THE years rolled by. Old hurts were dulled by the mists of passing time and every hour of the unfettered present came bringing some new joy. New children came to Queen and in the love of each succeeding one, Queen rejoiced as if it were the first and only one. Carefully she led them all to the of and there, since life willed it so, she gave them over to the , to live and provide for themselves and to by the unwritten laws of the herd in the finest exemplification of the Golden Rule on earth. The friends who died or who suddenly disappeared she would miss for a long while, sometimes spending months in search of them, then she would transfer her love of them to some other member of the , just as she transferred her mother-love from the older to the younger of her offspring.  
The shadowy creatures of the past often came, walking into the memory at nightfall. Queen would remain lying, chewing absent-mindedly and watching them, her contentment undisturbed, loving the sadness that clung to them, as we love the sadness that clings to our sweetest music.
 
There came a spring of unusual activity on the part of man, and his daily appearance so threateningly upon the herd, that they abandoned the land which had become endeared to them and journeyed north almost for many days.
 
They came upon a pleasant valley in delicious, grass and many small ponds; and they took possession of it. But at midnight, while they were resting, they were suddenly aroused by a noise which was followed by a long-drawn , like distant thunder.
 
The sound died out and did not come again, but an cloud of smoke swept across the valley. Though the rest of that night was undisturbed and the air, from then on, was clear, they kept awake and fearfully restless. At dawn they abandoned the valley though they saw nothing that was alarming; and as they moved , they came upon a railroad track.
 
On the other side of the track the land stretched away silent and , at the northern horizon in a long, narrow shadow, as of woodland. The tracks remained motionless and the herd slowly ventured near them. While some of the horses looked on , some of the headstrong young colts to the dismay of their mothers, walked upon the tracks and at them. Seeing that nothing happened to them, the herd started at once to cross.
 
Half a mile north of that they came upon another which had been hidden by a hill. Always glad to see water, they down in concert and took possession, once more intending to end the journey. But toward evening while the colts were expressing the joy of life in a about the water, they were startled by another like the one of the night before, and associating it somehow with the tracks, they tore up the slope to see what it was.
 
In the distant east glowed a light, like the harvest moon. It gleamed from the centre of a black, fear-inspiring object from which clouds of smoke poured into the air and streamed backward into space. They gazed upon it for a few moments as if transfixed, then when they realised that it was coming rapidly nearer, they broke down into the valley, splashing through the slough and sped up the other slope. On the top of that hill, they stopped to look back. The thing was already thundering past them, shutting away the whole of the south with a long, black line of smoke in which sparkled a thousand star-like eyes of fire.
 
Had they remained to look at that line of smoke, they might have lost the fear of it. Within a few minutes it went as it had come. The sweet evening air cleared and settled down to the silence they loved. But such is the way of destiny that a thing of smoke and illusion may a power greater than that of iron or mind.
 
They did not wait long enough to see what it really was. An impassable wall had arisen behind them. A guard of beasts had rushed across their path, shutting from them forever the old south world they knew so well. To Queen it was, in the vaguest sense, somewhat more than that. The of the moment were by the widening distance between them and this thing they feared; but a new anxiety crept into Queen’s heart, like a snaky creature, and grew bolder there as the danger it forecast approached. It was the fear of the hunted for the cage. It was as if she had entered an enormous trap and had seen the door shut upon her.
 
They kept to a strip of wild prairie several miles in width. On the eastern and western horizon they saw from time to time and barns and fences and huge squares of black, earth; and from the distances came at long the barking of dogs. The feel and the smell of man was in the air, and they found that air hard to breathe. They grazed when hunger asserted itself and rested when the younger colts refused to go on, but continued their .
 
They came to a country where there were no shacks and no fences, where the evenness was broken only by patches of woodland. There the earth seemed of living things and in the moaning of the winds as they blew through the swaying trees, the spirit of loneliness assured them of safety. The grass on the open spaces grew high as if no living thing had ever touched it, and swaying with the trees, it subtly testified to the of that assurance. In Queen’s mind, however, the shacks and the fences and the barking of dogs were as yet too distinct to allow her to feel secure; and she continued the flight, fear urging her to go on till the last trace of man had faded from the air and a wall of and had covered it. But they came one day to a very steep slope. Tall trees rose from the foot of the slope and beyond their tops Queen saw the reflecting waters of the Saskatchewan pouring along rapidly from west to east.
 
