and her open wound smarted and itched. she tried to lick it but only hurt it with the wire-net. she stood stolidly for a few moments, her addled brain trying to clarify the great confusion that came over it. what was she to do? what was going to become of her? life was almost unendurable, and instincts of terrifying force guarded against the death that would have relieved her. paroxysms of fear swept over her, filling the shadows of the desolation with beasts of prey who, leering and licking their chops, waited with terrifying patience for the weaker moment when they expected to pull her down.
geese flew southward constantly and their ominous honking sang dirges to the death of all that life had been to her in its happier past. the skies grew grey and remained chronically grey and the atmosphere seemed filled up with a great cosmic sorrow, like the face of a child suppressing the impulse to cry. the winds reaching out from the frozen north wailed with maddening grief.
a taciturn old coyote began to worry her. he would sometimes pass her while she grazed or struggled in her attempts to graze, each time seemingly coming nearer. he filled her soul with terror. sometimes he woke her at night with his demoniac howling and she would spring to her feet and shake and tremble with fear and cold, only to find that he was sitting on the rim of the hollow, looking down at her, his black, hateful form cut clearly against the dark grey sky. then one morning, she awoke to find him less than a rod away, sitting on his haunches and watching her. he fled when she sprang weakly toward him with a fearful cry in which she tried desperately to be defiant; but she decided then to abandon the horror-infested basin.
the great weakness was upon her. the coyote had long recognised it and she knew it now. whither she was to go or what she was to do, she did not know. only she felt the need of going and she went, limping slowly and painfully, sick in body and soul, all her defiance of man crushed out of her. thus the erstwhile queen of the wilds lumbered painfully over the plains that seemed to no longer sustain her, going humbly back to man to dumbly beg for mercy, for even in that state of mind she felt that as man had placed his curse upon her only man could remove it.
it was a dreary, dull afternoon. the sun struggled to show itself and its weakest warmth was driven from her protruding bones by a cold, cutting gale. in her lumbering along over the plains that seemed strangely dim and uncertain she stopped every once in a while and stared like a decrepit old woman. she came at last to an open space between two patches of woodland and stopped to gaze wild-eyed upon a black shanty covered with tar-paper, and a sod barn.
the smells that came from that farmyard made it very hard for her to advance, but the intense feeling of her desperation conquered each wave of fear and step by step she made her way toward the house, stopping at last, a hundred feet away, unable to go any farther. there was no sign of life. fear held her motionless yet hunger and thirst and weakness urged her to call for help. her call sounded weak and hollow. she called again with greater exertion and in that call a note of conciliation was unmistakably audible.
suddenly she saw the door of the shanty open and a woman came out. had it been a man, all her unworded resolution would have gone to naught and dora would have turned and fled; but a woman was a different experience. she turned nervously and walked off a short distance, but when the woman advanced toward her holding out a hand and calling with a most winning voice, she stopped and waited. when the woman came nearer dora heard her own name. the recognition of that sound gave her so much hope and courage that she deliberately turned toward the woman who by that time was near enough to take hold of one of the pieces of strap that still hung from the bit-ring.
for a few minutes the woman patted her forehead lovingly and talked to her in a way that warmed poor dora as if the woman had placed a blanket over her cold aching body. when the woman began leading her toward the house she followed willingly till the door opened and a little girl came out, then she stopped as if afraid; but when the woman urged she went on, keeping her eyes upon the little girl.
at the well, the little girl chopped a hole in the ice on the trough while the woman removed the basket, bridle, halter and what was left of the saddle and dora lowered her head quickly into the water and drank as rapidly as she could.
“that dirty brute!” said the woman.
“he never feeds his critters,” piped in the little girl.
“he doesn’t feed his wife,” added the woman, not because she wanted to tell this to the little girl, but rather because she wanted to express the hatred of an old and bitter feud.
“take these rotten things,” said the woman, pointing to the bridle and the halter, while she seized the remains of the saddle. “let’s get them out of the way, and don’t you ever open your mouth to tell any one, no matter who it is, that his mare was here. i don’t want his rotten old saddle and bridle. he never keeps anything looking decent enough for any one to want any of his rotten things. anyway it is a sin to send this poor mare back to him. it ain’t up to me to catch his runaway critters for him and i just can’t let the poor critter go off like this and die. when dad gets back from threshin’, he’ll take these things and drop ’em on the road near his place where he will be sure to find them.”
when dora had drunk all she could, she turned immediately to some grass near by and began voraciously to pull at it. the woman had befriended her and she was not afraid of her. but to her surprise, when she came back, the woman rushed at her with something in her hand which she waved threateningly at her, clearly ordering her away. dora ran off as fast as she could go and when she got well out of the way, she turned to look back with a puzzled expression on her face. both the woman and the little girl were calmly entering the shanty.
without an attempt to get at the motive behind the woman’s strange conduct, dora went on grazing there, moving off and looking back when her mouth was too full to crop, eating so rapidly and so absorbedly that she had no time to think about the phenomenal change that had thus miraculously come over her. if she was not thinking gratefully, she did feel grateful and possibly some higher intellectual force than hers, in some way, realised for her that only justice had been done.
