I straddled the top rail of the fence and watched her run the lot from end to end.  She knew this was no place for her.  She flew desperately along the fence line, looking for a way out.  She nearly lost her balance as she galloped frantically, her hooves hopelessly slipping in the frozen black mud.  Her nostrils flared with steamy jets of panic in the frigid morning stillness.  The mammoth billows of cotton that ambled ever so slowly over the empty fields matched the whites of her eyes, terror-stricken like a caged animal.  She wore herself as tired as the ancient barn that housed the neglected, too-fat pintos standing sleepily in several feet of packed winter manure inside.

I was warned to stay clear of the lot, because she was too dangerous and too wild for any man to go near her.  “We’ll break her the old-fashioned way,” was what they said.  I knew what it meant.  They were going to tie her with heavy rope to the whipping post and beat her until she had nothing left.  They would whip her to within an inch of her life, and then, if they hadn’t beaten her so badly that the loss of blood killed her, they would treat her wounds and keep the threat of the whip fresh in her mind.  That was their way.  They were the taskmasters.  They “knew” horses.  They even joked about it.  The one time I spoke up and said how cruel I thought it was, I was told to mind my own business and I was excused from the house, forever if it so suited me.

As I swung my other leg over the fence and balanced myself on the rail, I crossed my arms and shivered, not because of the cold, but because I could sense the aloneness in her.  She pulled up in the far corner and stood there, shaking her head, out of breath.  Her flanks were darkened with the dampness of sweat, and steamy vapors rose from her chestnut-colored back and rump.  She turned her head and eyed me from across the lot.  She was as far from me as she could get without being on the other side of the fence.  She hated me.  She hated all of us.  We were all the same to her.