Part 2

So Skewbald learned to avoid a snake, and incidentally that he could jump. He practised this on occasion, leaping over fallen stumps, across streamlets and shallow pits, not knowing how useful an accomplishment it might prove to him in after-life.

III.—THE CHASE

THE waning of September, with its sunny days, cold nights, and morning mists, made little difference to the ponies’ daily routine. Apparently they were as free to go where they listed as any wild Western herd. But their owners kept an eye on them, and left them there or had them “caught in,” as they pleased.

Later in the year strings of ponies would wend their way to the Brockenhurst sales, but it chanced that the owner of the bay leader of the herd in which Skewbald ran, decided to have him in before he got busy catching other people’s ponies, which was always the case towards the end of the year, as he was an adept at the game.

The shadows of a golden afternoon were lengthening, and the herd, scattered over a mile of valley bottom, was getting to work after the midday siesta, when a horseman appeared on the skyline at the head of the valley. It was the colt-hunter seeking his property. A moment later another rider came down one of the slopes, and a third emerged from the woods bordering the ridge on the other side of the valley. This last was Mollie, a girl of fifteen, and the other a lad of thirteen, her brother Tom. They had come to help their father to capture the pony. This was not the first time they had taken part in the chase.

The mares heard the thud of hoofs, threw up their heads, and whinnied to their foals and yearlings. Then a call came from their leader a good way down the valley, and at once the ponies made off towards the summons, increasing their pace as the boy and girl riders came down upon them, shouting and waving, in the hope of driving them back, so that the stallion could be dealt with alone. But the girl had to check, as she came to a boggy patch, and they swept on to join their leader. “Get along, Tom,” called the father, following behind. “Up the hill, Mollie, and head them off.” Tom, on a rough pony, and riding like a centaur, raced after the fugitives, which with one accord stretched into a gallop, stringing out along the valley, according to their ability; the stallion at the head, and putting his best foot forward, as if he knew that out of all the lot he was the one wanted. The ground resounded with the thud of hoofs, manes and tails waved in the air, and mares called to their foals, the youngsters responding gallantly.

The stallion was making for a wood, and to reach this the ponies had to skirt a swamp. As the leader rounded the wet land, and made for the upland shelter, Mollie came directly towards him, screeching and waving. It was too much for the pony’s nerves; he turned and fled up the valley, making for the higher ground, and followed by the herd, somewhat confused and bunched together by the check. Some of the foals began to tire, and, with their mothers, slackened and fell out. Among them was the chestnut mare, who retired with her foal to the shelter of a clump of hollies, whence, with twitching ears and distended nostrils, they watched the pursuit. The stallion, with some faithful companions, now encountered Tom, who turned him again, and then the man took up the running. Their aim was to tire out the stallion, “to run him off his legs,” for in this waste was no friendly farmyard or paddock into which he could be driven. Grass and heather fed, as he was, he was not likely to have the staying power of stable-fed ponies. On the other hand, he had no weight to carry, and, if allowed to get into the woods, might elude his pursuers until nightfall made it impossible to continue the chase.

The mares, yearlings, and two-year-olds dropped out one by one. In little groups they watched the chase, pursued and pursuers rapidly dwindling in size as they raced down the valley, then thundering back along the ridge, black against the evening sky. The bay had no rest, and was turned time after time. Now and then one rider slowed down, but the others kept inexorably on the heels of their prey.

The chase was not without its dangers, for the hillsides were dry and slippery. Once the stallion fell, and rolled clean over, but was up and away in a moment. The girl’s pony slipped twice, but she stuck to him like a burr. The ridden ponies had been on the business before, and were as keen as their riders. They were quick to see the signs of deflection on the part of their quarry, and would of their own accord cut off corners to where the stallion was heading. More than once the boy’s pony, going straight for his objective, went under a gnarled holly, and the rider had to flatten himself, with his head buried in the pony’s mane, or he would have been swept off by the lower branches, and hung aloft. But it was all in the day’s work. Perhaps the man took it the most quietly. He was there to secure his pony—his children were out for a good run.

The end came when the bay visibly tired, and could no longer keep ahead. He was alone, for all his companions had deserted him. The man forged alongside, and the two ran almost touching, when suddenly the rider, a halter in his hand, jumped from his mount, and flung himself on the stallion’s neck, bearing him to the ground. In a trice the halter was slipped on, and the man was up and on his pony, before the shaken bay knew what had happened. It was a feat of strength and agility of which few of the forest men were capable.

The others rode up exulting in their father’s prowess. “Keep clear of his heels, Tom,” was the caution. As the stallion turned to make off, the man’s mount leaned against the rope, bracing herself against the coming jerk, which brought the would-be fugitive up short, pulling him off his feet. He was up in a twinkling, and lashed out with his heels, but all were prepared, and stinging whips warned him against these tactics. When he hung back the two behind chivied him on. Once he lay down and was dragged along the turf a few paces, but the whips again drove him up. Then, with ears depressed, the red of his eyes showing, and bared teeth, he tried biting, but a slash across the face intimated that such an assault would not pay.

