Free Katie and the Mustang, Book 4 by Kathleen Duey

could only stare at him, it surprised me that
    much. He saw my reaction and gathered the reins in one hand so he could reach out and pat my head.
    â€œIt’s a hard road, no doubt about it,” he told me. “But we have to get along it now quick as we can to beat the snow. No time to rest.”
    I nodded and tried to smile at him; he looked
    so worn out that it worried me.
    â€œSnow would be about the only thing that’d stop us now, though,” he said, and chuckled as though he had said something funny.
    I smiled and nodded. “It won’t snow,” I said, just to be cheerful, too.
    He shrugged. “It will or it won’t; no way to know. I hope not.” He looked up at the sky. It was clear overhead, but there were a few clouds on the northern horizon. “Storms probably come in from the north out here, or maybe the west, coming in off the ocean.”
    I waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t. I finally gave him a little wave and angled the Mustang off the rutted trail, to look for grass. I could tell Mr. Kyler was truly worried.
    When I found a patch of dry, leathery grass, I stopped and the Mustang dropped his head to graze. I leaned against him and he lifted his head, turning to nuzzle my face, his mane falling like a shawl across my shoulders. I was so tired of traveling. I was so worried about so many things. But I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. Maybe a person had only so many tears in her, I thought. Maybe I had run dry. But, it turned out not to be true.
    Later, walking some distance from the others, I cried for Mary and for myself and for Annie’s poor burned hands and for Grover and for the mare that had broken her leg and for all the weary world.
    The Mustang nuzzled at me and walked more slowly than he usually did, matching his pace to mine for the rest of the day. I put one foot in front of the other, and that was hard enough.

CHAPTER NINE

    I smell snow in the wind sometimes. It is out there, waiting
for its time to come. I would not want to be caught in
these rocky pine forests by the snow. The two-leggeds are
traveling hard. They must know the danger.
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    W e were in the Blue Mountains now—the part of the trail everyone had always said was the worst. It was. There was one grade so steep that I stood at the bottom and held my arm out, sighting along my hand at the top of the rise. My elbow touched my ear, it was that steep!
    It took us two terrible days to get all the wagons up. We hitched twelve oxen to each wagon. Even so, it was hard.
    At the top, the men would rest and unhitch one team, then start back down, driving the six oxen ahead of them. We went on that way until dark, each team pulling twice.
    A few days later we came to another hill almost as steep, and it slanted side to side as well. Each wagon was double teamed again. We all lined up on the low side and pushed against the wagons, palms flat against the wooden bed rails. We had to walk sideward, crisscrossing our legs with each step, shoving with all of our strength to keep the wagons from crashing down the mountainside.
    Every hand was needed. I left the Mustang with Andrew’s herd and the mares so I could do my part. The Taylors’ youngest son watched the stock with Grover’s mother and little Toby. The boys were seven and five, and Mrs. Heldon could barely stand, but Mr. Kyler was so afraid that one of the wagons would tilt and wreck, rolling downward, that he asked everyone to help. Mrs. Heldon rode up in the last wagon, and Toby and I held the stock until Andrew and Charles Kyler could get back down.
    A few days after that, there was a steep, rocky downgrade, and we used the heavy ropes as makeshift drags and brakes as we had before. One place was so steep that we had to unload every single-bingle wagon, lower it down by rope over a rock shelf, then lower the goods down to repack. One ox broke a leg and had to be