Katie and the Mustang #1 (6 page)

Tiger finished drinking and went back on all fours, graceful and silent as any cat. She came out
between the rails and rubbed herself on my leg, purring. “Good for you!” I told the stallion.

The Mustang stamped one hind leg. It was too early for flies to be tickling him. His eyes were so intense. It really seemed as though he was trying to tell me something.

“You could squash her with one hoof,” I guessed. “Yes, you could. Why were you ever scared of something so small?”

“Katieeee!”

I wanted, more than anything, to stay right where I was, to talk to the Mustang until he let me touch him again.

“Katieeee!” Mrs. Stevens sounded pretty angry. If she had to come up the hill to get an answer from me . . . “I better go,” I told the stallion. I stepped back. “I’ll come back tonight or before. Whatever happens, I’ll come as soon as I can.”

The Mustang looked at me so intently, it was as though he was about to say something, about to speak. I tiptoed out, careful to move slowly until I got outside. Then I lifted the bucket down from the branch and walked as fast as I could toward the house.

When I was halfway down the path, the boss rooster crowed, loud and long. An instant later, the top of the sun rose above the horizon. Streaks of gold light shot across the valley. The cedar trees by the river looked nearly black. It was so beautiful, I caught my breath. Then I noticed a horse tied to the hitching rail—a tall red roan. I had never seen it before. I slowed my step and veered to go in the back door.

There is a sage smell in the wind sometimes. It’s faint and weak, as though it has traveled many days to reach me. I welcome it. So few scents make it into the wooden box where I am trapped. I am starved for scents, for living air
.

“
K
atie?” Mrs. Stevens called the instant she heard the door close.

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered her. “Just now cooling the milk.”

“You’re slow as winter molasses this morning,” she said, standing at the head of the hallway, scolding me gently. “Wash up. We have company.”

I wanted to ask her who it was, but she turned and walked back into the parlor. Who would be visiting so early in the morning? I got the milk cooling, leaving just enough in the bucket to fill
Tiger’s saucer on the porch. Then I washed the bucket carefully, going as fast as I could. I took a second to smooth my hair a little and rinsed my hands and face in the washbasin. I went down the hall, hoping whichever neighbor it was would leave soon. I wanted to get enough work done so that I’d have a little extra time to steal away if I could. The Mustang trusted me a little more every time I talked to him.

I wished it weren’t spring cleaning week. It was always hard for me to slip away to the barn. It would be nearly impossible to sneak out there until all the extra work was finished.

My thoughts were stilled the instant I came around the corner. There was a man sitting at the table with Mr. Stevens. He wore a hat so broad-brimmed that it nearly hid his face. It was strange that he would wear it indoors at all. Even in the early morning light, even with the wide brim overhanging his face, I could tell his skin was browned the color of coffee from the sun. He wasn’t any neighbor I had ever met.

“There you are!” Mrs. Stevens exclaimed. Her hands were fluttering from her face to her bodice, then back. “Run and bring in the eggs,” she said, and her hands swooped together to shoo me toward
the door. I got the egg basket off the sideboard and went out.

We hadn’t gathered eggs the day before—too much work in the house. So, even though the hens were still sleepy and grumpy, I found fourteen eggs. Mrs. Stevens was still fussing when I went back in. She had boiled coffee and was pouring it.

She hovered over the
egg
basket like it was something she had never seen before in her life. I had never seen her so nervous. Maybe the man was from the bank? My mother had gotten like that when the bankers had paid a call.

“Sit,” Mrs. Stevens said, shooing me again. “Eat.”

There was a bowl of plain oatmeal on the table. Mine. I sidled toward it. The men were talking in low voices about oxen. Maybe Mr. Stevens was buying a team of oxen to plow? Some men swore they were better than horses for that kind of slow, steady work.

I slid into my chair and tried to be invisible. My bowl of oats wasn’t steaming. I picked up my spoon and tasted them. Gold. I looked up, meaning to ask someone to pass the honey, but the men were lost in their conversation, and Mrs. Stevens was walking back to the woodstove.

“The eggs will only take a few minutes,” Mrs. Stevens said from the stove.

Mr. Stevens waved one hand at her to let her know he had heard.

“It takes—” Mr. Stevens began.

“Five months. Sometimes six,” the man interrupted. “I will leave early, as early as the weather will let me.”

Mr. Stevens nodded. “And land out there is—”

“Free or cheap,” the man interrupted him again. “The best plots are going fast. Waiting a year can be a mistake.”

In that instant, I finally understood what was going on, and my stomach tightened. This man didn’t look like a farmer because he wasn’t one. His hat was odd because it was the kind of hat a man could wear in every kind of weather. This man had something to do with going west. And Mr. Stevens was thinking about going
this
year?

Mr. Stevens kept asking questions. I ate my oats, then sat as still as a stone, listening to them. Mrs. Stevens had heated a skillet; I could hear the eggs snapping and sizzling in the pork fat, the scrape of the fork as she stirred them.

My heart was pounding. If we were really going, I could write my uncle Jack again and just tell him I was coming. It would be all right, I was sure. It had to be.

Mrs. Stevens cleared her throat, and I glanced up. She was bringing plates of steaming scrambled eggs and slab ham to set in front of the men.

“The chance for new-opened land is hard to pass up,” the man was saying. “Only fools sit and watch the opportunity of a generation go past them. And you don’t look like a fool to me, sir.”

