Katie and the Mustang #1 (9 page)

I wait every night for the sound of light footsteps and the scent of crushed flowers. She is very young to be a lead mare, but that seems to be her position. She is kind and wise. I will follow her
.

I
was so tired all the time from staying up half the night with the Mustang that Mrs. Stevens finally asked if I was sick, but she had little time to worry about me. She was worried, constantly, about going west.

“Katie?” Mr. Stevens said at supper one night. I looked up at him. He was smiling. “Why don’t you take the day off and go with Martha to the quilting party tomorrow?”

I stared at him. Mrs. Stevens always said that I was too young to go calling, that I couldn’t sit still
long enough—it had never once occurred to me that I would go this time.

Mrs. Stevens cleared her throat, and he turned to face her. “I’ve decided not to go,” she said quietly. “I would feel terrible if your cousin came while I was gone and not here to welcome him.”

Mr. Stevens didn’t say anything for a long moment, then he looked at his wife. “Some people are coming to look at the farm tomorrow. I’ve decided, Martha. We are going west.”

Mrs. Stevens lowered her eyes and said nothing. His sudden interest in her quilting needed no explanation now. He had wanted her out of the way for the day. And me as well.

“I expect you both to be cordial,” Mr. Stevens said evenly.

“I will,” Mrs. Stevens answered in a faint voice. Then she lifted her eyes. “I will honor my marriage and obey my husband,” she said. “But I will never forgive you for this, Robert, and neither will Katie, when it comes to that. You will be taking her away from everything she knows, too.” She gathered her skirt and stood up and left the room, leaving me staring at Mr. Stevens’s flushed face.

“She’s just upset about leaving her friends,” he said in a low voice, talking more to himself than to me. “She’ll get used to the idea.”

“I want to go,” I said timidly.

Mr. Stevens suddenly focused on my face, as though he had just realized that I was in the room with him. “You do?”

I nodded.

He smiled. “Well, that’s fine, just fine.” His voice was so reasonable that I smiled back at him. He seemed to take that as a sign to keep talking. “Mr. Peery and Mr. Gleason are going. And the Wilsons. The Themble family and maybe Mr. Dulin. And Hiram, I think.”

Hiram was going? I was glad. But I remained still and silent. Mr. Stevens had never spoken this many words to me all at once. Ever. And he wasn’t finished.

“We’ll go by river from Muscatine to St. Louis, buy prairie-schooner wagons there, then go by road west to Independence. Everyone is using the schooners. They’re half-size Conestogas, more or less.” He raked his hair back with one hand, and I noticed deep circles under his eyes.

For a moment, I thought about telling him about the Mustang, how tame he was getting. But before I could, he reached out to pat my shoulder awkwardly.

“Martha will need your help getting ready to leave. We’ll have to go as fast as we can once the farm is sold or we could end up overwintering somewhere. I don’t want that.”

I stared at him, my heart thudding inside my chest. It was real. We were going. I would make it to Oregon and find my family.

“We won’t take much of this.” He waved a hand vaguely at the whole room, the whole house. “Not past St. Louis, anyway. We can leave the blasted rugs with Martha’s sister there.”

I glanced around the room. The table had belonged to Mrs. Stevens’s favorite aunt. The woodstove was something her parents had given her when she was first married. Her rugs were her pride and joy. The cupboard cabinets held dishes her father’s mother had brought from England.

I had been so caught up in wanting to go that I hadn’t thought about what it would mean for her—or myself, really. I could almost see my parents’ home place from the hill. If I went west, I would
almost certainly never see it again. The thought made me uneasy.

I am not sure when I noticed that Mr. Stevens was still talking. My thoughts were circling, tangling themselves into a knot so dense that his voice had literally faded.

“. . . homestead, which means that we have to build a dwelling of some kind on the land in the first year,” he was saying. “The laws are very clear on that much, though they say there are people who couldn’t manage it and have yet to be removed from their places.”

“I heard Mr. Barrett talking about that,” I said without thinking.

Mr. Stevens’s face lit up. “You did?”

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” Mrs. Stevens’s voice was cold and flat.

I wrenched around, expecting her to scold me and send me to bed for speaking to her husband in such a familiar, disrespectful way. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at him.

Astonished, I watched her stare at him, and keep staring, until he turned away and walked out the front door into the darkness.

“Don’t pin your dreams on any man,” Mrs. Stevens said once he was gone. “Not a father, a brother, a friend, or a husband.” She looked at me, and her eyes were hard as ice. “Just don’t.”

I nodded, not knowing how else to react.

“We cleaned the house for his cousin’s visit?” she asked in a dull voice. “I never saw the letter.” Then she laughed bitterly. “There is no cousin coming. He just wanted the house clean. He
planned
this, Katie.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Go read or something,” Mrs. Stevens said in a low voice. “Just go on to bed and leave me alone for a while.”

“May I go out to the barn?” I asked.

She waved one hand, nodding. “I don’t care. Just go.”

I went out the back door.

Mr. Stevens was standing on the front porch; I could see him in the moonlight. As I went up the hill, I heard the front door open and close and knew that he had gone back in to talk to his wife.

I went into the barn, glad to be away from them both. I led the stallion back and forth for an hour
or more, then let him gallop. He wasn’t nearly as desperate for every little bit of freedom now. He was calmer than he had ever been.

Shivering in the chilly evening, I put the lead rope on his halter and dared to open the barn door and walk him outside. For an instant, I was sure I had made a terrible mistake. His tossed his head and began to prance sideways, his neck arched. But when he felt me tug gently at the lead, he followed.

I led him in a circle around the ash tree, three or four times around, then halfway down the path and back up. Maybe it was the darkness that kept him from wanting to run away, but he didn’t seem nervous or spooky at all, not even when the dogs barked a little. He kept lifting his head and taking great long breaths.

