Katie and the Mustang, Book 3 Read Free Page B

I told her.
    She yawned. “Nor did I, but Mr. Teal said there were a couple.”
    â€œThanks very much for supper, ma’am,” I said, suddenly remembering my manners.
    Mrs. Kyler reached out and stroked my hair. “Where do you want to sleep, Katie?”
    I hadn’t thought about it, and I didn’t know what to say. I was used to sleeping beneath the wagon, so that’s what I finally told her.
    â€œNot inside?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œJulia sometimes sleeps with us, but she isn’t going to tonight,” Mrs. Kyler said. “Her mother wants her close.”
    I shook my head again.
    â€œIt’s a fea-ther bed,” Mrs. Kyler said in a sing-song voice. “A feather bed with a real bolster pil loooow...” She was smiling.
    A real bed. I hadn’t slept in a real bed since home...you couldn’t really call a pallet in a pantry a real bed. My mother had had a feather bed. In the winter, we had all slept in it to keep warm.
    My eyes flooded with tears, and I turned away. “May I just sleep outside, ma’am?” I asked as evenly as I could.
    Mrs. Kyler put her hand on my shoulder. “Of course.”
    She walked away, and I heard the wagon creak as she climbed up the steps at the rear gate. I spread my bedding and then went to check on the Mustang once more before I lay down. The mares were asleep. The Mustang was wide awake, his ears swiveling to catch every sound. He seemed calm enough and let me kiss his forehead.
    Walking back to the Kylers’ wagon, I could hear men’s voices on the other side of the wide circle. I saw one campfire, built up and burning bright. Ten or fifteen men were standing around it, talking. Their voices sounded angry.
    Lying beneath the Kylers’ wagon, listening, I remembered what Mr. Teal had said. The wagon party had to become like a family, or fewer people would make it all the way to Oregon.

CHAPTER FOUR

    I must never sleep for long. The mares depend on me to
hear a wolf, to scent distant fires—to know about
danger before it comes. It is hard, the two-leggeds
don’t stop to doze mid-day. I am weary.
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    L ate the next morning we came over a little rise and saw the Elkhorn River. The men had all been talking about it at breakfast. It wasn’t wide, or all that deep, they said, unless there had been rain upstream. What they hadn’t said was that the Elkhorn was as curved as a snake’s track in summer dust.
    The Mustang had smelled the water a mile away, I was sure. All of a sudden, he had tossed his head, his nostrils flaring as he scented the breeze coming toward us. Then he had picked up the pace, pulling me along, outpacing the oxen easily. The road passed farmhouses and fields, and I wondered about the people who lived there, if the wagons passing made them want to go west or if the constant dust just made them angry.
    The McMahons waved at me when I came up even with them. I smiled at little Toby; he was peeking out the back of the wagon again. Then I angled away from the wagons to keep clear of the other families and their children. The Mustang was prancing, pulling me along by the time we started downhill.
    The wagons followed the rutted road with slow deliberation, Mr. Teal in the lead as he usually was, the big wagons swaying and creaking over every little bump. This slope was long and gradual, not like the steep descent into Council Bluff.
    We crossed a path that had been worn by cattle; there were thousands of cloven hoofprints in the dirt. The farmers here let their cows run loose to graze, it looked like, and they had trampled a path down to the river. It was narrow and curved in long arcs, switching back and forth, always headed downhill, always within sight of the road—so I took it to escape some of the dust from the wagons.
    I kept glancing at Mr. Teal, thinking he might call me back into the line, but he didn’t seem to notice or care if I took a different