THE reaping season passed and threshing time arrived. The farmer was 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 that from the wet earth, and breathing it filled Dora with old . Sensations of loping free over the unfenced earth, like spirits, danced before her eyes. Birds flitting through the sweet air sang with the enthusiasm of spring and urged her to resist the forces of evil that her. But the harness on her back was heavy. The traces that bound her to the 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 mornings, when, looking up as they turned at the end of a , 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 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 . 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, 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 , ears 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, 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, up with righteous , 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 of trying in any way to overcome the hold man had upon them.
The ploughman left the buggy side where he had been , 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 above it, but her eyes were in by the blinders and she found it difficult. She was obliged to raise her head over the mane of the little bay . 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 away.
During the last few weeks, throughout the endless hours of wearing , Dora had 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 as the slavery of harness, and without knowing why she did it, realising 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 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 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 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 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, an exceedingly large 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 with his , and as she neared the hole he turned her head sideways and once more 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 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 .
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 that rose threateningly before him. She turned with a toss of her head and bounded away as fast as the dragging reins would allow her to go. She could hear his threatening cries, but that voice had lost its power. Her chance had come at last!
By his 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 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 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 a few inches from her .
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, 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. 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, 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 she fled, though the north had failed her. It was evening, when after a steady 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 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 , she lay down to rest.
She had been down but a short time when the 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 , 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 of mist that rested upon the shadows of the trees and banks on each side. and toil had sickened Dora’s love of the wilds, though memory sought to it as of old, and the beauty of the , without her companions, was only desolation. A nameless longing in her heart and a 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 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 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 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 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 lov............