Finally, the stallion, dead tired as he was, lost heart, dropped his ears dejectedly, and trudged along, while his captors, almost as weary, went homewards across the moors, now and then breaking into speech, as they recalled the more exciting moments of the hunt.

Of the stallion’s life in the coal-pits there is not much to tell. This was a good mine, and the ponies were well looked after. Their stalls were lit with electricity, and they were properly fed and groomed. When at work they wore leather hats, so that in the low places a bump would not injure them.

Once at least the stallion, who gained the good-will of the drivers by his willingness and activity, had a good rest, beside his weekly one, for when the great strike was decreed and the pony-men were called out, the ponies had to be brought to the surface. The bay was among the first batch, no longer bright of coat, and his eyes dazzled by the light of day. But when he reached the field of dingy grass, so unlike the clean heather of his native soil, he lay down, and rolled to his heart’s content, then got up and whinnied long and loud, as if calling across the great open spaces of the forest.

IV.—DEATH ON THE ROAD

THE ponies were changing pasture one bright September day. They had eaten the grass from a bottom sward, and the old white mare was leading the party to another, a mile to the south. Up the hill they went, in single file, the mares with drooping heads, looking neither to left nor right, the yearlings nearly as soberly, and the colts wandering on either side to examine things, like scouts on the flanks of a column. The ridge attained, they followed the turf by the road. The Isle of Wight, mostly cerulean blue with touches of pink and gold where the sun caught it, lay along the southern horizon; its hilltops alone showed, the sea being out of sight, so that the island seemed merely the last folds of mainland hill country.

The old mare took the road, and the long string of ponies, as they came on the hard, gritty surface, suddenly became audible, the pounding of their hoofs contrasting with their noiseless progress on the turf. The road was straight, and behind them a green-covered lorry approached rapidly. It lurched somewhat, as if the driver’s hand was none too steady. He had met an old acquaintance in Hythe, and they had celebrated the occasion. He held to his speed, being in a foolhardy mood. Why should he make way for ponies when they had all the forest on both sides of the road? They must get out of his way, or all the worse for them. But the ways of ponies were fixed long before motor-lorries or any other of man’s contrivances were in being, and the pace of a car was beyond their calculation. Skewbald was ambling behind his little brown friend on the left hand of the road. The man kept to his side, grinning in anticipation of the ponies’ sudden dart to safety.

Some quickness of perception beyond the ordinary, some electric rapidity of movement, alone saved Skewbald. The increasing noise and vibration warned him, and without stopping to bend his hind-legs for a leap, he jumped with all four feet sideways. The lorry, rushing on and missing him by inches, caught the poor little brown foal and hurled it into the ditch, its mother in front escaping with a severe bruise on her flank. The man involuntarily put on his brakes, and the other ponies had time to get off the road. He leaned out, and looked back. There was no car, nor anyone in sight. “Better get out of this,” he muttered, and set off, cursing, accelerating to top speed.

But he had looked only along the road. Tom, on pony-back, was going shopping for his mother, and, with his empty bags hanging from his saddle, had taken a short cut across the moor, and by a path through the trees on the hill. As he came to the top the swaying lorry caught his eye. He saw its check and the scattering of the ponies, then its hurried departure. He cantered along until he reached the spot where the brown mare stood, and shrank in horror from the foal’s injuries, far beyond his help, then with a hot urge within him to bring the culprit to justice, he set off along the road as fast as his pony could go.

A little later, a car with two officers and a chauffeur came tearing along in the same direction. As they neared the spot where the foal was struck, the brown mare was seen standing in the road. “Slow down,” ordered the senior officer peremptorily, remarking to his companion that there had been too many accidents to ponies that summer. “Pony hurt, sir,” said the chauffeur, stopping the car of his own accord. One glance at the foal showed that nothing could be done for it, save freeing it from pain. The younger officer got a revolver from the car, while the elder and his man examined the tracks of the lorry before its stoppage, and the pattern of the tyre impressions. Then a shot rang out, and the mare moved away in fright, but returned to the body as the car started.

