Mountain Wild. Stacey Kayne

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      “My name is Maggie,” she said, taking the trapper’s hand.

      “I’m Ira.”

      Low murmurs carried across the meadow, drawing his gaze. Ira’s fingers tightened over hers, tugging her after him.

      “Run, Maggie.”

       Chapter One

       Central Wyoming Territory—Fall, 1889

      She moved with the caution of a doe caught grazing in an open meadow. Her dirt-stained fingers quickly secured a rope behind her saddle, binding her supplies as she discreetly watched the men filing out of the newly constructed town hall.

      Following a roomful of grumbling cattlemen out onto the boardwalk, Garret Daines spotted the woman they called Mad Mag the moment he stepped into the crisp evening air. Her mangy bearskin coat and battered brown hat was hard to miss in the fading light of an otherwise deserted street. Murmurs of recognition and surprise rumbled through the crowd of men.

      Garret had seen the mountain recluse in a town only one other time in the eight years he’d lived in these Wyoming hills, some years back in a settlement further north. The bushel of tangled black hair beneath her hat suggested she could still benefit from a lesson or two in hygiene. Known for having a temperament on the far side of crazy, Mad Mag tended to avoid folks altogether. She obviously hadn’t expected all the cattlemen within fifty miles to spill out onto the streets of Bitterroot Springs at five o’clock in the evening. He glanced around at the men watching her with an equal measure of curiosity and caution.

      “What’s the plan?” Duce asked, clapping a hand on Garret’s shoulder as he stepped beside him.

      Garret glanced over at his business partner, the man’s wide grin striking him as a pure wonder. The past two hours of heated debates and near brawls, two of which had included Garret, left an ache in his shoulders, the frustration winding inside him still burning for release. In the fourteen years he’d been riding with Duce the wiry cowpuncher had never known a sour mood.

      He doesn’t handle the account books, he silently retorted. Duce had signed on as his partner in name only, refusing to take a cut or responsibility for a business he hadn’t funded. At the age of forty-two, Duce still lived for Saturday nights and blowing his paycheck on weekend benders. In the past six years of running his cattle ranch, Garret had come to envy Duce’s carefree attitude and figured the past few winters had closed the wide gap in their ages.

      Garret felt old. Nothing like a failed marriage and Old Man Winter cramming his boot up your behind to age a man.

      He glanced out at a pink-streaked sky. “Sun’s about down. Might as well spend the night.”

      Duce gave a nod. He raked his fingers through his bushy red hair glowing bright beneath a streetlamp then tugged on his hat. “Think I’ll head over to the Gilded Lady. Winter snow will be piling up soon and my girls are bound to miss me. Care to come along?”

      “Not in the mood.” He shook his head, a weary sigh breaking from his chest. “I feel like I’ve just been ambushed by seven cattle barons.”

      Duce chuckled.

      Garret didn’t share his humor. To secure his place in the stockyards come spring he’d signed over a small fortune to the wealthy bandits of the newly appointed Cattlemen’s Association. They’d seemed rather disappointed in his ability to meet their demands. He wasn’t about to be pushed off his land. He’d faired better than many of his colleagues, men who’d lost all their stock in the freeze a couple of winters back, a blizzard that had damn near wiped out the cattle trade across the state. Now the railroad and invading cattle barons circled like vultures, ready to pick off the smaller ranches struggling to make ends meet.

      “I’ll settle for a pint of whiskey and passing out in a hotel room.”

      “You can do that over at the Gilded Lady,” Duce persisted. “What you need is a night in the saddle with some wild women. Ain’t no reason for you not to.” He moved closer as they stepped into the street. “Amanda’s not coming back, you know?”

      Garret rolled his shoulders against the surge of anger and resentment tightening his muscles. “I sure as hell hope not.” Staring at that outrageous cattlemen contract reminded him of the divorce papers he’d finally signed last spring—cutting his marital ties to a woman he’d not seen in nearly three years. A wife walking out on a marriage left a man with no small amount of humiliation. He didn’t see the need to announce his divorce.

      Life sure hadn’t gone the way he’d planned. Having acquired his ranch at the age of sixteen and marrying at nineteen, he truly thought he’d be settled in with his own family by now, not contemplating a night at a brothel. Damned if he could figure out what he’d done wrong. One thing he did know: he was through chasing women. If he was to have another wife, she’d have to run him to ground first.

      “You can slug me for saying so,” said Duce, “but you’re lucky to be rid of that one. All that pretty was wasted on a woman who don’t do nothin’ but sniffle and pout ’cause you’re too busy to sit and stare at her all damn day.”

      The truth didn’t keep Garret’s chest from burning at the thought of Amanda Billings standing on his sister’s front porch bound and bustled in the fanciest gear he’d ever seen. The daughter of a Southern banker, she was a true belle, her soft-spoken voice never reaching much above a whisper, her long, lithe body and graceful movements mesmerizing. The fact that she’d looked twice at his weather-beaten hide had lit his fire, and he’d sure as hell lit hers.

      Passion hadn’t been enough to hold her. After eight months of marriage Amanda had her fill of him and Wyoming winters—a winter like nothing he’d ever seen. He wasn’t new to tragedy or hardship. Raised on cattle trails by his older sister, he’d survived raids, floods, droughts and damn near being washed out of a Colorado Canyon—none of it had prepared him for watching his livelihood go to hell in a frozen handcart.

      Murmurs buzzed from the men around him as Mad Mag guided her horse along the main strip. The top of her hat was barely visible beyond the large bay she led by the reins. A fine horse, its golden coat gleaming in the low light. His gaze stopped on the Morgan brand singed into the animal’s haunch—the brand of his sister’s ranch. He glanced again at the horse’s golden coat, black socks, the burst of white on the horse’s dark frock—Star.

      “Is that Star?” he said to Duce as they stopped beside their own mounts.

      “Yep,” he answered, not bothering to shift his gaze toward the woman and her horse. “Chance sold his mare to the trapper, Ira Danvers just before you bought your ranch and we moved onto the Lazy J.”

      That was six years back and he and Chance Morgan hadn’t been on good speaking terms, Chance having stolen his girl right out from under his nose. Still, he found it hard to believe Chance would sell his prized mare to someone like Ira Danvers. Garret had never actually met the mountain man, but had heard he was far less sociable than his woman.

      “How can filth like that own a Morgan horse?”

      Garret glanced back at the newest member of the Cattlemen’s Association standing on the landing of the town hall, his expression filled with disgust. Strafford, the newly elected mayor of Bitterroot Springs, gripped the sides of his shiny blue jacket and stepped onto the walk, his group of ranch hands СКАЧАТЬ