Katie and the Mustang #1 (2 page)

I smoothed my dress where it hung below my coat, trying to think what excuse I might give. I had finished hanging the laundry and had split stove-wood for the next day an hour quicker than usual just to warm myself up. But that wouldn’t matter. Here I was, sitting idle and with nowhere to hide.

“Katie Rose!”

I stood up and ran three steps to snatch a pitchfork from its wall hooks. It was a silly ruse. Hiram kept the stalls clean and the aisles swept. What chore could I pretend to be doing with a pitchfork?

But then the door swung wide; I blinked at the sudden glare. There was an old, spreading ash tree outside, but the shade was broken by a shaft of early morning sunlight. With the sun behind her, Mrs. Stevens looked golden, like an angel. Then she stepped inside the dim barn, and she was a pinch-mouthed farmwife again.

“Katie! Whatever do you
do
out here?”

I knew better than to answer. Any explanation would be the wrong one, especially the truth. Talking to a cow?

“I asked you a question.” Mrs. Stevens put her hands on her hips.

I just stood there, my eyes down.

Mrs. Stevens sighed. “Daydreaming and mooning again? Do you think that’ll get the chores done? Perhaps a few hours of real work would cure you of idleness. Or maybe a long stand in the corner.”

My whole body went stiff. I hated standing in the corner worse than extra chores or even getting a whipping. She knew it.

Mrs. Stevens suddenly tilted her head. “Oh my,” she breathed. “He’s early.”

Then I heard it, too: faint hoofbeats and the distant
grating of metal-shod cartwheels. Mr. Stevens was coming home.

Mrs. Stevens had turned to face the barn door. Now she spun around and made a motion like she was shooing hens. “Hurry!”

I almost smiled. I was afraid of her. But she was afraid of him. Mr. Stevens never struck his wife, but he shouted and cursed sometimes if he saw her idle. And he took pride in her never talking back to him, ever. I had heard him brag about it to Hiram. When he shouted at Mrs. Stevens, she would shrink in on herself for days afterward. But she never seemed angry at him, only at herself—and me.

“Sssst!” Mrs. Stevens hissed again, glaring. “Come on, girl, come on!”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, still fighting the smile. She was whispering as though her husband, still a half mile away, could somehow hear her.

I leaned the pitchfork against the wall and followed her along the lilac hedge, down into the yard. The dogs were milling at our feet, and Mrs. Stevens shut them up in their pen. “Get the rug beaters!” she ordered over her shoulder. Her voice was even sharper than usual. I set the milk bucket inside
the back door and ran for the pantry closet.

By the time the cart clattered around the springhouse, we were both beating the rugs she had hung on the fence two days before to air, the beater wires humming. I hated this chore. I always coughed the whole time, breathing the fine grayish dust. The spring-wire handle of the beater was freezing cold, and it rubbed hard on my palm, but it didn’t hurt anymore. I had grown calluses for it. What hurt were the willow-switch stripes on my back where my dress pulled across my skin.

Mrs. Stevens beat her rugs four times a year. She loved them. They were ugly, I thought, dark red with big white and black diamond shapes around the edges. But the wool was still thick and tight. They had been her grandmother’s, brought all the way from England seventy years before.

I had once spilled milk on the edge of the biggest one. Mrs. Stevens’s face had turned the color of her precious rugs. She had scolded me like a mean dog growls, standing within an inch of my nose, shaming me for ruining what the women in her family had kept stainless for three generations. I knew why the rugs had lasted that long. Her grandmothers had
probably been strict and mean and had company only once or twice a year, just like her. The Stevens house was as quiet as midnight most the time.

“Mind you, do it in a circle pattern,” Mrs. Stevens scolded me lightly.

She had it all figured out. The best way to knock dust and dirt out of a rug was to hit it in a rapid circle that got wider and wider as you went around it. It seemed silly to me.

I looked up. The carriage was nearly to the yard drive.

“See that you keep beating,” Mrs. Stevens warned me.