When Tom reached the town he saw the lorry outside a public-house. He looked up the street; the policeman strolling along was an old acquaintance of his father’s, and the lad went up to him. “Please, Mr. Jones, that lorry ran over a foal back on the road.” “Oh!” exclaimed the constable; “sure? Where’s the driver? In there, I suppose. What happened?” At that moment the man emerged, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and went to the lorry. “What’s this about a foal?” asked the policeman. “You ran into it.” The boy burst in with, “You ran it down! You know you did!” “You’re a lying little rascal,” retorted the man surlily; “I never went within a mile of a pony.” “I know this boy well,” said the constable, “and he wouldn’t make trouble for nothing. I want your name and address.” A few idlers strolled up, and the man began to bluff; he was in Government employ, and if his lorry with its load wasn’t in Ringwood by midday, someone would have to answer for it. Just then the car with the two officers came up. They jumped out and looked at the lorry tyres. “This is the car,” said the senior officer. “Where’s the chauffeur?” Tom, the policeman, and the bystanders all nodded accusingly at the driver. The officer turned on him. “You’re an inhuman brute, running down harmless creatures. No, sir; don’t bluster,” as the driver opened his mouth. “We came up after you, marked your tyre tracks, put the foal out of its misery, and we shall certainly attend to give evidence against you. Take my name, constable—General ——,” mentioning a famous name, which made the crowd gape and the miserable driver shiver in his shoes.

And later when he appeared in court, the General, his subordinate officer, and the chauffeur attended, as well as Tom, who was complimented on the way in which he gave his evidence; and the driver was severely punished, as a warning to other brutal or careless people.

V.—SKEWBALD’S NEIGHBOURS

WANDERING over moor and heath, and through the deep woods, Skewbald while yet a foal got to know the wild life of the forest, for, as with all young things, life to him was more than mere eating, and he was full of curiosity about everything that went on around him.

In the evenings he would see the rabbits, first little and then big, come out of their holes, their white scuts flashing as they gambolled. If they “froze,” their quiet umber tint assimilated with the surrounding hues, so that their outline was lost, and sometimes the colt, going towards a patch of herbage, saw nothing but a great black eye gazing at him, until, on a nearer approach, a young rabbit materialized, and loped away. On summer mornings when the dew was heavy, the bunnies looked almost black because of their drenched fur. They would have all day to comb and smooth it out underground. Early one morning he saw a doe rabbit with a mouthful of grass, sticking out on both sides of her muzzle, like a great green moustache; she went below with it, her two little ones following.

Hares he did not see so often, and they sat so quietly in their “forms,” that he was not aware of their presence until he nosed up against them. But he once saw a hare anything but quiet. On a bare patch of gravel near the railway, where hares were in the habit of crossing, a big jack hare was writhing and squirming without moving from the spot, and Skewbald went up to see this strange sight. The creature, of course, was in a gin, though the foal was not to know that. Not being afraid of hares, he got quite close, and, as the entrapped one did not move off, but still strained and struggled, he gave a mischievous little stamp to drive him away. Now, the poor hare was caught by a fore toenail only, and Skewbald happening to press with his hoof on the spring the jaw opened, and the prisoner was set free; but his fore-leg was so strained by the tension, that when he put weight on it, he fell over, and squirmed as before.

Skewbald, very interested, touched him, and the hare made off on to the track, where again he fell and writhed, Skewbald watching through the railings, until the noise of an oncoming train reminded the stricken one that he still had three legs to run on. The following spring Skewbald again witnessed the hare in motion, and this time there were two. The pair were on a level stretch, and indulging in an orgy of violent movement. They chased one another, turning and doubling, taking turns to be pursued and pursuer, till one stopped and crouched, the other jumping over its back. Then they ran apart in tangential circles which brought them face to face, whereupon they stood up on their hind-legs, and thumped one another with their forepaws like boxers. They acted as madly as any other pair of March hares.

Instinct and his mother taught Skewbald to notice all that was going on, to keep his eyes “skinned.” When they were in the woods, the harsh notes of the jays made him start, and from his mother’s movements, he learned that someone was about. Once in spring, browsing on the young shoots of a hawthorn-bush, he almost nosed against two dormice fresh from their long rest, sleek and tawny bright, among the green tufts.

The squirrels he could not help seeing, and when he stopped, and looked at them sitting on the low boughs of a fir, making short work of the cones, they stamped peevishly with their hind-feet, making quite a noise, as the rabbits did on the ground. Once he witnessed a curious and beautiful sight which lasted but a moment. A squirrel pursued another, going round and round a tree-trunk as they descended, so quickly that they left on the eye the impression of a reddish streak, drawn spirally round the trunk. This again was in spring, and, like the mad antics of the hares, a love chase.

Sometimes a fox trotted by, or sat up and looked at him impudently, and, as it happened, he got tolerably familiar with a family of foxes. The lair was in a bank between the roots of an old oak. Skewbald’s mother, as she went by, snuffed the air, and indeed, the smell, whether of fox or high viands, was perceptible even to human nostrils. So Skewbald snuffed too, and whenever he passed the hole, the odour reminded him of what dwelt there. One fine evening, as he idled at a little distance, he perceived movement outside the hole. It was not rabbits, so he went closer, and saw the little fox cubs, lithe and furry. One lay on its back gnawing at a moorhen’s wing, two were engaged in a tussle, and one curled into a ball with his tail over his nose, pretending to be asleep; but when the vixen came up, and, after looking round, sat down calmly amidst her family, the mischievous cub got up, came behind her and worried her tail, until she turned, and seized him in her jaws, so that he yelped.

