Thunder Over Lolo Pass Read online

  “Whaddaya say we divide up that gold dust?” Crocker suggested, his only response to her criticism.

  Roberta glanced at Crocker, then back at Burdette, her expression softening from the frown a second before, fully aware that she had use for him yet. “Not yet,” she said. “It’ll be a more accurate split after we get back to Fort Missoula and have it assayed. Don’t you think so, Frank?”

  Relieved to see the apparent return of her gentler demeanor, Burdette replied, “You’re probably right, Roberta. No sense in tryin’ to divide a pile of dust when the assayer’s office can tell us exactly how much we’ve got to split.” In an attempt to further lighten the mood, he turned to Crocker then and said, “You’re too anxious to get your hands on that gold, Big John. There ain’t nothin’ to spend it on till we get to Fort Missoula, anyway.”

  Crocker shrugged. What they said made sense to him. He would have preferred to divide it up right away, but he wouldn’t put up a fuss over it. He didn’t entirely trust the woman. She sure as hell liked to run things her way. Of course he had to admit that the whole scheme was her idea to begin with, and Burdette seemed to trust her, so he guessed he could, too. He and Burdette had pulled more than a few jobs together, along with Blackie. Too bad about Blackie, he paused to reflect, but that makes it a three-way split instead of four. He gazed at Roberta as she tucked the pouches under her saddle after Burdette had placed it on the ground for her. It occurred to him that the sensible thing to do at this point was to get rid of the woman and split the gold two ways. That was what they would have done if Burdette hadn’t gotten sweet on her. I reckon if she sashayed her little rear end around me like she does around him, I’d be the same way.

  The cooking of supper was left to Crocker, since Roberta, in an abrupt change in demeanor, insisted that she should take care of Burdette’s wound. Burdette made a big show of pretending the creased shoulder was of no concern to him, and Roberta scolded him for his manly indifference to pain. The little play between the two was enough to disgust Crocker as he unwrapped a slab of bacon and sliced off enough to fill his frying pan. The woman had Burdette acting like a schoolboy sniffing around a little girl for the first time, when ten minutes before she was scolding him like a runaway slave. Before Roberta came along and charmed his partner, he and Burdette would have shared the woman. We get back to Butte, he told himself, I’ll have enough money to buy any woman I want. Thoughts of the wideopen town with its many bawdy houses in the redlight district the locals called The Line brought a smile of anticipation to his face. Ol’ Burdette can have his trueloving with one woman. I’ll have a different one every night.

  As for Burdette, he had a great deal to learn regarding the manipulative powers of a woman. He was quite flattered, overwhelmed in fact, by Roberta’s apparent interest in him. When they first met in Butte, their arrangement was strictly business with the potential of a considerable payoff for all concerned. But as the venture progressed, they seemed to find a certain attraction for each other—enough so that he found himself experiencing feelings of jealousy over the short time she was to spend riding with the McCloud brothers. Therefore, he was considerably relieved to feel the soft, caring touch of her fingers upon his wounded shoulder.

  When she had finished cleaning the shallow cut left by Cullen’s bullet, she made a bandage from some cloth she carried in her saddlebags. “That’ll do just fine,” he announced. “Wasn’t much to begin with.”

  “You need me to take care of you,” she scolded playfully, causing him to grin from ear to ear.

  “When you two get done playin’ house,” Crocker blurted impatiently, “I reckon you can help yourself to some of this bacon. I ain’t gonna serve it up for you.”

  Roberta responded with a girlish giggle and bent close to whisper in Burdette’s ear, “I wish there was just the two of us.”

  “Me, too,” Burdette replied, also under his breath.

  “Why don’t you make your bed up close to mine?” she suggested coyly.

  He nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll do that,” he whispered, already excited over the prospect.

  There was some speculation about the real possibility of their being followed by the McCloud brothers as they sat around the fire to consume the bacon and coffee Big John had prepared. Crocker seemed unconcerned about it. He was fairly certain that Jug was seriously wounded and the other two had suffered wounds to some extent. “They ain’t in no shape to come after us,” he said, “even if they was to try.”