Mr. Stevens squared his shoulders and sat up straighter in his chair. “I’m not known for foolishness,” he said.

“Many sensible men have decided not to go, haven’t they, Mr. Barrett?” Mrs. Stevens said quietly as she straightened up. “My husband hasn’t settled on anything yet.”

The man turned to look at her. “Your husband sounds pretty interested to me,” he said, grinning. He touched his hat respectfully. “Don’t worry, ma’am. Most farm women get used to the wagon life fairly quickly. You’ll see.”

I lowered my head and picked up my spoon,
intent on being invisible long enough to hear all I could from Mr. Barrett before Mrs. Stevens sent me back to my chores. It didn’t work. She noticed me less than a minute later.

“Katie?”

I glanced at her. She was wiping her hands on her apron, her face stern and hard.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Start with those mattresses now.”

I sighed and got up. The corn shucks were in the woodshed. I bagged what we would need for the Stevenses’ bed and carried them in the back door. By then, Mr. Barrett was leaving. Whatever else they said, I had missed.

The spring cleaning dragged itself along—finally it was finished—at the end of
two
weeks, not one. And then it was March. It didn’t
feel
like spring. It got colder than it had been all winter.

We had a snowstorm, and Hiram left off flattening the cornstalks from the year before to go help Mr. Firner slaughter his pigs for the year. The cold weather kept the meat fresher until they could
get it into the smokehouse and packed in salt.

It got so cold that Mr. Stevens moved Midnight and Delia and the plow team back into the barn day and night. I had to fill the chicken coop in deep straw to keep the one batch of early-hatch chicks alive. Tiger moved back into the barn, too, and insisted on getting her milk there. She refused to walk a snowy path if she didn’t have to. It was all right. The Mustang knew she was harmless now.

The Mustang seemed to like having horse company all the time. From the first night that all the other stalls were full, he seemed calmer and more content. He always watched when I scratched Mid-night’s ears and combed out Delia’s mane and tail.

If I had time to stand still in front of his stall and talk quietly to him for a while, he would usually come to the gate and let me touch him—but only if I was the only one in the barn. If Hiram or Mr. Stevens came in, he stood at the back of the stall again.

Hiram was always patient and quiet-voiced. The stallion watched closely when he came in every morning to clean the stalls and feed. Hiram always talked to him, too, but the Mustang never came to the front of the stall for Hiram.

I could tell that Hiram was uneasy sitting around the Stevenses’ house. When the snow eased up, he would be glad to go back to clearing last year’s cornstalks in the two fields where Mr. Stevens had left them standing last fall.

The ears in those two fields had been too small to harvest before first frost because Mr. Stevens had planted late. He had brought in half a crop, at best.

Every morning, I stood in front of the Mustang’s stall before I milked Betsy. “Will you let me touch you today?” I asked him.

He always reacted. Sometimes he would switch his tail back and forth; sometimes he would blow out a long breath. But it seemed like he could understand me.

“The ground is still frozen,” I said to him one day. “But as soon as it thaws for good, Mr. Stevens will put the other horses out in the pasture. Don’t you want to go out, too?”

He was standing at the back of his stall, looking at me. He stamped a forehoof and walked forward, stopping so that his muzzle was directly above the stall gate. I took a single step toward him, then stopped. I stood still for a moment, then I stepped
forward again—a slow half step, and I kept my arms close to my body. He was still wary of me, of any human being.

I came forward, raising my hand slowly, and held it open, palm up, just in front of him. He whuf-fled a breath out through his nostrils. Then there was a prickly tickle of his whiskers, a warm sigh—and the smell of sweet grass from his breath. I patted his cheek, then let my hand slide down his neck. He smelled my hair, my cheek, then my hand again. Then, without warning, he shied away from me, spinning in a circle, his hooves throwing clods of dirt against the planks.

I heard a low-pitched chuckle, and I turned toward the door. Mr. Stevens was standing there. “That’s good,” he said. “Maybe if you get him gentled a little, I can get him trained.”

I managed to nod, but the idea of Mr. Stevens training the Mustang made me cringe. He was awkward in the saddle, and he always carried a whip and jerked the reins when he drove the buggy. I pitied the mares.

“You’ve been hearing all the talk about going west,” he said.

I nodded, keeping my face expressionless. He had never talked to me beyond giving me scoldings or reminding me to finish some chore.

“You can tell that Mrs. Stevens doesn’t want to go?”

I nodded again, cautiously. Anyone could tell. Whenever he brought it up at the table, she looked ill with worry.

He sighed. “Has she said much about it to you?”

I shook my head. “Nothing at all, sir.”

He looked down at the toe of his work boot, then back at me. I was afraid he might come closer and scare the Mustang again. But he only shook his head; then, without another word to me, he turned and walked away. From halfway down the path, I heard him shouting. Mrs. Stevens answered from inside the house.

“I’ll be done with Betsy in a few minutes,” I whispered to the Mustang. He flared his nostrils. Now he looked fierce again, and wild. But when he had touched me, he had been so careful, so gentle.

I wished with all my heart that Mr. Stevens had not chosen that moment to come into the barn. Maybe the Mustang would never come close to me again.

By the time I was finished milking, the stallion had come to the front of his stall once more. But when he saw me walking toward him, he backed away.

“That’s all right,” I told him as I came closer. “I understand. I talk to someone and then I get shy again, too.”