Katie and the Mustang, Book 4 by Kathleen Duey Page A

hadn’t aimed at anything at all, and he didn’t look at me.
    â€œHe told her last night that he’s not staying here, that he doesn’t want to farm,” Grover whispered.
    I tried to imagine why Grover’s father would tell his wife these things. To make her worry? What kind of cruelty would it take to say such a thing to a woman so sick and weak?
    Grover glanced at me, then away again. “Katie, I hate him. I won’t stay with him. But what’ll I do?”
    â€œYou’ll make your own way,” I said. “Mrs. Kyler says some of us just have to.”
    He knelt and kissed the stones that covered his mother and then stood up and began to walk. I trotted the Mustang to catch up and we fell in beside Grover. All that day we walked behind the wagons, neither one of us saying anything more. I just stayed close. There was nothing else I could do.

CHAPTER TEN

    The little one is weary now. She walks more slowly. We
must settle for winter soon. It is time to find a valley with
water and grass. It is time to stop traveling.
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    â€œ T oday ought to get us to The Dalles,” Mr. T McMahon said one morning, reading from his handbook. Then he lifted his head and shouted it out. I heard Charles Kyler holler the news to Mr. Taylor and, in seconds, everyone knew. A ragged little cheer went up from the wagons. I heard Miss Liddy’s voice, high, happy, and loud . The Mustang shook his head and danced a little, then settled back into the long-strided walk that I had learned to keep pace with.
    I had gotten into the habit of traveling not too far from Mr. Heldon’s wagon. Grover would sometimes come walk with me and the Mustang. That morning I heard Mr. Heldon’s angry voice, and I angled closer.
    â€œI don’t care what you say,” Mr. Heldon was saying. “If you’d taken better care of her...” He dropped his voice, and I couldn’t hear the rest, but I could imagine it.
    I caught my breath. It was the cruelest thing I could imagine anyone saying. And it wasn’t true. No one could have done more to help someone than Grover had done for his mother. I slowed and started looking for grass for the Mustang before Mr. Heldon noticed me.
    After a little while, Grover saw me and dropped back to walk with me for an hour or two. Then he drifted toward Andrew and the stock. I saw him helping herd the animals.
    At noon, I went and got Grover, and he ate at Mrs. Kyler’s campfire with me. He helped us clean up and then walked alongside the Kylers’ wagon the rest of the day. His father didn’t seem to know or care where he had gone.
    We got to The Dalles before sundown. The town had been built near a narrow chasm that the mighty Columbia River roared through. We could hear it from our camp—which was nearly a mile from town. We stayed back that far to find grass for the stock; closer to town, it was all grazed flat.
    Most of us walked on once camp was made, just to see if the guidebooks were true. They were. There was a place where the wagon ruts simply stopped. Wagons could go no farther because of the river. We all stood staring at it.
    The Columbia River was wide and deep, the color of a storm sky, and it muscled its way past, the currents swirling and twined. You couldn’t hear anyone unless they shouted.
    The sheer size and force of the river scared me. I could tell it scared everyone. We saw two Indian men walk past, carrying three canoes lashed together on their backs. Was that how people got across? No one said much walking back to camp.
    We weren’t the only ones there, and the next day we talked to other people. My fears were true. They were all waiting, camped out in a mile-wide circle outside the town, for Indian men who hired out their canoes as ferries to take them downriver and land them on the far side. We were told it could be a week or more, that it was first come, first