  “Maybe we should keep a watch just in case,” Roberta suggested, “at least until well after dark when it’ll be too hard for them to see our trail. What do you think, Frank?”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Burdette immediately agreed. “Wouldn’t hurt to be sure.” He was already thinking of the promise of time alone with Roberta. She had already expressed her reluctance to demonstrate her affection in front of Crocker. It was an attitude of modesty that Burdette had never been exposed to with the usual class of women he had known, and another quality of Roberta’s that made her all the more desirable.

  Not entirely taken in by the ruse he suspected, Crocker was not averse to the suggestion, however. It probably would be a smart precaution to take. “Lemme guess who you think oughta take the first watch,” he said sarcastically.

  “Hell,” Burdette replied, “I can do it, if you don’t want to. It won’t be for long, anyway.”

  “Nah,” Crocker responded, “I’ll take it.” He got up then, pulled his rifle from the saddle sling, and walked off in the direction of a low rise in the riverbank to pick a good spot to watch their back trail.

  He was barely out of sight when Burdette got up and moved over to sit down beside Roberta. “Did any of them McCloud boys try to get too cozy with you?” he asked. “’Cause if they did, I might wanna go back and make damn sure they paid for it.”

  She graced him with another of her coy smiles. “That’s sweet of you to care,” she said demurely, “but, no, although I could tell a couple of them were thinking about it. And I didn’t give them a chance. I kept thinking about you waiting for me.” She leaned over then and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  Overcome with joy, Burdette was speechless for a few moments, scarcely able to believe his good fortune. He had never had a woman—one he hadn’t paid—so blatantly attracted to him. And Roberta was so far above any woman he had had contact with before. Tall and trim, proper with almost a touch of elegance at times; she was a prize he never dreamed he would win. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why she had become so attracted to a rough outlaw like him. “Damn,” he finally uttered, “I been thinkin’ a lot about you lately.”

  “And I’ve been thinking about you,” she returned, meeting his hungry eyes with a frank gaze of her own that encouraged him to be bold.

  Confident then that he had not misinterpreted the invitation in her eyes, he reached for her, and she made no move to resist, coming into his arms, her face lifted to receive his kiss. Following his natural instincts, and having never been a party to a gentle passion, he set upon her then, pawing and groping in his beastly fashion. She permitted his primordial exploration of her body until he began pulling at the buttons on her blouse; then she stopped him. “Oh, Frank,” she sighed, seemingly breathless, “I want to share my body completely, but I can’t with Crocker sitting out there. I would be devastated if he came and saw us.”

  Heated to a degree he had never before experienced, Burdette was not sure he would not explode. “He won’t come back. I’ll tell him to stay the hell away till we’re ready,” he insisted, his voice urgent and raspy.

  “I want you so,” she whispered, “but I can’t give myself freely, the way you deserve, until we’re away from that man.” Seeing the frustration in his eyes, she pressed him further. “I wish he wasn’t with us. If it was just the two of us, we could live as lovers—and we would have all the gold to ourselves.”

  Burdette was not an intelligent man, but he recognized a situation that appealed
to him. He was quick to come up with a solution to their problem. “Well, I reckon I can fix it so we won’t have to worry about Crocker no more.”

  “Oh, Frank, do I really mean that much to you?”

  “And then some,” he answered. “I’ll take care of that big son of a bitch right now. I’m tired of his complainin’, anyway.” He got up immediately, strapped on his gun belt, and started toward the low rise where he had last seen Crocker.

