A man named John is dressed in fancy clothing and he creeps through the underbrush next to the corral of the Buckler farm. John has been dirtied and scratched by the shrubbery. He reaches the fence and lies down on the ground with his face pressed into the earth. He feels the tremor of the earth as the horses go wild on the other side of the fence. John draws himself up against the fence and hears the horses coming closer. He sees them running, and swiftly gets up to run alongside them. He falls, and blood trickles down his forehead. He sits up and hears the thunder of the hooves far off in the distance. As he sits, he thinks about the interaction he had with Freda Buckler back at the house.
Freda is an intelligent, cunning woman and her mother owns the farm. John once called Freda's yellow veil ridiculous back when he was a stable boy, and Freda took a liking to him. At the house, he tells her he liked it better where he was before, at the stables. Freda has been turning John into a gentleman, and he no longer goes to see his horses. Freda tells him that he will enter the army, and there are horses there. John occasionally goes to see his horses, but he never goes near them. Freda torments him with pictures and objects that are not a part of his world, and John thinks he will never see his horses again when they are married. On this evening, John asks Freda what she wants from him and why she is interested in him. Freda responded that John will grow to like this life and regret the stables.
That night, there is a party, and many of the guests are drunk, as is John. John sings wildly, but then he realizes that nobody thinks his behavior is presumptuous or strange. He then feels that Freda has him exactly where she wants him, and he goes up to her and tells her she is ridiculous, then leaves.

That is how John ends up in the shrubbery. He presses his eyes against the bars and stares in at the horses. He sees the black stallion in the lead that had been his special pet. He crawls into the corral. The horses are still running, but less madly. John decides that he will mount one of the horses and escape. He sees twelve horses rounding the curve and he stands up. They do not seem to know and recognize John, but he thinks that they will in a moment more. The horses keep coming towards him and he becomes afraid. He kneels, cursing the horses and speaking promises to Freda in his head. He says aloud that he wants to live and forge ahead and make his own mark. The raised hooves of the first horse miss John, but the second horse's hooves do not. The horses draw apart and calmly nibble at the grass.