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  To Tame a Wild Mustang

  Kate is hardly an average gal in the old west. She dresses in man's trousers, speaks Hupa indian, and pursues animal medicine—a male vocation. Why should it surprise her to find herself in a shocking, unconventional relationship with two drop-dead sexy cowboys?

  William is trying to save his failing ranch by taming wild mustangs with native Indian methods to keep things running while he rebuilds his cattle herd. Jack is the muscled ranch hand who has stuck by William through thick and thin—and stirs something inside of William that he’s never felt for a man. Does Kate, the wild beauty who has lassoed their hearts, have room in hers for them both? And can their love survive a lynch mob determined to see Kate and William hung for a crime they didn't commit?

  Genre: Historical, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys

  Length: 73,094 words

  TO TAME A WILD MUSTANG

  J. Rose Allister

  MENAGE AMOUR

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

  TO TAME A WILD MUSTANG

  Copyright © 2011 by J. Rose Allister

  E-book ISBN: 1-61034-451-0

  First E-book Publication: April 2011

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of To Tame a Wild Mustang by J. Rose Allister from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is J. Rose Allister’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Allister’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  DEDICATION

  For all of you who find romance, excitement, and fantasy in tales of the wild West. Special thanks to my husband Mike for his awesome information on the old West, and for putting antique spurs up on display in front of my writing area to provide inspiration while I wrote this.

  TO TAME A WILD MUSTANG

  J. ROSE ALLISTER

  Copyright © 2011

  Chapter One

  Katie Rose ran faster than she had ever run in her life, but it wasn’t fast enough. Her pulse pounded in her ears in time to the sound of her heels digging into hard earth. Each boot slap sent clouds of dust up around her, and with fleeting regret, she wished she were barefoot. She could run faster without shoes, but she hadn’t time to sit down and deal with her battered old lace-ups now. Trickles of sweat burned eyes already stinging with tears, but her hands were too busy holding her skirts up to wipe them on her sleeve. She was too intent on freeing herself from the sound growing closer behind her.

  Despite her mounting panic, a smile twisted the corners of her mouth when she spied a familiar copse of trees to her right. The vegetation wouldn’t stop her pursuer, but it would slow his horse down. Even better, the landmark meant town was just a short ways off.

  Without warning, Katie Rose zigzagged toward the brush, a darting motion that had kept her out of the drunken cowboy’s foul-breathed reach and had earned her the nickname Lizard as a child. She veered off dry prairie and plunged into the anomalous patch of green. She could see the far side of the grove almost as soon as she’d entered it, ignoring the slap of branches and the tug of stinging nettles on her skirts as she ran straight ahead. If she could reach the town of Tanner’s Grove, no doubt the ill-mannered wretch on her heels would think twice about this indecent sport and go soak his head in the saloon. With any luck, he’d trip over his rusty spurs and land face-first in a nasty old spittoon.

  Her skirt caught in the brambles of some scrub brush near the edge of the little grove and held her fast. She sucked in a breath. “Oh, bats.”

  The sound of approaching hooves prompted her to tug harder on her worn blue frock, only half-caring when she heard the fabric tear. Then she was free and back on the run, emerging from the trees at a frantic pace. Then, the entire scene turned upside down in a heart-stopping moment.

  The hooves she hadn’t realized were now coming from the front reared before her. Katie Rose shrieked and tried one of her trademark lizard-dart moves to avoid being trampled, but instead fell square on her backside and hands. The man on horseback swore and reined his mount hard to the side, and was thrown off hard enough to leave her line of vision entirely. The poor horse stumbled, and with a pitiful whinny, fell in on its flank in a great cloud of dust.

  Katie Rose stared in shock, sharp, rapid breaths stabbing her lungs while she thought of how close she’d come to being crushed beneath the animal. The stallion tried to get up, but couldn’t. She pushed herself over to him and stroked its smooth brown coat. Its own breath was as labored as hers, and she clucked softly and murmured encouragement when he tried yet again to get to his feet.

  “That’s it, boy,” she said. “Come on.”

  Realization hit as her hand stroked over the white splotches marking the animal’s flank and hindquarters. The horse her drunken pursuer was riding wasn’t a Calico. It bore no spots at all. This wasn’t the animal that had been racing after her. Meaning its rider likely wasn’t the man who’d been chasing her, either.

