Ranch Feud (Doc Beck Westerns Book 5): Doc Beck Westerns

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer

A feud dating back to the Civil War threatens Doc Beck's future…

 

Doctor Rebekah LaRoche is finally home in Wyoming—but trouble waits for her in spades, and a slim chance to return to the Omaha Indian Reservation grows slimmer when she's drawn into a feud between two powerful ranchers.

 

Glenn Butler and Dean Wallace hate each other's guts and have pitted their offspring against each other since birth. But it's Butler's daughter, Lilly, and her disgrace at law school that has Rebekah scrambling for answers. Rebekah wrote the letter of recommendation that helped Lilly be accepted into the college, and if she can't untangle the scandal and its connection to this powerful rivalry, she is doomed with another black mark on her professional reputation.

 

U.S. Senator Jeffrey Harris wants Rebekah to stay out of the young state's troubles if she hopes to have his help. But how can she stay out of something that's entangled her, threatening the last chance she has to return to her people?

 

***

About the Doc Beck Westerns series:

 

Of Omaha Indian and French descent, 34-year-old Doctor Rebekah LaRoche goes by Doc Beck, which gets her foot in doors before her patients and patrons realize she's a woman. A sophisticated spitfire with remarkable people skills, a foot in the door is all Rebekah needs to do her job. Traveling the West in the 1890s to lend aid and cure the sick, Doc Beck finds herself solving problems and setting straight more than just broken bones. But the work doesn't fill the longing in her heart for a place to truly call home—and someone beyond herself to believe in.

 

Books in the series:

Canyon War (Book 1)
Mission Bandits (Book 2)
Grave Robbers (Book 3)
Desert Captive (Book 4)
Ranch Feud (Book 5)
Bronc Buster (Book 6)
The Gunman (Book 7)
Ape Man (Book 8)
The Return (Book 9) (Coming May 2023)
Lost Legacy ((Book 10) (Coming July 2023)
Prairie Shadows (Book 11) (Coming September 2023)
The Judgment (Book 12) (Coming November 2023)
Doc Beck Westerns Boxset (Books 1 - 4)

• Language: English
• Publisher: RockHaven Publishing
• Release date: Jan 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201604721

Book preview

Ranch Feud

RANCH FEUD

Doc Beck Westerns Book 5

SARAH ELISABETH SAWYER

RockHaven Publishing

CONTENTS

Free Books

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Author’s Note

Also by Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer

About the Author

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Happy reading!

—Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer

PROLOGUE

Only the moon lit the giant pines hovering above Trey Wallace as he sat horseback in the foothills of the Medicine Bow Mountains. The light from the main house at the McKinnon Ranch sure couldn’t reach him. The house sat far below, two miles away from where he hid among the loblolly branches.

No one in that uppity crowd descending from buggies and wagons or on horseback would ever know he watched them.

Trey leaned forward and crossed his arms on the saddle horn, letting his fingers dangle loose with the reins. He spoke to his horse Dixie, the only one who cared about listening to him.

Well, little lady, that’s a big to-do they’re having. Not surprised they didn’t invite the Wallace clan. Wouldn’t have been room for us anyway, not with those Butlers there.

His mare twitched her ears back to catch the sound of his voice then pricked forward again, alert to the sounds of the night.

But Trey didn’t take his eyes off the two-story mansion that stood on its own little hill. Valleys lay between Trey on his high spot and the mansion, the last dip littered with a barn, corrals, and bunkhouse. Doc McKinnon had a fine spread, a real cattle king in this Wyoming territory.

Correction—Wyoming state, something Trey still wasn’t used to after growing up in Wyoming territory. There was a difference, his pa said.

But statehood or not, there would never be true civilization in this wild country as long as the likes of Glenn Butler was courted and favored. Something else his pa said.

Trey and his father wouldn’t be welcome at that shindig, for sure. Folks in Centennial Ridge and the surrounding ranches looked on the Wallace clan like cur dogs. Even Doc McKinnon, who Trey’s father had once called an honest man, sided with the Butlers in public. What rankled Trey most was how Doctor Rebekah LaRoche took to the Butlers last year.

Trey clenched the reins, causing his mare to flinch. He eased off and smiled to himself. Doctor Rebekah LaRoche thought she was smart in sending off a recommendation letter for Lilly Butler, Glenn Butler’s daughter, getting the girl in some fancy school back east. They all thought they were smug and progressive. Trey didn’t care no more about that than the party taking place at the house he stared at for an hour now.

His mare pricked her ears again. Maybe she heard his long sigh. But when her head came up, Trey knew it was more than that.

Dixie looked south, inhaling and then exhaling with a soft whinny. Trey gave her a pat on the neck and loosened the reins. He nudged her forward, letting her follow her instincts.

She picked up a trot and found a game trail down the hillside. Only this wasn’t a game trail. It was too wide.

In the moonlight that barely showed the way, Trey reckoned it was a trail used by the McKinnon horse herds that free-roamed in the mountains. Doc McKinnon was not only a cattle king—he maintained one of the largest horse herds in the county. In the whole blamed state.

When the trail leveled in a gully and they broke through a thicket of quaking aspens, Trey pulled his mare to a halt. A sound reached his human ears. A sound he didn’t like at all.

Thunder reverberated from the clear night sky, echoing through the foothills.

Before Trey could spin Dixie around, a herd of horses surged over the rise to his right, their hooves churning earth and beating down the summer prairie grasses.

Charging alongside them was a man on horseback, waving his yellow rain slicker in an attempt to turn the herd uphill and slow them. The moon flashed on his silver hatband and Trey recognized it along with the perpetual slouch of the fellow’s shoulders.

It was Ol’ Mosby, head wrangler on the McKinnon Ranch. He was the man who had gifted Dixie to Trey when Mosby worked for the Wallace outfit.

Ol’ Mosby succeeded in partially turning the herd toward the hills, but if they angled toward the open gully in front of Trey, there’d be no stopping them from charging into the dark mountains.

Trey whipped up Dixie to get in the gap and help turn the horse herd. He whipped off his brown Stetson and waved it wildly at the herd while yipping like a coyote.

The lead horse shied away from him, slowing the galloping charge. There were at least 100 horses in the stampede and they looked to be calming after their run over the hill. As they passed Trey at a lope, he looked up to see Ol’ Mosby sitting with the rain slicker slack at his side.