Katie and the Mustang #1 (8 page)

I hung the milk bucket in the ash tree to keep Tiger out of it, then ran into the tack room. It smelled of mice and leather grease. The pegs on the right-hand wall held the carriage harness and the heavy-strapped plow rig. The back wall had three saddle trees jutting out. Only one had a saddle on it—and it was seldom used. Mr. Stevens always took the buggy.

Above the saddle trees were two pegs. One held two bridles, the nickel-plated bits covered in dust. The other had five or six halters, all well used.

I looked through them quickly. Two were buckled at their last holes—made as big as they could be for the plow team. I finally settled on an old one, the leather worn soft. I carried it back out into the aisle.

The Mustang was watching me. I walked slowly,
letting him get a good look at the halter. He paced his circle three or four times, stopping long enough to stare, then letting his nervousness explode into a half minute of rearing and head tossing.

“I know you hate the idea,” I said, sure it was true. After all, ropes and leather were the things that had gotten him here, caged in this stall. How could I get him to believe that a halter was the way out, too?

“Will you trust me enough to at least look at it?” I pleaded with him.

He was frantic now, switching his tail and breathing harder. “It won’t hurt you,” I promised.

I took one more step forward. Just then, Tiger came racing across the barn and pounced on the end of the lead rope. I turned to look at her and realized something. The long lead looked like a snake trailing through the straw behind me.

I pulled the leather strap away from Tiger and slowly coiled it up. Then I faced the Mustang again.

He was still agitated, but he had stopped switching his tail. I risked a half step, then another half step. When I was close enough to the rail for him to reach out and sniff at the halter, I waited.

He paced his circle three times, then stopped and leaned out over the rail. I held the halter still, letting him touch it and smell the leather for a long moment. I stood very still, letting him assure himself that the halter meant him no harm.

“Katie!”

I sighed. Mrs. Stevens had missed me. What a surprise. I sighed. “I have to go,” I told the stallion. “I always have to go.” I put the halter behind my back and reached out with my free hand. He let me pat him, and tug gently at his mane. I kissed his muzzle. The velvety hair tickled my lips and nose. Then I ran to hang the halter back up and hurried outside.

The straps and ropes are in her hands now. I cannot think that she would mean to hurt me, but then, what does she want? Oh, how I long to beat down this box, to smash it into pieces so that I can run beneath the wide sky again
.

A
t first, I had been preoccupied with gentling the Mustang to halter and lead rope so he could get out of the dim and dusty barn. But as the days passed and Mr. Stevens and the other men were meeting nearly every night to talk, I knew there was another, even more important reason. If we were going to go west, he had to calm down and let himself be led along without fighting the halter. If he wouldn’t, Mr. Stevens might decide to sell him after all.

I started sneaking off to the barn every time I had
a chance. It didn’t take too long before the Mustang was comfortable enough with the halter just to sniff it matter-of-factly when I showed it to him. And after he had reassured himself about the halter, he would nuzzle my shoulder, hoping to have his ears scratched. I did, rubbing the halter along the side of his face, sliding it across his muzzle.

One morning I slid the leather over his muzzle, and pushed the crown strap gently over his ears. He was startled and paced, but when nothing happened to hurt or scare him, he came back and let me rub his forehead.

Once he was used to the halter, I tried tugging gently on the straps. The first time, he plunged backward, startled and angry. I hung on for a second, and he nearly lifted me off me feet. My arm was strained—it was sore for days. I made sure Mrs. Stevens didn’t notice.

I kept trying gentle tugs on the halter, but the stallion always reacted the same way. It worried me. Every time I tried to control his movements, even for a second, he was ready to fight. How could I ever get him to calm down? I was pretty sure I didn’t have much longer.

The fields were about due to plow. Any other year, Mr. Stevens would have been cleaning and mending the harness, making sure the plow was sharp, laying out the year’s crops, buying seed corn—but this year he wasn’t doing any of it. He would have been worried about Hiram being so busy else-where, too, but this year he didn’t seem to care at all.

One morning a man came and bought the plow team. I gave each of them a cube of sugar from the pantry and hugged them good-bye. Mrs. Stevens watched as the man led the heavy-boned draft horses away. She kept chewing at her lower lip, like a child about to cry.

That evening, Mr. Stevens came home with oxen—twelve of the heavy beasts. He put them in the pasture and faced his wife.

“If we decide not to go, they can pull the plow.”

Mrs. Stevens’s eyes were narrow. “Six plows, if need be,” she said quietly, and turned on her heel. He glared at her as she walked away.

I stayed to myself as much as I could. I daydreamed, pretending my uncle Jack’s letter would come the day before we were to leave. He’d say he was so glad that I was coming. He would tell me
about his lovely, kind wife. They would have five children. One or two of them would be girls about my age, and we would grow up together, like sisters.

I lay on my pallet listening to the men talking in the kitchen and wished I would be allowed to ask questions. I wanted to know about the school-houses out west. Were they small and cozy like the ones here, with all the students in one or two rooms? Did they have woodstoves against the winter chill? Uncle Jack would let me go to school, I was sure of that. He wouldn’t make me work all the time like the Stevenses did. I fell asleep nearly every night thinking about the journey west.

One evening when the wind smelled like rain, Mr. Stevens sat reading a guidebook. I could see the cover. It had been written by a man named Lansford D. Hasting. I had seen other guidebooks. Medorem Crawford had written one, and a man named Asa Lovejoy. The men were passing them around, discussing what they read.

