Katie and the Mustang, Book 4 by Kathleen Duey

rolled over rocks.
    I managed to get save a bit of the squash rind, and I fed it to the Mustang. He ate it with his eyes closed, like my mother used to drink her hot chocolate on Christmas Day.
    Almost everyone seemed to gain a little health back every day from the food. We badly needed it. The Blue Mountains seemed to be determined to take the last bit of our strength.
    Mrs. Heldon had been bedridden for some time, unable to eat at all. As we headed down the steep, rocky road, she got jostled and shaken, and we all heard her cry out now and then.
    Grazing the Mustang one morning, I saw Grover helping her climb out of the wagon. She looked tiny and thin, like a sickly child. Neither she nor Grover noticed me, and I am ashamed to say I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to call out a greeting and try to sound cheerful. I am ashamed because two days later she passed away, and I never had another chance to say anything to her at all.
    We stopped for a few hours to dig a grave. Grover walked back and forth, gathering rocks and piling them on the little patch of broken earth that covered his mother. His father stood stock-still beside the grave, his hair a wild halo around his head.
    I had left the Mustang with Andrew’s herd, but I still stood back from the others. I watched, knowing I should say something to Grover, that I was the one, out of all of us, who should be able to say something to him. But I couldn’t.
    Staring at the mound of earth, listening to Mr. Kyler read from the Bible, I was lost in memories of my own parents’ funeral and the weight of those memories very nearly crushed my heart. I swayed on my feet, biting at my lip, determined not to cry. My loss had no place in this wilderness beside the Oregon Trail. Poor Grover was in the first wounded day of his own grief. He had become my friend, and this was his time to cry, not mine. I stood, fidgeting, while Mr. Kyler was reading a Bible passage.
    Then, on impulse, I picked up a rock so big I could barely carry it and walked, stiff-legged, to the grave. I set it down, then went to fetch another. Grover shot me one grateful look, and I knew I had done the right thing, maybe the only thing.
    Together we carried enough rocks to half cover the grave before the adults got done with their praying and Bible reading and joined in. The men carried bigger stones than we could, of course. Mr. Heldon carried a few rocks, then stood back, his face bleak and cold as morning ashes.
    Mr. Taylor, Mr. McMahon, and Mr. Silas found a big black stone the shape of a wind blown storm cloud, flat on one side. Sweating and straining, they rolled and dragged it across the clearing. Then others took over and heaved at it, finally positioning it at the top of the grave for a headstone. By the time Mr. Kyler called out for everyone to get ready to go, the whole grave was well mounded with rock. Grover was still working, his eyes down.
    As the wagons lurched into motion and Grover’s father guided his oxen back onto the trail, I lagged behind. I kept an eye on Grover as I went to get the Mustang. When I came back, he still hadn’t left the graveside. His father had taken his usual place in the line of wagons and was well ahead; he seemed to have forgotten Grover entirely.
    I saw Mrs. Kyler leaning out to see around the canvas wagon cover. I waved at her and gestured toward Grover. She waved back and I knew we understood each other.
    As I came closer, I saw that Grover was holding a fist-sized rock, balancing it in his hand. He looked up when he heard the Mustang’s hoofbeats. His eyes were empty of everything. I wondered if I had looked the same way. He swung around, his arm tracing a wide arc, the stone leaving his hand with all the strength in his body, all the violence of this pain.
    I stood with him, listening to the sound of the rock as it passed between two pine trees and fell, striking random stones, glancing off, then pattering to a stop in the pine needles. He