  Smiling to herself, Roberta straightened her clothes, which had become disheveled after Burdette’s feverish pawing. She felt confident that his lust for her was a sufficient instrument to bring about the elimination of another shareholder in the four pouches of gold dust. A two-way split was her ultimate goal, and for the time being, she was content to let Burdette assume that he was the partner she planned to split it with. She resolved to tolerate him at least until she felt she no longer needed his protection. She could not say that she enjoyed the rough-and-tumble style of lovemaking practiced by Frank Burdette, or any other style, as far as that was concerned, but she would put up with it for as long as she thought necessary. She was not looking forward to the fulfillment of the promise she had implied, but she knew it was necessary to maintain control of Burdette. At least it would be preferable to dealing with the huge beast that was Big John Crocker. Her total disdain for making love in general caused her to view it as nothing more than a means to get what she wanted. The act had never brought her pleasure, although she reluctantly admitted to herself that there might have been a possibility with Cullen McCloud.

  “You relievin’ me already?” Crocker asked, surprised to see his partner climbing the backside of the ridge by the river’s edge. He grinned then and chided, “Miss Priss must not be in heat right now.” His comment only served to strengthen Burdette’s resolve. “What’s goin’ on?” Crocker asked, confused when Burdette pulled his revolver from the holster. “What the hell are you doin’?” he challenged nervously as Burdette raised the pistol to point directly at him.

  “There ain’t no hard feelin’s, Big John,” Burdette responded. “I expect you’ll do as a partner about as good as any man I ever rode with. But things has changed. You’d do the same if you was in my shoes.”

  Crocker realized at once what was about to happen. He rolled off the log he was seated upon, reaching for his rifle as he hit the ground, but Burdette shot him before he could raise the weapon and cock it. He cried out in pain and dropped his rifle when the bullet ripped through his stomach, “Oh Lord, you’ve kilt me!” But he wasn’t dead yet. “Frank, we rode together for more’n three years. Don’t do this!” His pleas ignored, he managed to get on his knees and attempted to crawl away.

  Burdette stalked purposefully along with him, aiming his .44 at the back of the doomed man’s skull. When he pulled the trigger, Crocker crumpled and lay still. Burdette stood over the huge man’s body for a few minutes to make sure he was dead. “I didn’t want you to suffer with that stomach wound,” he said in explanation for the shot to the head.

  His evil mission completed, he relieved Big John of his weapons and returned to the campfire and his waiting lover. He found her in the midst of mixing up some bread to be baked in a pan. Astonished to find her so employed, he blurted, “I done it. I shot him.”

  “I heard the shots,” she replied. “We’re better off without him.” He was still puzzled by her mundane reaction to his harsh solution to their problem. Without looking up at him, she busied herself at the fire. “I was still hungry after that bacon and I thought you might want something more, too.”

  “Well, yeah,” he stumbled to reply. “I reckon I could eat somethin’ else.” The cold-blooded murder of his friend and partner had not been enough to effectively cool his ardor. And the fact that she apparently did not share his need for fulfillment at the moment frustrated him totally.

  Finally, she looked up at him and smiled. “We’re going to have to get an early start in the morning and I don’t want you to go to bed hungry. We need our rest.” One look at the dismay in his expression told her that she was going to have to honor their unspoken contract. She would go through with it—let him have his romp, just to keep him in the harness until she was safely in Missoula. Then she would have no further use for him.

  The trail was not hard to follow. It was the only fresh set of tracks leading out of the mouth of Blodgett Canyon. After parting with Cody and Jug, Cullen headed north at a lope, seeing no need to closely scout the tracks of the four horses. He had not gone far when he noticed a circle of buzzards in the distance. Wondering if the scavengers had any connection to the tracks he followed, and troubled that it might be the scene he hoped he wouldn’t find, he slowed his horse to a walk while he looked for the tracks that would tell him he was still on the right trail. Still holding the bay to a walk, he continued through a patch of high grass close by the river, his mind creating the image of Roberta resisting an assault upon her body, and the possible result that might follow. It was not a pleasant picture, and feeling the urgency to find her, he pressed the bay again for more speed.