Mrs. Stevens was cutting quilt pieces from the cloth in her patch bag that evening again. She was working with blues and reds, cut like stars. It was
windy outside, and the noise of the ash trees groaning as they swayed sounded odd and spooky.

I was shelling and picking walnuts, trying to get most of them out whole so Mrs. Stevens wouldn’t scold me. She finally went to bed. Mr. Stevens nodded without looking up from the page when she bade him good night. I cleaned up the flecks of walnut shell and the paper-thin casings that had held the nut meats in place, then I excused myself, too. He acted as though he hadn’t heard me.

I lay awake until I heard Mr. Stevens retire for the night, then I lit a candle stub and read my mother’s book for a little while. When my eyelids felt heavy, I blew out the candle.

But the wind was rising, and I couldn’t go to sleep, no matter how many times I turned over and readjusted the blankets. The night crept past, silent except for the sound of the wind rushing past, shoving at the walls.

After a long time I could hear the Mustang whinnying. Midnight and Delia were in the barn tonight; Hiram had put them in on the chance that it stormed. The stallion was usually calm enough if they were in, too.

I kept listening, hoping the Mustang would quiet down, but he didn’t. It was odd. There was no lightning. It wasn’t raining yet, and, even if it did, rainstorms hadn’t scared him before this.

I turned over once more and closed my eyes firmly, but I could not seem to let my weariness carry me into sleep. I kept listening. The stallion was squealing, the high-pitched sound he made when he was terrified.

I got up and stood shivering for a moment in the dark. Then I pulled my clothes on. I would just settle him down a little, then come back to bed.

There were flickers of lightning on the horizon when I went out the back door, but it was far away. My hair whipping around my face, I ran up the hill to the barn and opened the door, fighting the wind to close it behind myself. Feeling my way in the dark, I lit the lantern wick and hung it on the wall hook by the tack room, then turned around. I stood still as a stone, blinking in the honey-colored light.

The stallion had broken the latch on the stall gate. It was dangling by one peg. He was out, standing proud at the end of the barn aisle, his nostrils
flared. I bit my lip, frantically trying to figure out what to do. He reared, lashing out at empty air. He was free at last, and if the barn door had been open, I knew he would have run twenty miles before he stopped. I took a step toward him, wondering if he would hurt me now that there were no stall rails between us.

The sky outside the flashed blue-white. I saw the brilliant light for an instant through the missing chinks in the planked walls. The roll of thunder ended in a dull crackling.

The stallion squealed and whirled in a tight circle, half rearing as he shied. Then he came back to earth and launched himself into a gallop. I barely had time to jump out of his way.

The barn aisle was long and wide, but the stallion could only manage about five strides before he had to plunge, rearing, and sliding to a halt before the closed door. He reared, pivoting on his hind legs, and sprang into a gallop again. This time I stepped backward into the tack room and stood still, watching.

The Mustang ran the length of the aisle again, then reared, pivoted, and started back. He was
beautiful, like a magical creature from a book. He lunged back into a gallop after every pivoting turn. All his pent-up energy was finally exploding.

I was so glad to have come, so glad to have lit the lantern for him. Now that the darkness was gone, he ran without fear. His hooves flinging dirt and straw, he galloped back and forth so many times that I lost count. His breath was coming in heaving sobs when he finally slowed, then broke back into a trot, still rearing at the end of the aisle and whirling around to trot back.

I was afraid of him like this. His neck was arched, and he was prancing. The lightning flashed, and he kicked high, his back hooves striking the wall higher than my head.

Finally he dropped back to a walk after what seemed like hours. I saw the uncontrollable fire in his eyes subside, his head dropping a little. I could tell when he remembered that I was there. He stopped and looked at me.

“You have to go back in the stall tonight,” I said sadly. “But I’ll make sure you get to run again; as many nights as I can sneak out, you’ll get to run.” I meant it as a solemn promise.

I carried hay to where he stood, then ran to get a handful of corn and his halter. He ate it while I slipped the leather over his head. When I tugged gently at the halter he followed me uncertainly. He balked at the stall gate. I talked quietly, promising him it wasn’t permanent.

He walked in cautiously. I pulled the gate closed and used the lead rope to tie it shut. Then I slid the halter off and scratched his ears until he moved away from me to drink from his bucket. I fetched more hay.

Then my knees went rubbery. If I hadn’t heard him, if Mr. Stevens had found him first and tried to force him into the stall with the whip . . .

I found a mallet and repegged the latch. It was bent, but I managed to make it work again. Mr. Stevens wouldn’t notice. He almost never came to the barn now.

The Mustang lifted his head to watch as I used a hay rake to smooth out the worst of the hoof gouges in the aisle and scattered straw over the ground. I blew out the lantern and went out, wrestling with the wind for control of the door until I finally got the bar back in place.

All the way back to the house, walking through the wind, I was smiling. If the Mustang could get out and run, he would calm down. And if he calmed down, I was sure I could teach him to obey a lead rope. If I had even a week or two more, everything was going to be all right.

Every night after that, I went to my pantry a little earlier than usual, but not so much that the Stevenses noticed. Then, at about midnight, I would rouse myself and go to the barn. The stallion was skittish when I first let him out. But he began to expect me, and when I began insisting that he allow me to put on the halter before I let him out, he stood still while I slid it over his ears and buckled the throat latch. He was smart. He quickly learned that the halter didn’t keep him from galloping until he felt better.

One night, I put the lead through the halter straps and gently tugged on it. He wanted to come out anyway, so he followed the pressure. I walked with him for a while, then let him loose in the aisle and stood aside. He bucked and galloped like a colt in an April pasture. It was wonderful to see him so happy.