“I will,” I promised, and waited until she had walked away to angle my body so I could wallop the blasted rug and watch the cart approach at the same time.

The buggy team was trotting, Mr. Stevens’s string-leather whip popping above their backs. I loved to watch the mares, their knees and fetlocks snapping up and down, as regular as the beat of a duck’s wings. Their manes flew out behind as the road angled and they crossed the breeze.

It was then that I noticed. Tied behind the cart
was a horse I had never seen before. He was the color of dark honey, with a mane and tail as black as midnight. He ticked a front hoof and stumbled, then caught his stride again as Mr. Stevens reined the mares in. Mrs. Stevens walked to meet the wagon. I stood still, beating the rug, watching.

Mr. Stevens set the brake handle and climbed down, stiff and gimpy from the long ride. He was smiling, though. He pointed at the horse. “He’s a Mustang, fresh broke in, and I got him cheap. He needs feeding up.”

Mrs. Stevens nodded cautiously.

Mr. Stevens was standing tall, his collar buttoned high. He laid one finger on his cheek, something he often did when he was about to say something he thought truly important. “Mustangs make fine saddle horses,” he announced, “if a man can handle them.”

“Mustangs?” Mrs. Stevens spat out the unfamiliar word like it tasted sour.

Mr. Stevens glanced past her and noticed me. “Haven’t you got something to do?”

I realized I had stopped beating the rug and started up again.

“Go see if there are more eggs for supper,” Mrs. Stevens shouted at me. “And mind you don’t bother the broody hen!”

Glad to be done with the cloud of rug dust, I hung the beater on its nail by the back door, glancing back over my shoulder every few seconds.

Mr. Stevens had untied the Mustang stallion and was leading him toward the barn. He was the most beautiful horse I had ever seen, even though he was too thin—his sides were ridged by his ribs. He looked young, but he walked like an old pasture mare, aged past having colts or doing buggy work, scuffing the toe of each hoof in the dust.

At the barn door, the stallion hesitated. He tossed his head, and the sunlight caught his dark gold coat, glinting like kindling sparks. Mr. Stevens jerked the lead rope. The stallion stepped forward into the barn, and the sparks went out.

The ropes and whips and the shouts have taken everything from me. My mares are gone. The smell of sagebrush and rain, the mountains that guided my way, are far behind. I hate the two-leggeds for chasing me across the plains, for making me come so far toward the rising sun. And I hate the wooden box that traps me here
.

I
was startled out of my dreams by the dogs barking. I sat up on my pallet, blinking in the dark for a few seconds. Then I pushed my mother’s book into its hiding place beneath my blankets and stood up.

“Hiram! Get up!” It was Mr. Stevens’s voice, screaming the command like he was talking to a dog.

It was dark, but I found the door handle easily enough—without taking a single step. I didn’t have a proper room to sleep in, but Mrs. Stevens had given me her biggest closet—an old pantry she rarely
used since they had built their springhouse.

“Hiram!”

Hiram slept in an old pig shed. He had it all cleaned up and decent inside—I peeked in it once when he was gone. He worked part-time on the Stevens farm and part-time for whichever neighbors needed help. If he worked more than a mile or two away, he’d take his bedroll and sleep over. He came and went without my knowing. Unless I paid attention, I never knew whether he was on the place or not.

“Can you see what’s wrong yet?” That was Mrs. Stevens. She wasn’t exactly shouting, but she had raised her rough voice to a high pitch so it would carry through the dogs’ racket. It sounded like she was standing by the front door—or maybe just outside, on the planked porch.

“Mr. Stevens?” she called.

No answer.

“Robert?” she pleaded. “Are you all right?”

Using his given name didn’t help a bit. Her husband didn’t answer her. “Hiraaaam!” he shouted once more, dragging the name out like a coyote howl.

“Should I dress?” Mrs. Stevens beseeched her husband. “Should I dress and come out there? Do you need help?”

Mr. Stevens ignored her again. I was pretty sure he couldn’t hear her at all. The dogs were having conniption fits.

