Katie and the Mustang #1 (4 page)

I knew why. The book was all I had. It was the only thing that had belonged to my mother that hadn’t been sold off by the bankers. They had sold everything they could find, trying to get their money on my parents’ debt—then they had sold the land itself.

No one had wanted to take me in. Everyone had been afraid of the fever—I couldn’t blame them for that. In a way, I was grateful. For the better part of three weeks after the funeral services, I had been at the farm alone, taking flowers up to the graves, feeding the stock, cooking for myself.

One of the bank men had known about the Stevenses, that they had no children of their own, and he had arranged my coming here. Before the first sale, I hid two things: the book my mother had had since she was a girl and my father’s silver shoe buckles.

I leaned on the ash tree by the barn door and forced myself to stop crying. Pa had been so proud of the silver buckles. They had been handed down from his great-grandfather. He had worn them
every Sunday, fastened over his worn black shoes.

I wiped at my eyes with my sleeve and dragged in one long breath after another. Crying wasn’t going to help anything. It never had. The buckles were wrapped in a tea cloth and buried beneath the lilac hedge. My book was beneath my pallet. Mr. Stevens was not going to get hold of either one.

I squared my shoulders and banged open the barn door, then stopped dead, standing just inside it, feeling foolish. I had startled the Mustang awake. He reared, then lashed out, his hooves striking the stall rails.

“Easy, easy,” I pleaded with him. I leaned back to glance toward the house. Mr. Stevens couldn’t help but hear. He was already upset with me. A commotion would make him furious.

“It’s all right,” I repeated over and over, quietly, standing very still. I could barely see in the near dark inside the barn. I heard the stallion drop back onto all four hooves. He was breathing hard.

I did not move an inch. “I never meant to scare you,” I told him. “Please settle down. It’s all right.” I had heard my father calm farm horses with words like that all my life. He hadn’t owned a horse whip.

“Just be easy and I’ll get you some grain,” I told him. I took one step into the dim barn. “All right? Just stand easy. Everything is all right. Just stand nice and easy.”

My eyes were adjusting. The stallion snorted. I could just see his shape in the dim light coming through the wide door. His mane was so long and so matted. I took one more step. He stood still. He had been getting used to me, a little more each day, and now I had ruined everything. I saw him toss his head again. “You need a currycomb,” I said quietly. The stallion reared and squealed softly.

I held my breath a moment; there were no shouts, no sound of footfalls on the path. Maybe Mr. Stevens and Hiram were talking and they hadn’t heard anything. I knew I should milk quickly and get back down to the house. I would just do what I had gotten so good at with the Stevenses. I would act as though I was fine, that they hadn’t scared me or upset me at all—but I would hide my book somewhere safe just in case.

“Listen,” I told the Mustang, “you have to learn. Mr. Stevens scares me, too. But I learned to pretend.”

The stallion was staring at me now, his neck arched. His breathing slowed a little. He didn’t move as I came forward another step. When I lit the lantern, he reared, but his front hooves barely left the stall floor, and he didn’t kick at the stall rails. He danced in a circle, and, as always, I was amazed at how agile he was, how he seemed to know exactly how big the stall was. He missed hitting the rails by inches.

“Perfect,” I murmured. “You’d do fine at a barn dance.” I took the milk pail off the hook and moved very slowly toward Betsy’s stall at the end of the aisle. Usually she was bawling at me by now. Her bag was heavy and full of the night’s milk and she was uncomfortable—but this morning she was silent.

“That horse scares you, doesn’t he?” I murmured, pouring corn into her trough. “He won’t hurt you. You scare him, too, I think. We all do.” Betsy ignored me and thrust her head in. A second later, a crunching sound and the sweet smell of cracked corn filled the air. I set the pail in place and reached for the one-legged stool and the udder rag.

I settled myself on the stool, making sure of my balance before I leaned down and wiped the
flecks of dung and hay off Betsy’s udder. The rag was damp and cold, and she hunched her back.

I was a fast milker. It has to do with how strong your hands are, I think. That’s what my pa used to say anyway. His hands were long-fingered and slender, but strong. So are mine.

I kept glancing behind myself at the stallion. He was watching me and Betsy intently. I sang my usual little tune to Betsy, using the squirts of milk hitting the pail as the rhythm. It was an Irish song, from my mother and grandmother. They sang it fast, like a jig; I liked to slow it down a little, drawing out the words. I had no idea what they meant.
Gaelic
, my mother called the language. She didn’t speak it either. I wondered if we said the words right or if we were like Mr. Svensen, our old neighbor, getting everything backward and making funny mistakes, like asking if the plate was locket.

“Gate,” my mother had corrected him in her gentlest voice. “And you mean
locked
, not
locket
.”

I closed my eyes and sang a little louder, and I could see my mother’s face. Betsy’s flank was warm and soft. She was chewing happily, and I knew she liked my singing.

I sat up straight and turned to look back down the barn aisle again. The Mustang had lowered his head, and he blew a long breath out his nostrils when he saw me looking at him. “It’s a song older than the stones, my mother always said,” I told him.

I was careful to strip out the last drops of milk so that Betsy would keep producing—and to get every bit of the cream. Mrs. Stevens saved it up. She would have me churning butter in a day or two.

On the way past the stallion, I was careful to walk slowly, not to make any sudden motion. He watched me carefully. I could see that his water bucket was still upright. Good. I set the milk bucket down to put a little dried hay grass in his manger, then a coffee tin full of oats. Then I backed away.

“Hiram will feed you more later when he is done with his morning chores. Or maybe they will let you out to the pasture today and
.
.
.”

I trailed off. I knew it wasn’t true. Of course he wouldn’t be let out into the pasture. Mr. Stevens was afraid to even try to get a halter on him, and Hiram wasn’t being paid to break wild horses.