After this, Skewbald, when his company came that way, looked out for the cubs, but he saw little more of them, for the older they grew, the later they came out, until it was night before they emerged, and then it was not for play but work, learning to hunt for their living.

Skewbald and his mother sometimes sunned themselves by a bank crowned with lichened thorns. It was quite a badger fortress, being honeycombed with passages. A certain family which camped by it one August must have occasioned the badger some inconvenience, for they used the great holes as dustbins, stuffing down newspapers, tins, tea-leaves and coffee grounds, and other rubbish. But they never set eyes on him, not even on moonlight nights. Probably he used an exit on the other side of the bank while the campers were about. But Skewbald sometimes saw him after dusk, coming or going with his rolling gait, or appearing at the mouth of his den with sniffing snout and uplifted paw. Once the foal came upon him in broad day, and sunny at that. He was fast asleep, nearly hidden in a great nest of dried grass and bracken in a sheltered corner.

Sometimes, though probably he was unaware of it, the colt walked over little sharply pitted tracks which were the slots of the deer. Only once did he see that rare and shy British mammal, the roedeer. Skewbald was strolling in a forest ride, when, all at once, a delicate fawn-coloured shape with two uplifted sharp horn spikes emerged from a fern brake, and paused with raised fore-foot and twitching ears before venturing across the grassy space, and like a shadow his mate followed him.

In the thick woods, he sometimes saw the other deer, mostly fallow, the buck with widely branching palmate antlers, but occasionally a great red deer.

One September midday, mother and foal were wandering down a wide drive in the woods, when strange noises came to the foal’s ears, people shouting, baying of hounds and blowing of horns. He ran close to his mother, who, though not alarmed, raised her head and snuffed the air with interest. People with horns no longer hunted ponies, and she had no apprehensions of capture.

Presently a buck topped the bank, and shot across the drive, a mere rusty brown streak, gone as soon as seen. The noise of the hounds wavered, and grew fainter. The buck had eluded them. Then in the distance a huntsman appeared coming up the drive on a tall white horse. He was a fine sight in his black velvet cap, dark green coat with brass buttons, and his horn ready to hand. He stopped by a gate watching the drive, not knowing he was too late. On the hill out of sight were the three men in brown velveteen, each holding a team of the leashed hounds; young and swift these, waiting to be put on the track of the quarry when the slow old hounds, or “tufters,” had got the scent, and mounted hunting folk waiting or patrolling the forest glades. But the noise and the sight of the buck was all that Skewbald experienced, that day, of a forest buck-hunt.

After being warned by his mother, Skewbald kept as respectful a distance from harmless grass-snakes and slow-worms as from vipers. He even jumped when the little brown lizard ran across the path in front of him. And doubtless he sometimes found the open door of the home of the underground wasp, and quickly removed his nose and himself from its proximity. More rarely he saw the brown paperish globe of the wood-wasp hung from a low branch, with a hovering swarm of wasps like a yellow halo round it.

As for “stoats,” heathflies, and the tickling, crawling New Forest fly, they are, in hot weather, the torment of a forest pony’s life, and the less said about them the better.

Of birds, he knew most familiarly the stonechat, always on the topmost spray of a gorsebush, both in summer and in winter, with his little jerking tail and monotonous “tick-tack” note. Sometimes he would see the stonechat’s relative, the wheatear, standing on a stone or clod of earth, with the same flirting of the tail; the attitude alert and vigilant, his black eye-streak emphasizing his suspicious glance.

In the evening he heard the “hoo-hoo” of the tawny owl, and might have seen him sitting upright on the low branch of a willow, close to the trunk; and once in broad daylight, as he was nibbling at the bark of the branches of a stubby hollow holly, a blotched form appeared at the opening as if in response to the noise he made before her door; then with a couple of wing-beats, the little owl flew up into the higher branches and looked at him with fierce gold-rimmed eyes, and irritable movements of her head.

Now and then he came across a small covey of partridges dusting themselves in a sandy patch, or sunning on a bank. Once in May, as he put his nose to a tussock, a sitting partridge gave it a sharp peck. All that season he looked into tussocks warily, and one day he came upon what looked like two partridges sitting together; but the one outside the nest was a cock-bird, as could be seen by his red ear-lobes and absence of cross-bars on his wings. As Skewbald looked, a little head peeped out from under his father’s wing and piped. Then there was more chirping, and from under the mother emerged a tiny chick, and in a moment was lost in his male parent’s feathery recesses. That faithful husband and father was on duty, receiving each little chick as it hatched, and “drying them off.”