My clothes were laid over the back of a chair just outside my pantry as usual. I felt for them in the dark. I couldn’t light a candle or Mrs. Stevens would scold me about wasting her tallow.

I pulled my nightshirt off and replaced it with my camisole, then stepped into my petticoat and dress. I tied the strings on my bodice with trembling fingers. Then I pulled on my shoes, wriggling my toes to straighten the wads of tissue paper in the toes. It was bound to be cold outside. Then I just stood there, shivering in the dark.

There was no scent of smoke—so there was no fire. But something was terribly wrong. Mr. Stevens would not be shouting like this over a fox in the yard.

“Hiram!”

His shouts were getting farther away.

I tiptoed out into the kitchen and bent to look
out the window. Mr. Stevens was carrying a lantern. I could see the yellowish glow sliding over the lilac hedge as he walked up the path toward the barn.

Mrs. Stevens had ventured out into the house yard and was holding her bedroom candleholder, standing near the chicken coop.

There was a cascade of hen noise, and she stepped back a few paces.

“Hiram, raise yourself!” Mr. Stevens bellowed. He was halfway up the path.

“Coming!” came an answer at last. I was glad. No matter what was wrong, Hiram Weiss was a steady man, the kind of man my father would have liked.

Once Mr. Stevens stopped shouting, the yard dogs quieted some. It was then, for the first time, that I heard what had set them off. There was a muffled banging coming from the direction of the barn.

It was the stallion, kicking at the stall planks. What else could it be? The buggy team didn’t have it in them to attack the wooden planks that held them from grazing on the new green grass when they wanted to.

Hiram shouted something I couldn’t understand,
and I fidgeted. What would Mr. Stevens do to the horse? I knew I shouldn’t leave the house without asking Mrs. Stevens, but I knew just as well that if I asked, she would forbid me to go at all. And, as usual, she would get angry at me, instead of at her husband.

The reason she was standing in the yard in her wrapper instead of dressing and running to help was that she knew her husband would be upset since he hadn’t
told
her to come. I felt sorry for her. She spent half her time guessing what he wanted of her—and usually guessed wrong.

I grabbed my jacket from the hook, and moved a hat to cover its emptiness. Pulling it on, I went out the back door, opening and closing it in quick swooshes. The hasps were well oiled; squeaks bothered Mr. Stevens.

It was a dark night. The moon wasn’t up yet. I crawled through the lilac hedge, then ran on the far side of it, half bent over, until I got well clear of the yard. I could hear the men shouting at the stallion.

I ran up the path toward the barn door. The dogs were still barking a little, but unless someone
let them out of their pen, they knew their job was done. I had the hedge between me and the chicken coop. I could hear worry clucks inside, but no more than that. I was glad. Broken eggs and ruined chicks would only cause more trouble in the house.

Mr. Stevens had hung his lantern from one of the iron spikes driven into the wall of the barn. I stayed outside, just beyond the pale amber light, standing in front of the ash tree, hidden by the darkness but still able to see in through the open door.

The Mustang stallion was rearing, crashing his hooves on the top rail of his stall, dancing backward, then rearing again.

“Giddown, you crazy fool!” I couldn’t see Hiram, but that was him, his voice calm but loud.

“Get back!” Mr. Stevens yelled. “He’ll break out of there any second.”

Hiram laughed. “No, no he can’t. That’s good thick wood, that rail.”

The stallion reared again, then again. Hiram came into sight, the long buggy whip in one hand.

I flinched when I heard the first pop.

The stallion squealed, baring his teeth; he reared again.

The whip popped again, and the Mustang slewed sideways, his ears tight against his head.

He plunged in a circle, then stood at the back of the stall, his head high, his nostrils wide.

“There now, you settle down,” Hiram said gently. “It’s all right now. See?” Hiram added, looking at Mr. Stevens. “Something scared him is all.”

“Well done,” Mr. Stevens said.

Hiram chuckled. I could just see the side of his face. He was breathing hard, but he was smiling. “I didn’t touch him with it. Just the noise to startle him. He learns fast.”