I swung around and picked up the milk bucket with one hand and lifted the lantern down with
the other. I left quietly, trying not to scare the Mustang again. I was almost to the front door when I heard the whicker this time.

I turned. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I whispered. The stallion needed a friend. And I suppose I did, too.

The little one comes every morning. She is gentle and mild. I think she would let me go back out into the sunshine if she could. I don’t know where their lead mare is, but the older male who comes sometimes is cruel. Perhaps he has driven away most of his herd
.

M
onday morning I woke long before dawn and lay in my pantry, unhappy, thinking about spring cleaning. Mrs. Stevens never missed a day of housework. Her round of chores rolled along like a cart wheel on a hard-packed road. Like most women, she arranged her work according to the days. I lay still, listing them in my mind, dreading the extra work that would be added this week.

Monday was always wash day, and doing the laundry was the hardest, meanest, worst backbreaking work we did—so we did it while we were still rested
from Sunday’s Bible reading and rest—and a big Sunday supper. Every Monday I smelled lye soap from the neighboring farms and knew women were boiling laundry pots. I saw the tiny white rectangles of their bedding hanging from lines all down the valley.

If I squinted, and if it wasn’t hot enough to make the air squirm and shimmer, I imagined that I could see far enough to see my father’s farm, linens hung out on the clotheslines running between the three old cottonwood trees behind the house.

Tuesday we did the ironing since the laundry was still damp. Mrs. Stevens had a good set of irons. When I first came, it was my job to switch them out, placing the spare back on the woodstove, keeping the fire up to reheat them. Now she had me press pillowcases and tea cloths and the tablecloths she used every day.

Wednesday was sewing day since we had just been through all the clothes-washing and ironing. She always noticed tiny tears and little snags. It was my job to check buttons and stitch them down tight before they came off. She got upset if she found one missing—that meant I had missed a loose one. Mrs.
Stevens didn’t really trust me to do anything else with a needle. My stitches weren’t very even, which pained her more than it did me.

Thursday was market day. Usually it was Mr. Stevens who went. Mrs. Stevens spent time the night before making out her list of needful things. Sometimes she went with him. When she did, Thursday was like a second Sabbath for me. Even though she left me chores to do, I could do them at my own pace, and I could pretend it was my house, that I could decide what was for supper and tell people to mind their manners.

My first year at the Stevenses, I would pretend that Betsy, the horses, the dogs, and the chickens were all my friends, that I was having a party. Then it started to feel too silly doing it, and I stopped. I didn’t have any friends anymore.

Friday was cleaning day. Mrs. Stevens focused her attention on a different room each week, and we’d move furniture to sweep beneath or mop the floors with extra care to get all the corners. She’d had me carrying fifty-pound mop buckets the day after Mr. Stevens brought me home to her. It had taken both hands, the bucket banging my shins at every step.

Saturday was baking day. I had loved Saturdays in my own home. My mother made bread, but she also made cakes and pies and cobblers, using fruit in the summer and squash in the winter. Mrs. Stevens made heavy, dark breads that tasted strongly of molasses and salt. Once in a long while she made a cobbler or a cake for a funeral—but I rarely got a taste. She thought sugar was too expensive to waste on me.

Sunday was always the day of rest. Mr. Stevens was very strict about the Sabbath. My parents hadn’t worked on Sundays, either, but we had sung together, and sometimes we would all take a walk along the creek. Mama had always made a nice dinner if there was plenty of food, and Pa would let us play chess or checkers.

Mr. Stevens read the Bible aloud while his wife and I sat with our hands in our laps, listening. It could go on for a hours, some Sundays. I had learned not to fidget, but it was worse than church, by far—and Mr. Stevens wasn’t interesting like Pa had always been. He didn’t explain the scripture, and he didn’t read it like a story, pouncing on some words and letting other trickle out slowly. His
voice was loud and precise and flat—and endless.

The boss rooster crowed out in the coop, interrupting my sleepy thoughts. Mrs. Stevens was always about ten minutes behind the first rooster. I lit a candle and was up and dressed by the time she tapped on the pantry door.

“You’re growing,” she said, leading the way back up the hall. “Now you can be of some real use to me at housework.”

I sighed. All I ever
did
was help her with her work.

“Do you have something to say to me, Miss Katie?”

I shook my head.

“That’s good,” she told me. “Rude children don’t get letters.”

I turned to face her squarely, my heart pounding. Had my uncle Jack written me at last? She waggled a finger in my face.

“Maybe that’s why he hasn’t answered.” She smiled as though it was a joke between us. “Maybe he knows you are a rude girl that he wouldn’t want to have in his home.”

I exhaled slowly, fighting the ache behind my
eyes. When I had first come, Mrs. Stevens would hold me tightly when I cried, rocking me back and forth, calling me an orphan, a poor child. But she had lost patience quickly. Now she only got annoyed if she noticed tears in my eyes.

“Well,” she said after a moment, straightening her apron. “We might as well get started.”

I nodded.

She reached out and tapped the top of my head. “Go milk. I’ll get the laundry water boiling. This afternoon we’ll start in scrubbing the larder shelves.”

I waited for her to turn away. Then I washed up and got a clean pail off the sideboard. My jacket was hanging beside the door. On my way out to the barn, Tiger came bounding up behind me, purring, braiding her steps with mine so that I nearly tripped over her. I shooed her back toward the house.

“You’ll scare the Mustang if you’re silly like this, chasing around the barn,” I scolded her.

She arched her back and meowed, staring at the milk bucket.

“I’ll make sure you get your milk,” I promised. “Scat!” I rattled the bucket and chased her a few steps, then started back up the hill. It was only then
that I noticed the barn door was already open. I could see lantern light through the doorway. I ran the rest of the way.