The river was very wide and the darker waters beneath the brighter surface indicated a depth. The fear of the trap that had been vague in Queen’s mind now became distinct as she gazed at the obscure distance from which the river came and at the shadowy spaces into which it rushed. Her faith in the north had given her a decade of freedom and had taken her two hundred miles from her birthplace. The sight of those impassable volumes of water staggered that faith. She grew nervous and restless and when the herd had drunk the water, she led them away to the west.
 
A half day’s journey brought them to where the Vermillion River tearing along between high banks comes pouring down from the south and the west and breaks into the Saskatchewan, with a threatening roar. Again Queen felt that she had come to another wall of the trap and turning, led the herd back toward the east. A few days of grazing and moving east along the Saskatchewan brought them to a barbed wire fence that ran down the banks to the very edge of the river. Ever as she had followed the slightly river, she had searched in vain for a . The doors of the north, too, had closed to them, and their freedom now depended upon a battle of wits, the wits of the herd in the limited wilds against the wits of man in his protecting .
 
They returned to the middle of the unsettled belt and there Queen spent a happy week of freedom, disturbed only by the promptings of the canker within her which its from the frequent appearance of men on horseback.
 
Seeding time arrived and the homesteaders who lived south of the railroad tracks went to hunt for the horses they had released the preceding fall. The homesteaders who lived on the of these wilds, in the hope of capturing some of the unclaimed horses, joined them. But with a cunning that the hunters, Queen went from one hiding place to another, detecting every approach so long before the horsemen appeared that in the first full week of searching she was seen only on two occasions.
 
The homesteaders became desperate. The snows were fast disappearing and the land was in best condition for their work. They appealed to the Canadian Government and half a dozen members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police came out to reinforce them in the war to the knife that was declared upon Queen and her .
 
Several times a day Queen would run down the banks of the Saskatchewan. At the river she would take a few of water as if she had come to drink and then she would stand and look across the roaring deeps to the wilds beyond, suppressing the constantly rising impulse to into the rapid waters and beat her way to the freedom of the north, which seemed, after half a lifetime of benefaction, to have abandoned her. Then one day the impulse came with overwhelming suddenness and she struck out madly for the other shore. But when she felt the bottom drop away from under her feet, she became frightened. The remnants of the huge snow drifts that were still melting kept the river to twice its volume. The current lifted her and carried her several rods downstream, fortunately for her, hitting a bar and depositing her there.
 
and snorting and registering the promise that she would never try it again, Queen finally clambered back upon the shore where she shook the water from her body. Some of the horses who had watched the whole performance with anxiety, came toward her. Queen joined them dejectedly, grateful to be out of the treacherous water, but remembering that she was being hunted and realising now that there was no chance of getting across the river and that her only hope lay in her delicate legs and the cunning that many years of resistance to man had developed.
 
A few days passed by in which all on the part of the homesteaders and the Mounted Police seemed to have ceased. Queen began to feel that the war had been abandoned; but she was surprised one very early morning by a formidable group of horsemen, less than a quarter of a mile to the east from where the herd was grazing, who were coming at full speed. A strong wind had been blowing from the west and had carried the and sound of them away. A in the wind her of the enemy’s approach.
 
They had been moving along the edge of a patch of woodland, the wall of which stretched from the Saskatchewan to a point a little more than a mile south of the river. There was no opening between the trees and the brush. The only chance for escape lay in a wild dash south and in reaching the end of the wooded wall before the horsemen could reach it. That chance they took.
 
The horsemen divided into groups. One group sped away southwest at an angle, while another, going straight west, spread out on a long line to prevent the herd from going back to the river.
 
