Katie and the Mustang, Book 4 Read Online Free PDF Page B

quietly. “I don’t want to ride him.”
    Miss Liddy tipped her head to one side.
    I took a long breath, fighting the strange flood of feelings inside myself. “I don’t think he would want me to ride him,” I said finally.
    â€œAre you scared that he wouldn’t let you?” she asked me in a gentler voice.
    I nodded. I had never managed to explain it to myself, but she was right. I was afraid. What if he tried to buck me off, what if he shied and tried to get away? He trusted me. We were friends, but my trying to ride him could change that.
    â€œWell,” Miss Liddy said, “it’s up to you. Can you finish chores a half hour earlier than usual?”
    It took me a few seconds to take in what she had said. Then I nodded so hard I could feel my hair swing against my back.
    Miss Liddy smiled. “Give me a few days. I’ll let you know when we can start.”

CHAPTER FIVE

    We have found a good meadow, but there are too
many two-leggeds here. We are heading toward
the mountains, and I am glad. I can smell the pine trees
a little stronger each day.
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    F ort Bridger was in the middle of a green oasis of creeks and trees. There were twenty tipis, leathern tents shaped like tall funnels. Indian women and their trapper husbands lived in them, Mr. Kyler said.
    There were children everywhere, running and laughing or somber-faced and concentrating on work of some kind. I saw a boy no older than five scraping the hair off what looked like deer hides.
    The women were busy like we were, from early light onward. Once, when I took our plates to the creek to wash them properly, I knelt down, then, after I got started, I saw an Indian woman a little upstream. She held a heavy iron stew pot and waited politely until I had finished so she wouldn’t muddy the water. Her eyes were merry and her mouth curved into a lovely smile. I tried to talk to her. She answered me, but in her own language. We could only smile at each other.
    Mrs. Kyler bought soft leather slippers for all her granddaughters that the Indian women had made. And she bought a pair for me, too. I was so touched to have the present that I wept, and she hugged me.
    Everyone stopped and rested a day or two at Fort Bridger—the Mormon party in front of us and the one behind us camped not far from our camp while we were there. But when we packed up our wagons and headed northwest, they all joined into one big company and turned south.
    We all waved farewell to them. I wondered what their city would be like, if it was in a place that had forests and green grass, or the kind of dry, rocky kind of land we had seen so much of on the way to Fort Bridger. For their sakes, I hoped the salty lake hadn’t killed all the trees.
    I asked about letters in the post store. There were a few, all tossed into a cracker box. There was no sign of any more of mine and that was a relief. But there was no answer from my uncle Jack waiting for someone to carry east, either.
    I was blue for the rest of the day. But maybe he had sent an answer two years before, and it hadn’t reached me. That happened all the time, I knew.
    So I stopped moping around and got my chores done early, just in case Miss Liddy wanted to start teaching me that evening—but she didn’t. Everyone in her camp was kneeling, looking at the axle on one of the wagons. I saw them talking to the joiner at the fort the next morning. Mr. Le Croix and Mr. Dillard carried a new axle back to camp around noon.
    That same day, I spent a long time brushing the Mustang while he stood with Delia and Midnight off to the edge of Andrew Kyler’s herd. I pushed my hands up beneath his heavy mane and pressed my palms against the warmth of his coat.
    I kept watching Miss Liddy and the men in her company as they changed the wagon axle. I felt scared and at first I thought I was just nervous about the trick riding. Maybe I would fall