Katie and the Mustang #1 Read Free

gold coat, glinting like kindling sparks. Mr. Stevens jerked the lead rope. The stallion stepped forward into the barn, and the sparks went out.

CHAPTER TWO

    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 rarelyused 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 lookout 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