QUEEN was branded! A large letter B had been burned through the hair and almost through the skin on her right shoulder. The red hot metal had broken through the skin in several spots on the curves and from these spots drops of blood. The air constantly passing over the wound kept the pain of it at its original .
The ropes gave way. The two men stepped away quickly. Queen thought for a moment that she was free. The ropes were still hanging from her neck but they were hanging loosely. She sprang to her feet. A hasty look around made her think, foolishly, that she could now get away. She leaped forward eagerly and at once realised her mistake. The ropes became . A front leg was back to one of the legs and she went down on one side with a shock that seemed to have disturbed every organ in her body.
She remained lying down but raised her head. With large round eyes, radiating fear and hate, she looked from one to the other of her little captors as if she were seeking some vulnerable point for attack; but they were calmly and their calmness their power. Nearby the fire that had heated the irons was still smouldering, poisoning the air with its significance.
For a few moments Queen remained comparatively still. Their obvious power over her crushed and confused her. From her shoulder came the painful of her ; and somehow, this pain, more than the ropes that gripped her neck and feet, brought her the overwhelming conviction that she was as much their property as the body of her first beloved colt had been the property of the coyote that had sat and feasted over it.
That the rest of her flesh would be torn from her body as she felt a piece had already been torn from her shoulder, there was no doubt in her mind. But Queen had fought many battles and though the pain of the brand was inescapable and unforgetable, though that moment she was well-nigh hopeless, she still watched for her chance to get away.
When she got up again she was afraid to move a foot. One of the men pulled on the rope that gripped her neck. Queen expected to be hurt again. She herself against the earth with all four legs, and pulled back. A severe on the haunch sent her limping to the side. The man behind followed her while the man in front ran off a few paces ahead, and pulled again. Several repetitions of this performance brought her to the open of the fence. Near the gateway was the house and beyond the house was the barn. Experience had taught her to keep away from men’s and the smell of the barn where she had once seen White-black, and her colt had been , came back faintly and called upon her to resist. There were the men about her. There was the boy and at his heels, barking , was the dog. But in spite of them she made another attempt to get away and once more earned a violent throw to the ground.
The fall this time her. She stretched out her head and lay motionless a moment, breathing very heavily and as if she were dying. The man behind her struck her with his rope. Her skin quivered and another forced its way out between her teeth. Her consciousness came back slowly. She heard the barking of the dog and the voices of the men and above their voices the shriller voice of the boy. She was sick at her heart and stomach. She felt as if she didn’t care what they did any more. But a very severe blow with the end of the rope striking a tender spot on her flanks brought her to her senses. She felt as if a wave of cold water had swept over her. She managed to get to her feet. As she stood, bewildered, not knowing what to do, and feeling the terrible necessity of doing something, her whole body shook with an uncontrollable tremour.
The of all this torture aroused an insane ; and, casting a glance over the silent prairies that stretched away to the horizon, within her grasp, yet cruelly denied her, she leaped toward the open with all her strength, so suddenly and so unexpectedly that the man behind her, clinging to the rope, was thrown to the ground and the man in front barely escaped her front legs.
The cries of men and boy and dog broke fearfully upon her ears and the dog leaped at her throat. He fell back without having touched her but she lifted a to strike him and thus pulling on the rope that tied that foot to a hind leg she threw herself to the ground. She fell outside of the gateway and within a dozen yards of the barn-door which stood open and black, ready to swallow her.
The man behind her beat her with his rope and kicked her unmercifully; but even if she could have risen she would not have done so; and they finally to let her rest a while.
The beating commenced all over again and she was forced to her feet. With another swing of the rope she started off before it struck her. The man in front ran on each time she went forward and in that way they got her to the barn-door. But she was afraid to enter. The boy had brought the man behind her a whip and when that came down upon her back raising a welt, she involuntarily rushed into the barn to escape it.
Thus they got her into a stall and tied her securely. One man got into the manger and against all her fearful protestations managed to force a halter upon her head. With double ropes tied to the ring of the halter they tied two rope ends to each side of the manger, then removed the ropes with which they had first tied her; and she almost killed one of the men in the process. Finally, they left her alone.
It was so dark and damp and dirty in the barn. The smells were revolting. When her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she made out a horse, chewing a short distance away, and the sight of him relieved her immeasurably. She called to him but he went on chewing and ignored her call. Queen was hurt. She looked at him sadly, then half closed her eyes. But in a few minutes she called to him again and more forcibly. This time the old replied to her but with little enthusiasm, rather with , for he didn’t like it a bit that she made him take time from his chewing to reply to her.
The ropes did not allow her to see him very well, but she watched him a moment out of the corner of her eye and felt as she watched him that somehow he was in league with man, the of her liberty. She hated him and looked no more in his direction. Over her came full force the horror of her and the fearful realisation that her every effort to escape it would prove . Yet her thoughts contradicted each other and where some images came out of her memory and experience and supported her fear, others came just as strongly and it. She remembered, for instance, White-black tied in his stall in the sod barn where her colt had been imprisoned and then she saw him coming over the plains tied to the old sorrel work-horse. So she saw him in many happier moods on the open plains long after that. Together with the endless stream of sensations of pain, from the wound on her shoulder and from other wounds on her body, came visions of familiar nooks on the prairies and in the woods. Like ghosts these visions came through the smelling darkness and haunted her.
At times these visions drove her and she would pull and and tear and kick till her energy was spent and after every storm there was some new wound to her. There was a deep on her upper lip that bothered her almost as much as the burn on her shoulder, for blood kept from it into her nose and mouth and the taste and the smell of blood were as as the pain.
The man came back. She heard him coming and her eyes began to blaze again and her ............