  A groan a short distance ahead cut off the rest of that thought. She gasped and whipped her head around to see a man lying flat on his back a short ways off. His hat had landed a few feet away, revealing tousled blond hair, not the greasy auburn locks of the menace she’d been fleeing.

  “Heavens,” she said, getting to her feet and pushing her bonnet back to fall behind her shoulders. Although af
raid to find the man mangled and dying, she hurried to his side. “I’m sorry, Mister. Are you all right?”

  He didn’t answer, but squinted hard into the sun as if trying to see her through the glare. She stepped forward to block the early afternoon sun with her shadow. The cowboy on the ground was definitely not a nasty, grizzled troublemaker. He was only four or five years older than she was, and quite handsome besides. Grass-green eyes blinked rapidly, as if trying to regain their focus. The tan of his skin highlighted corn silk hair all the more. Sharp, angled features outlined a rugged attractiveness that probably afflicted many young women with a case of the vapors.

  “I can fetch the doc from town,” she said.

  He pushed himself up on his elbows. “I don’t need no doctorin’.”

  His scrutiny of her features was harsh enough for her to reach a hand toward her face. She rarely thought about things like dirt smudges and mussed hair, but something in his gaze made her aware of how unmannered she must look. She tucked long strands of brown behind her ear, hair that had escaped the braid she’d hastily fashioned that morning. Then she brushed dirt from the back of her faded calico skirt. “Is anythin’ broken?”

  He glared and sat upright. He moaned, his hand flying to his lower back. “Yeah, somethin’s broke.”

  Her eyes flew wide. “What?”

  He grimaced, but got to his feet. “My good humor and patience.”

  He fingered a rip on the sleeve of his brown checked shirt, and then looked around the ground. She grabbed his hat and held it out before he had a chance to make a move for it. He took it and added, “You shouldn’t be playin’ around by a main road to town. You could have been killed.”

  She scowled and used her best imitation of her friend Elspeth’s voice. The girl’s folks raised her up to talk right and proper, and she’d been trying to teach Katie. “I weren’t, I mean, I wasn’t playing. Someone’s chasing me.”

  He snorted. “That so? Don’t see no one but you.”

  A glance around showed the stranger was right. There was no sign of the man who’d been after her. “He must have turned back when he saw you.”

  The cowboy dusted off his hat and fitted it back on his head. “Still, children oughta know better than to run around without lookin’ where they’re goin’.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m not a child.”

  His brow arched in challenge. “Beg pardon, Miss, but you seem a bit closer to hay than grass to me.”

  Heat flooded into her cheeks. “I’m sixteen, already past marrying age. And it might interest you to know the man who was chasing me had decided to do something rather improper about it.”

  His eyes widened a bit, and she fought the urge to slap a hand over her mouth for letting such brazen words fly out. True, the whiskey-breathed man had said far worse things. Things he wanted from her that no decent stranger had any right to say to a girl. Why, he made her drop her best fishing pole right into the creek and take off running before he could make good on any of them.

  He opened his mouth to reply, but then his eyes shifted over her shoulder to the horse behind her. He all but pushed her aside and raced with a slight limp to the animal still struggling to get upright. “Sunrise! There, now, boy.”

  The man cooed softly as he squatted beside the stallion. He ran his hands over the horse’s body, stopping with a muttered curse when he reached a front fetlock.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  The man didn’t answer. He pulled his hat off and cradled his forehead in one hand. Then he hurled the Stetson down hard on the dirt and rose to pace back and forth.

  She came alongside him, an ugly sensation creeping through her abdomen. “What’s the matter with your horse?”

  “His leg’s broke.” The words spit out like an accusation, and he whirled on her. “My only horse’s leg is broke.”

  Guilt pierced her chest. “Are you sure? Maybe it’s not that bad.”

  “An ace-high paint, gone up the flume. Damn it.” He reached for the holster slung low on his hip and pulled out a pistol.

  Her mouth dropped open. “You’re not going to kill it?”

  “What else?” He thumbed the hammer. “A horse ain’t no good with a broke fetlock.”

  She fisted her hips. “People aren’t much use for a spell when they got a broken leg, either. But you don’t see them getting shot for it.”

  “People can hop around on crutches.”

  “Let me just get the doc. Maybe he can help.”

  “Ain’t no hoss docs in Tanner’s Grove.”

