Beyond Rope and Fence

ROLLING hills and shallow valleys—an ocean of brown waves with fast drying sloughs, like patches of sunshine on the surface of the sea—such was the Canadian prairie that autumn...

IT was in the very early hours of the morning when little Queen was rudely awakened by the sudden rising of her mother, upon whose warm flank her little head was lying. As her c...

LITTLE QUEEN was awake at the very first peep of dawn. With her soft muzzle pressed against her mother’s warm flank, she watched the beautiful unfolding of morning. Red streaks...

IT is only the foolish who bewail the inevitable with wasting passion; it is after all the wise who accept it and make the most of things. Because the inevitable is so much more...

THE winter was a hard one. The skies were persistently and monotonously dull. A few moments of sunshine were invariably followed by days of howling winds and leaden skies. Blizz...

THE summer days dragged along hot and enervating. Mosquitoes and nose-flies in countless numbers became more and more annoying as the sultry period prevailed. It made grazing du...

THEN came an early spring. Geese returned from the south. The sadness in their honking had given way to the exaltation of rebirth. The snows melted almost in a day. Hundreds of...

EVERY dawn on the plains is the miracle of creation, and the best philosophy for man or animal lies in this daily beginning. “Endure Sorrow’s night,” says the dawn, “then rise w...

THE prairie grass began once more to wither and grow grey. The winds assumed again their autumnal sadness and moaned with an aimless complaint. Again dead thistles began rolling...

THE years rolled by. Old tragic 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 an...

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 severa...

ONE day while Queen, for want of something better to do, was dozing over her empty manger from which she had eaten up every spire of hay, she heard the dog, outside, bark with u...

JUST when Dora was resigning herself to the irksome but unavoidable duty of carrying them about in the saddle; just when she had learned in this state of her bondage to get from...

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 farm...

FOR several days after the woman had relieved her of the racking burden of straps and iron and wire-net, Dora was troubled by the conflict of recurrent impulses to go back to th...