I led him down toward the house, along the lilac hedge at the edge of the yard, staying away from the dog yard, singing a little so the dogs could hear me and wouldn’t bark again.

I thought about leading him right up to the door and showing Mr. Stevens how much he had learned, but I could hear them talking once I got close, so I turned and took the stallion back to the barn.

“We’re going west,” I told him when I put him back in his stall. “We’re really going west!”

I slipped in the back door and tiptoed down the hall. They weren’t talking anymore, and I didn’t know if that was bad or good. I lay awake, dreaming about Oregon, about my real family, about how wonderful it would be to find them.

The little one led me beneath the stars last night. I hated coming back into the wooden box, but I followed her. I will let her lead unless there is danger
.

I
woke the next morning, feeling uneasy. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens were both silent at the breakfast table. Mrs. Stevens set her husband’s plate in front of him and walked back to the woodstove. Mr. Stevens stared at the wall while he chewed.

I ate my oatmeal slowly, waiting for one of them to speak, for them to at least pretend that things were normal—they always had before when they’d had an argument. But when I was nearly finished eating—and they hadn’t exchanged a single word—I knew this time was different.

“When are they coming?” Mrs. Stevens finally asked. Her voice was so blunt, so heavy, that I flinched.

Mr. Stevens faced her. “First light, they said. They’re staying with the Gibsons—she is Mary Esther’s niece, I think. So they stayed there last night and—”

“Fine.” Mrs. Stevens nodded sharply.

“They’re the McCarty family from upper New York,” he began again. “And they—”

“I’ll be ready,” she interrupted him, turning. “I had better dress properly. Katie can clean up breakfast.”

I nodded, but I knew she didn’t see me. I am not sure she cared whether or not her kitchen was tidy this morning. After they had both left the room, I rushed around, wiping up the table, the sideboard, setting the washed plates in the rack, putting the milk back in the cooler, wrapping the butter in its cloth.

When I heard the grinding sound of buggy wheels mixed with hoofbeats through the little kitchen window, I was just wringing out the dishrag. Breathless, I ran down the hall to get my shoes on.
The sun was sitting bright and round on the horizon. I was a half hour behind on my chores. I didn’t think anyone else would care today, but Betsy would be wondering what was wrong.

I hurried out the back door, hoping the Mustang wouldn’t be too nervous. He wasn’t used to hearing strangers around the place. Halfway up the hill, Tiger pattered up behind me, running like wolves were after her. I noticed children’s laughter and shouts mixed in with the sounds of the buggy coming up the road, and I knew what had scared her. Tiger wasn’t used to the sounds of children playing. Mrs. Stevens insisted on my being quiet and polite—and I never had time to play.

I ducked inside the barn. The Mustang was standing with his head over the stall gate. I set the milk bucket down and ran to rub his ears. Tiger slipped beneath the lowest rail and lapped water out of his bucket. He barely noticed.

“Good for you,” I said to him. “Maybe, after the McCarty family leaves, we can show Mr. Stevens how gentle you’ve gotten.” I pushed his forelock out of his eyes and patted his wide forehead, tracing the swirl where his coat spiraled outward.

In the early light of the sun coming through the door, I could see the dust coming out of his coat. I had tried the currycomb weeks before, and he hadn’t let me use it. But now maybe he would let me brush him—maybe I could get the last of the mats out of his mane.

“Tomorrow, I’ll groom you,” I promised him. “We’ll wait until then to show Mr. Stevens how you let me lead you around.”

An explosion of giggles made me turn. There were two girls standing in the doorway of the barn, both with curly fair hair. They were smiling at me, and my heart cracked open inside my chest. They looked enough like my little sister and me to be related. The younger one especially looked like Tess had, with a merry grin and pink, full cheeks.

Aching inside, I nodded politely at them and stepped back, picking up the milk pail. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. The sadness was as sudden and sharp as the night I had leaned against the Mustang’s neck.

“We’re Ruth and Mary,” the older girl said.

I glanced back and saw her, pointing to herself
last. I tried to smile and couldn’t. She looked seven or so; Mary looked about five.

Tess would have been six this year, I heard myself thinking. This summer, she would have turned six.

“My name is Katie,” I managed. I didn’t turn to look back at them. I knew if I did, they’d see my tears. How could I explain to them? I bit my lip. I didn’t want to explain, I didn’t want to have to tell them anything at all. They had no right to see me like this . . . to make me feel like this . . .

“Oh, what a pretty horse!”

I set down the bucket and whirled around in time to see a set of petticoats flouncing as little Ruth climbed the Mustang’s stall gate and leaned toward him.

He snorted and lifted his head.

“Ruthie! Get down!” her older sister shrieked. The Mustang pawed at the dirt. Ruthie was hanging on to the rails, her skirts belling out as she leaned back. The stallion reared and pawed at the air, then kicked the back wall of this stall squarely. The sound of his hooves striking the wood rang out like a slammed door in a quiet house. Ruthie began to cry. The stallion reared again, his eyes rimmed in white.

“Get down!” I shouted.

The Mustang reared once more. Ruthie looked terrified, but she didn’t climb down; instead, her crying turned into a wail.

“Get down!” her sister screamed.

Then Ruth leaned back even farther and I realized that she
couldn’t
get down. Her skirts were caught on the rail. The Mustang had attacked the wood so many times it had splintered, and the long slivers of wood had snagged the fabric of her dress. The Mustang plunged in a circle, then rushed at the gate, his teeth bared.

Ruth screamed. It was a high-pitched, grating sound. The Mustang whirled away and squealed, slamming his back hooves into the planks again. I dropped the milk bucket and ran. The stallion spun in a tight circle, throwing clods of dirt into the air with his hooves.