  “I mean our doc. He knows a good deal more about people, true. But he takes care of animals.”

  “Then he’ll know why this is the only thing to do.”

  He started to cock back the hammer, but Katie Rose stepped between him and the horse. “Please, Mister. Don’t.”

  He re-holstered his firearm while his green eyes bored into her. “My name’s William.” She shot him a quizzical look at the change in topic. “Figure with you intent on gettin’ between a bullet and my horse, introductions are in order.”

  “I’m Katie Rose.” He tipped a hand to his head in reply. She folded her arms. “And I’m not moving until you say you’ll let me get help.”

  He nodded to the horse. “Old Sunrise here is my property, Miss Katie. I have a right to handle my business as I see fit.”

  “Not if it robs you of your only ride on my account,” she said. “It’s my fault your stallion is lying there waiting for a bullet, even if I were being chased by a soak full as a tick with whiskey. I owe it to you and Sunrise to try and help.”

  His brow shot up. “Does your ma know you talk like that, especially to strange men?”

  Her eyes widened a moment at the lapse in her attempt to talk proper, but she shrugged. “I’m just saying what’s true. And I don’t have a ma. Pa raised me from the time I was seven.” She shifted her stance and rolled her eyes. “I know a thing or two about hard living, but I figure most of us out here do. No sense making it worse for you by leaving you without a horse.”

  The stubborn pounding of her heart did an odd little skip at the crooked grin that slid up one side of his face. Merciful Lord. She’d never been one to notice which fellows cut a swell figure, not like the Elspeth and other silly girls at the schoolhouse who did little aside from giggle over boys. Surely she wasn’t about to swoon over a dusty cowpoke who’d called her a child?

  “I appreciate the offer,” he said. “But truth is there ain’t nothin’ you can do.”

  “Maybe someone in town can.” He shook his head, but she cut off his reply. “Please, just wait here with Sunrise and I’ll find help.”

  “How would I even get him to town like this?”

  She thought about it. “Haul him on a wagon. Maybe you can board him in Tanner’s Grove until he mends.”

  William cocked his head. “And I suppose you’ll heft him up onto a buckboard? Horse weighs near half a ton.”

  “If we had enough help, we could do it.” She pulled her bonnet back up onto her head. “Just wait here and I’ll be back before you know it.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. Then he sighed. “Best you up stakes and git, then.”

  She broke into a grin. “Thanks. Don’t go nowhere.”

  Without another word she ran off, and it was only when the first buildings in Tanner’s Grove were within sharp focus that she thought hard about the odd look on William’s face when he sent her away. She was slowing her pace to turn around when she heard the gunshot go off behind her.

  Katie Rose sucked in an agonized breath. “No.”

  She swiveled to see William’s small, shadowy profile standing over the horse in the distance. Her legs folded beneath her and she sank to the dirt, still staring at the scene that had been entirely her fault.

  Tears rose, and her body quivered with the effort to hold back. Then for the first time in years, Katie Rose gave up trying to keep the sobs pent up inside of her.

  Chap
ter Two

  Five years later

  “Well, that’s the last of it.”

  William Tyler tugged off his battered elk skin gloves and surveyed his work. Two years and a good deal of money had gone into this conversion, one the local menfolk had scoffed at him for in light of the ranch’s financial status. Uncle Jed had laid perfectly good devil’s rope fencing at the height of the ranch’s modest success, but the style of barb preferred in 1872 came with a big disadvantage. The extra long points on the fencing injured livestock. Injured livestock soon became sick livestock, both of which drew predators. Jed found this out the hard way—and that predators weren’t the only dangers that could best his fence work. There had been raiding parties, the last of which had taken a good large portion of the line and Jed Tyler’s life.

  The sun had dropped low enough to peek under the brim of his Stetson by the time William had reloaded the wagon and hopped on, setting his boot heels on the buckboard and clucking to Raven when a tug on the reins failed to set the horse in motion. The black stallion tossed his head and stamped its feet, resisting the journey back.

  “Git on up, now,” William said.

  Another cluck and firm tug finally got a response, and the cowboy shook his head while they trotted back toward the stables. Raven had never taken well to pulling a buckboard, stubborn beast that he was. William much preferred a good mare as a riding animal these days, but he had little choice in the matter. Windstorm had taken lame again that morning.