It was a close race. Every animal, pursuing or pursued, in the terrible of it. The younger and the stronger of the herd led the race, with Queen’s magnificent head in front. Behind the group of fastest runners came the mothers with their colts, and the old work-worn horses brought up the rear. Though spurs dug unmercifully into wet, sides, staining them with small red spots, the forepart of the herd, unencumbered by riders, won the end of the wall and broke away to the west in safety. Not until the wall point was almost out of sight did they stop to look back and when Queen finally felt it safe to do so and swung round a , she saw no sign of her pursuers; but the far greater portion of the herd was gone with them.
 
About a mile southwest of where they were, they knew of a slough. It was down in a deep hollow and though they would rather have remained on the hills where they could more easily spy any one coming after them, they were very thirsty and trotted away for water. At the of the hollow some of them stopped to look about before going down, others broke down on a run.
 
Queen drank very little. She was worried and very nervous. While most of the horses walked into the pond, looking for deeper and clearer water, she took a few hasty sips of the warm, muddy stuff on the edge and then ran up the slope to take another look. There seemed to be nothing on the plains, but to make sure she remained there a while and grazed.
 
She had not been grazing more than a few minutes when she was startled by a splashing in the pond. She looked down in time to see White-black whose forelegs had sunk into a mud-hole, attempt to turn round. Half a dozen of the others began to struggle just as . Some of them managed to reach hard ground, but White-black and two others seemed to sink deeper the harder they struggled.
 
At first all this violent effort to get out made her think that some awful danger had suddenly arisen in the centre of the pond, but the light grey mud on the flanks of those who did get out, apprised her of the fact that they had struck an alkali mud-hole. She had had her experience with alkali mud-holes before. They had been in the habit of drinking at the other end of the slough and had come to this end now only because the other end was somewhat nearer to the territory from which they had just escaped.
 
She hurried down to the side of White-black and as he resumed his struggling, she called to him anxiously. Finally the three of them ceased struggling for a while and set up a helpless neighing to which those on the shore responded just as helplessly.
 
There was little danger of drowning for the water was very shallow, but the fear of being caught, the fear of the pursued creature still warm in their throbbing hearts, kept them struggling and their struggles tired them out and drove them down deeper into the mud. Queen was . It seemed as if everything were combining for their destruction, that even the mud joined man in his effort to torture them. She called to the helpless creatures ceaselessly, running up and down the slope in a of fear.
 
Suddenly while she was down at the edge of the pond, urging White-black to exert himself and White-black was for want of strength, the wind shifted and brought from the northwest a message of danger. The horses who were free ran up the slope to the southeast. Queen, who was this time behind the others, suddenly stopped half way up the slope and turning back called frantically to White-black. Her life long association with White-black had endeared him more strongly to her than the other two and it seemed hard for her to leave him in .
 
She ran back to the edge of the water, stamping her foot and calling with all her strength; but White-black only weakened himself. One of the two other horses, in a violent last effort, pulled himself half way out, and dropped back, but White-black ceased trying.
 
The beats of the free horses faded away in the distance and their patter was followed by those of the enemy’s horses. A man’s head appeared at the rim of the hollow and with a last call to White-black, Queen shot up the slope and away to the southwest. The men had seen the other horses first and had to go after them, when they discovered Queen. Trying to head her off, one man started down the slope and as he did so he discovered White-black and his two companions struggling in the mud.
 
As Queen fled she heard the one man whistling to the others. She could not hear anyone behind her but she did not stop to find out whether she was being followed or not. In the distant west she saw the shadowy blue of a of trees and she made for that with every bit of strength left in her. When she reached the trees she first shot under cover, then investigating to make sure that no dangerous animal was hidden there, or that no men were coming from any other direction, she pushed her way out to a of berries, and stopped to scan the plains she had covered.
 
Not a living thing stirred on the level of the prairies. Only heat waves danced above the narrow, blue strips of woodland shadows. Within a few minutes she was convinced that no one was coming after her and then despite her fear and restlessness, and her anxiety to get back to the other horses that had escaped, she sank down to the ground, snorting and panting like a dog. But within half an hour she was off again in pursuit of the remnant of the herd.
 
All through the afternoon she hunted them, stopping often............