The Man from Beartooth Pass

By Louni Lammers

Jim Beal falls onto the Knutsons veranda, bloody and gasping for his last breaths. The gold in his saddle and the map in his pack take the Knutsons down a road with many dark and twisted turns. Young Tavi Knutson and her father decide to follow the map to hunt the treasure they are sure to find. Instead, they find themselves being the hunted as they follow the trail of The Man from Beartooth Pass.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463413484

Louni Lammers

Louni Lammers is a fresh, new voice in the genre of western fiction. Raised in the badlands of eastern Montana, Louni understands the West and the western man. The stories are written about places that are real and characters who could have been there. Louni has ridden in cattle round-ups,hunted on the prairies, and spent time listening to the voices and stories of the men who lived the Old West. Although most of those men are now gone, Louni hopes youll hear their voices in the pages of The Man from Beartooth Pass.

Book preview

Chapter I

The moon was bright, the air cool, but a cold, clammy sweat ran down Ned Knutson’s spine. The big, raw-boned man doggedly hung on to the saddle horn and cussed himself for being four kinds of a fool. Pure determination had kept him in the saddle for the past few hours. He was shot and losing blood, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He knew that come morning, those following would find him and Tavi.

Tavi was Ned’s beautiful young daughter, who resembled her mother in looks and temperament. Unfortunately, her mother—who had been his world—had died several years ago. Tavi had been only eleven at the time, and Ned, not knowing what else to do, had sent her to town to boarding school. But when she was fifteen, she had made the decision to come back home and had stayed with her father ever since, helping him run the farm. She was a strong, spirited young woman, but not unwise, and there had been many times in the past few years when he had relied on her good judgment in his business affairs. Now, here he was, relying on her again, but this time it was for their lives. Silently, she led them through the night. In the moonlight, he could see her riding out in front of him and her long auburn hair blowing in the breeze. In his mind, he could envision the look of determination that would be in her green eyes.

Initially, Ned Knutson hadn’t realized he had been shot. He thought he and Tavi had managed to get away from their attackers unscathed. Then the pain had hit him. When Tavi had seen how her father was slumped and hanging on to his saddle, she knew he was in trouble. She had grabbed the reins of his horse and led her father’s animal due northwest all night. In the moments that he had been able to talk, they had decided to try to find the cattlemen they had talked with the day before. If they could find the men and the herd those men had been driving, Tavi would have at least a prayer of a chance. If not, Ned was determined that he would spare her what those hunting them would do if they caught them.

Chapter II

The incident that had brought them to this current situation had transpired almost as quickly as the event that had happened this very night. It had all begun about eight months ago. One evening, as Ned and Tavi were eating dinner, there had been a strange noise out on the porch of their little farmhouse. Ned grabbed his rifle, thinking a fox was trying to get into the henhouse. But when he cautiously opened the door, he found that a stranger had literally fallen from his horse onto the veranda of the Knutsons’ little home.

The man, Jim Beal, had been wounded and was in bad shape. He had said he was a miner and he had been mining in the Montana mountains, where he had hit a gold strike on his claim above Lost Lake in the Beartooth Mountains. He had found enough gold to make him a rich man. He staked his claim and worked it for a few months. Then, having cached the gold he had mined, he took some of the yellow nuggets and headed east. He had a longing to see St. Louis, ride the riverboats, and then come back and buy a little ranch of his own. But he had made mistakes once he had gotten back to civilization. After he came out of the mountains, he had, at first, avoided the towns. But when he got to Miles City, Montana, he thought himself far enough from his mine to be safe. Jim had ridden into town, purchased some new clothes, and gotten a room and a hot bath. When he came down from his room to get something to eat, he met a man who had seen him ride into town. The man had liked Jim’s horse and wanted to buy it. The horse was a fine-looking chestnut with four white socks and had the apparent good breeding that any western man would appreciate. Jim, however, told the man that the animal was not for sale.

After dinner, the same man offered to buy him a drink. Jim Beal had ended up drinking too much, talked too much, and had shown too much of his gold. When he left town the next day, there were men hiding and waiting for him. They had shot at him, but his horse had been too fast. A thunderstorm developed, and he had outridden the men in the rain. Unfortunately, one of the bushwhackers’ bullets had hit Jim low in the vital area of the back. When Jim found the Knutsons’ farm, he had simply collapsed on their front steps. The Knutsons had taken him in, and Tavi Knutson had sat by his side through the night, bathing his brow and giving him water. But Jim Beal was no fool, and he knew his time was running out. At dawn, the miner asked Tavi if she had a penny to buy a horse. She said she did, and he wrote out a bill of sale for his horse to her. Jim Beal then told Ned to bring him his saddlebags. From the bags, he took an oilskin pouch, inside of which was gold and a map drawn on a small piece of doeskin leather. It showed the way from Lost Lake to the gold he’d hidden and the mine he’d left behind in the