Free Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) by Mary Connealy Page A

from its soaking swim.
    Kylie looked at the high-and-mighty ram and snorted at its stupid name.
    Bailey shoved the stubborn male toward the pen, and he let out a ferocious Baa! —well, ferocious for a sheep. He leapt forward, lashed out his hind legs, and managed to clip Bailey hard on the leg.
    “Ouch!” Growling and rubbing her kneecap, Baileygoaded the animal forward, her golden-yellow eyes—a brighter color than Kylie’s—flashing hot with temper. “He’s still a puny thing compared to a normal, respectable animal like a cow or a horse.”
    Shannon had seven adult sheep and a few lambs. She knew them all by name, which made Kylie wonder how her sister was ever going to eat them.
    “You said he fell in after you pulled him out of a mudhole left from the rainstorm.” Kylie pointed at the mire in a backwater of the fast-moving stream. “Then you fell in trying to grab him and snagged your foot. He saved you, but he’s also the reason you got into that mess in the first place.”
    Kylie carried the last of the babies inside. “How do you ever manage this yourself?”
    Shannon shrugged. “Mostly they just follow me like little shadows. But they’re stirred up today. Even if they do give me trouble and I have to carry them in, I like doing it. I like having a few moments with each of them.”
    Bailey groaned.
    “And I sold the wool for quite a bit of money. The market is good enough that I’m going to be able to buy a milk cow.” Shannon sounded smug as she swung the gate.
    “Now, cattle make sense.” Bailey came out of the barn last, fastened the door, leaned her arms on the top rail of Shannon’s corral fence, and stood there scowling. “A milk cow’s a good thing to have around. But I can give you a milk cow, Shannon. You don’t have to buy one.”
    Bailey had been here since last fall, the same as Shannon and Kylie, but somehow, through hard work, bartering, scooping up a few head here and there when homesteaders quit their claims, rounding up maverick cattle that ran wild in the mountains, and having a nice spring-calf crop, Bailey now owned nearly fifty head of cattle. Add to that, Bailey’s claim was right smack on top of the opening to a narrow-necked canyon, a canyon that opened into a vast grassy pasture Bailey said was over five thousand acres. Bailey’s claim blocked anyone from having access to the canyon, which made it hers.
    If Bailey wanted it—and she did—that canyon would soon be teeming with Wilde cattle. Given half a chance, Bailey would soon challenge Gage Coulter for biggest cattleman around.
    And a cattle baron’s competitor, who lived disguised as a man, wasn’t about to agree to marrying him, so Kylie gave up on that method of solving their problems with Coulter.
    “I want a gentle cow.” Shannon shook her head good-naturedly. “Yours are all longhorns, most of them wild as deer and mean as grizzlies.”
    “I’ve got one I can milk.” Bailey always found a way.
    “I’ve seen you do it. It’s like milking a tornado.” They all laughed at Shannon’s very apt description. “I appreciate the offer, but one of your cows would gore me before I got a drop of milk out of her.”
    “Why don’t you try milking your sheep, then?” Honestly, Bailey had raised sarcasm to an art form.
    “I heard tell of a man in town with a little red-and-white jersey cow, who had twin heifer calves. I exchanged a note with him, and he said the second calf is taking all the milk the man planned for his family. I have already arranged to buy that calf as soon as it’s weaned and I’ve raised justa little more money. So I’ll have a young calf I can gentle from the beginning.
    “You won’t get any milk out of it for two years.” Bailey pulled her gloves on as she headed for her buckskin mustang with its long black mane and tail. It stood beside Kylie’s gray, both of them staked in the middle of a circle of grass.
    They’d come out here in their pa’s covered wagon, pulled by his