  He could now see that the buzzards were circling closer to the river than it had first appeared from a half mile back, and the tracks he followed led along the west bank of the river before abruptly turning away from the water, toward a low ridge about forty yards from the edge of the pines. Giving his horse a gentle nudge with his heels, he started directly over the top of the ridge before coming to an abrupt halt at the top. Below him, at the foot of the ridge, lay the body of Big John Crocker.

  Cullen instinctively looked all around him to make sure there was no one watching him before he proceeded to the foot of the ridge to dismount. The huge man looked even larger as a corpse, sprawled facedown in the sandy soil, now stained with a pattern of blood that spread underneath it. The hole in the back of Crocker’s skull was no doubt the fatal shot, but upon turning the corpse over, Cullen could see that Crocker was also gut-shot. What did it mean? he wondered. Had the two outlaws fought over the woman and this one was the loser? Maybe the big man received the stomach wound in the gunfight at Gabe’s camp and made it this far. But how could the shot to the back of his head be explained? A mercy killing? Perhaps, but not likely, he decided. It made more sense to him that the two had a falling-out for whatever reason. With the amount of gold dust involved, it was not hard to imagine. He glanced up at the buzzards overhead and thought, Thank God it’s this scum and not Roberta. Maybe there’s still time.

  Leaving the grisly banquet awaiting the scavengers, he followed the tracks into the trees to the clearing where they had camped the night before. There was not much to see, the ashes of their fire, the grass still matted in spots where the bed was made, little else. He could not prevent a sharp pang of despair when he determined only one large imprint, indicating that Burdette had evidently kept Roberta close to him all night. It also told him that Crocker must have been killed the night before. With a new sense of urgency, he stepped back up in the saddle and started out after Burdette once more, trying desperately not to think of the terror Roberta had to be suffering.

  As he continued on their trail, he rode on through the afternoon, never stopping until his horse needed rest. As the afternoon wore on, he began to give up hope that he would overtake them before dark. And unless Burdette changed directions, he would pass within a mile or two of Mule Sibley’s place. At the rate he was traveling, it would be dark before he reached that point, and since he would be forced to stop for the night, he decided that he might as well ride on in to Sibley’s and pick up some more cartridges for his rifle. His estimation proved to be accurate, for darkness began to settle in by the time he reached a trail that ran from the river to Sibley’s store. It occurred to him then that Burdette might have stopped at the trading post for some reason, so he followed the trail in, although he could find no tracks to verify it.

  “Well, hello there, Cullen,” Mule Sibley sang out when Cullen walked in the door of his establishment. “I ain’t seen you i
n a while. Your brothers was in here a few days ago.” He paused, waiting for an indication that would tell him the point of Cullen’s visit. Cullen pointed toward the general store end of the room. “What brings you out this way this time of night?” Sibley asked, and followed him to the counter.

  “I thought I might pick up a box of .44 cartridges,” Cullen said, “if my line of credit is still good.”

  “Why, sure—you know it’s always good,” Sibley replied.

  “My brothers tell me you had three strangers come by a few days ago. You haven’t seen one of ’em today, have you?”

  The question sparked Sibley’s interest right away. “Those three? No, I ain’t seen none of ’em again, and I’m just as glad I ain’t. Why? You lookin’ for ’em?”

  “I am,” Cullen replied, then went on to explain why.

  Sibley listened with more than a little interest, still recalling the trouble that had barely been avoided when the three outlaws were in his saloon. “I knew they was up to no good,” he remarked when Cullen told him of the attack at Gabe’s camp in the mountains. “I ain’t surprised. I’m right sorry to hear about Jug and Cody gettin’ shot, though.” He shook his head slowly to show his concern. Then he asked again about the woman, Roberta Morris. “Why did you say she was lookin’ for ol’ Gabe?” Cullen explained that Roberta was trying to reach Gabe to tell him of his wife’s serious illness, and now Cullen’s concern was to find her before further harm came to her, and the gold Gabe had labored for was lost to her aunt Edna. Sibley paused to let that sink in before commenting, “Gabe didn’t have no wife.”