One day our cab and many others were waiting outside a park where a band was playing. A shabby old cab drove up beside ours. Its horse was a worn-out chestnut, so thin that her bones showed through her dull coat, and her front legs were weak and unsteady. The wind blew a little of my hay her way, and the poor creature stretched out her long thin neck, picked it up, and looked about for more. There was a hopeless look in her eye. I was wondering where I had seen her before, when she looked straight at me and said, “Black Beauty, is that you?”
It was Ginger! But how changed! Her beautiful arched neck was now thin and straight, her legs were swollen, and her face, once so full of spirit, was full of suffering. From her cough I could tell how bad her breathing was.
Our drivers were standing together a little way off, so I moved a step or two closer, and we had a quiet talk. After a year’s rest at Earlshall, she had been sold to a gentleman. For a while she did well, but after a long gallop the old trouble came back, and she was sold again. In this way she had changed hands many times, and each time she went lower down.
“And so at last,” she said, “I was bought by a man who keeps many cabs and horses and rents them out. When they found out my weakness, they said I wasn’t worth what they paid, and I must go into one of the cheap cabs and just be used up. They whip me and work me and never think of what I suffer. The man who drives me pays the owner a lot of money every day, so he has to get it out of me too. And so it goes on, all week long, with never a Sunday’s rest.”
“You used to stand up for yourself when you were treated badly,” I said.
“Ah,” she said, “I did once, but it’s no use. Men are the strongest, and if they are cruel, there is nothing we can do but bear it, on and on to the end. I wish the end would come. I wish I were dead. I hope I drop down dead at my work, and am not sent off to the men who kill old horses for meat.”
I was very troubled. I put my nose up to hers, but I could say nothing to comfort her. I think she was pleased to see me, for she said, “You are the only friend I ever had.”
Just then her driver came up, pulled hard at her mouth, backed her out of the line and drove off, and I was left very sad.
A short time after this, a cart with a dead horse in it passed our cab stand. It was a chestnut horse with a long thin neck, and I saw a white streak down its forehead. I believe it was Ginger. I hoped it was, for then her troubles were over. Oh, if men were more merciful, they would shoot us before we came to such misery.