Katie and the Mustang, Book 4 Read Free Page B

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    â€œ T he prairies are behind us,” Mr. Kyler said one evening. “We will have nothing but hills and rocks for quite some time—and a pass through the Rocky Mountains after that.”
    I sighed. Rocks and ravines were all I had seen in every direction every morning for a week or more—except to the west. In that direction, the Rocky Mountains rose up out of the earth, blue and misty with distance—and with every passing day they looked bigger.
    The Mustang seemed uneasy one morning, prancing sideways as we veered off from the wagons as we always did, searching for grass. I found three or four clumps right off that still had some green blades—most was hay brittle from the summer heat. I let the Mustang graze until the wagons had rolled past, then I ran to catch up, the Mustang trotting beside me.
    The lead rope, as always, was slack between my hand and the Mustang’s halter. We had walked so long, so close together every day, that it was as though as soon as I thought about slowing down, he responded by doing it.
    Most of the time, I didn’t think twice about him being with me—in fact, it felt odd to me when he wasn’t. In the evenings, sometimes, I had the strangest feeling that I had forgotten something, that something was missing, and then I would realize that it was the Mustang, off with Delia and Midnight and the rest of the horses.
    I pulled in a long breath, appreciating the cool morning air as the Mustang grazed. When he had leveled the patch we were on, we ran to catch up, then repeated the process. It felt good to run, the air was almost chilly.
    I watched the ground ahead of us for snakes, but I didn’t see any—nor did I expect to, at least not until the sun was enough to warm their cold blood.
    The day passed slowly, the sun sliding upward in the sky until the midday heat settled against the land. After our dinner stop at noon, the wagons moved through a haze of heat and dust, the oxen plodding onward as though they had forgotten any other kind of life and would plod onward until they dropped dead.
    I squinted, trying to spot patches and pockets of grass, as always, but the heat made it harder to see—the air shimmered up from the ground in waves. Grass was greener and darker than the sage, but the heat blurred the colors and the shape of the land ahead.
    I saw what I thought might be grass and headed toward it, following a downward slope. There was a slough, I discovered, as I got closer, marshy and wet. There was no river, not even a creek—and the ground around the slough was dry as old bones. It had to be spring-fed, the water just bubbling up somewhere close by.
    I glanced up at the Rocky Mountains in the distance as I followed along the edge of the slough. They looked a deeper blue as we got closer, darker than the sky but not by too much. They were crowned in white.
    â€œThat’s snow, Miss Liddy says,” I said to the Mustang as I spotted a tiny stream flowing from the earth. The water looked clear enough, and I stepped in it to cool my bare feet—then jumped backward. The water and the mud around it were icy cold!
    My reaction startled the Mustang, and he shied sideways, half rearing. I stood aside, leaving the lead rope loose, waiting for him to calm down; then, when he had, I put my foot closer to the spring. I hadn’t imagined it! The ground felt like frozen soil in the middle of winter, not like sun-heated earth in the hottest part of summer.
    I looked back toward the wagons. I was too far away to shout and be heard. I would go tell them in a minute. But first, I wanted to explore the slough a little. What in the world could cause such icy water? I waded into the little creek. It was so cold that I began to shiver, in spite of the hot sun. In places, there was a skim of ice on the surface. It seemed impossible. I had to reach down and touch it to believe it. I drank