Smoke Mountain

Some people don't know when to leave bad enough alone. Just when it seemed that Smoke Jensen's life had settled down to something resembling normal, he'd all but forgotten the vicious young gunfighter who called himself Sundance. Smoke had hoped to teach that twisted kid a lesson by shooting off his ear. But the lesson didn't take. Now, after years on the run, Sundance's hunger for revenge has pushed him over the edge.

Smoke Jensen has a good woman by his side. Now all he needs to make Sugarloaf the best cattle ranch in Colorado is John Chisum's prime steer. But a cattle war has turned the landscape into a battleground, and a ruthless gang of rustlers is hot on Smoke's trail. The bullet-proof mountain man is determined to get what he wants - even if he has to blast every one of the dirty desperadoes back to hell!

What the vicious Utah Jack Grubbs would really kill for just rode into town: Smoke Jensen...and a small fortune in rawhide. As if that wasn't trouble enough, Chief Iron Claw's bloodthirsty Cheyenne warriors have just appeared on the horizon. It isn't long before a war between the white man's greed and the red man's savagery turns the peaceful Bighorn Mountains into a simmering powder keg...and Smoke Jensen is just the man to set off the explosion.

Smoke Jensen has seen the worst that men can do on the lawless frontier. But even the mountain man is not prepared for the outlaw band that strikes Smoke’s ranch, kidnapping Sally and the daughter of Smoke’s neighbor. Now, the women are gone and a ranch hand and his young daughter are dead.

It didn't matter that the warrant was years old, or that Smoke Jensen had been cleared of all charges. A Texas bounty hunter named Bill Pike believed he could still collect a $10,000 reward for killing Jensen - and he intended to do just that. But when Pike and his men came calling, Jensen was nowhere to be found. So they took the next best thing - Smoke's woman - left behind a ransom note, and headed up into the Rocky Mountains.

When gunfighter Monte Carson decides to go straight, returning a stolen $50,000 Army payroll, he makes an enemy of former colleague Jim Slaughter, who vows to kill Monte's wife in retaliation, and Monte's only hope of rescuing his wife is Mountain Man Smoke Jensen....

Nursing a bitter hatred for Smoke Jensen, the man responsible for landing them in Yuma Territorial Prison, Olin Buckner, Ralph Tinsdale, and twisted archenemy Victor Spectre manage to escape and rally an army of gunslingers and cutthroats for the purpose of getting even. And their first act is to kidnap Sally, Smoke Jensen's wife.

Smoke Jensen was buying cattle a hundred miles away from his Colorado ranch when he got the news. He saddled up, rode off, and didn’t stop until he reached his wife’s side. She had been shot three times and lay close to death. Smoke knew the outlaws had come to kill him and he wasn’t going to give them a second chance. He was going after them.

When the Missouri farm boy named Jensen came west, he started fighting, surviving, and learning every brutal step of the way. He learned from a mountain man named Preacher. He learned from Indians. And from outlaws. And he learned that nothing burns the souls of men faster than the lure of glimmering gold. From one ramshackle frontier mountain town to another, Smoke sees gold strikes - and gold fever - drawing crooks and cold-blooded killers from across the nation.

The trouble with being the fastest gun alive was having to prove it to all the trigger-happy gunmen who scoured the West itching for a challenge. Some traveled even further — Count Frederick von Hausen sailed across the Atlantic from Germany to hunt the most dangerous game of all — Smoke Jensen. Gathering together a hunting party of the toughest, most ruthless hard cases in the West, von Hausen shadowed Smoke into Wyoming's high Rockies — the odds were worse than 50 to 1.

When preacher-gone-wrong Lazarus Cain sets his sights on pilfering a herd of cattle and a team of horses, his first mistake is crossing the Sugarloaf Ranch - and the owner, Smoke Jensen. Now, Cain will have to build an army of cut throats and brigands in order to stand a chance against Jensen and his gunfighter friends.

The little town of No-Name, Colorado is jubilant when they strike gold there, until every no-account degenerate and desperado for hundreds of miles shows up on their doorstep. It's up to mountain Man Smoke Jensen and his over-the-hill companions to save the town's bacon, and do their best not to get killed in the process.

When Smoke Jensen sees a gang of outlaws holding up a stagecoach, his gunfighter instincts take over and he storms in with guns blazing. He kills one of the gunmen, the rest scatter like the rats they are. Another notch on the sharpshooter's weathered grip. But the dead man is the brother of the notorious outlaw Gabe Briggs, and Briggs will want revenge....

Smoke Jensen was the last Mountain Man and the fastest gun in the west. But this time, Smoke is going to put his reputation to the test in the southern reaches of Mexico. When two Mexican Gunfighters, and old friends of Smoke Jensen, send a letter asking Smoke for help, he can't possibly say no. He quickly straps on his hog legs and heads down into the middle of a war. A crazy Mexican Bandito, that fancies himself the resurrection of Montezuma, has formed a vast and unstoppable army, and he marches across the land.

In the depth of a cruel High Lonesome winter comes a cryptic message for Smoke Jensen. The letter tells of skullduggery by gold barons, railroad magnates, and Chinese tongs in San Francisco. Smoke knows only one person in the city by the bay: the well-rounded, open-natured Francie, mistress of one of the town's most notorious pleasure palaces.

The gold-mining town of Red Light, Montana is the kind of backwater hole less famous for the folks that live there than the ones who die there - like Janey Jensen, Smoke Jensen's sister. Smoke never would have gone there if it hadn't been for her estate. But that isn't the only thing the Mountain Man's got to settle. There's also the score between him and Major Cosgrove. The man who owns Red Light - lock, stock and barrel - is six feet of trouble looking for somebody like Smoke to bring out the worst in him.

In Montana Territory, one name above all others strikes fear and hatred in the hearts of the Crow Indians - John Jackson, better known these days as Liver-Eating Jackson. Consumed by grief and rage, the mountain man has brutally killed 10 braves so far in his one-man war of vengeance against the Crow, who murdered his beloved wife. Smoke Jensen knows Jackson by another name - "friend". He's not sure to what extent Jackson's exploits are true - devastating loss and frontier savagery have certainly driven lesser men mad.

Robber baron Clifton Satterlee's plan is twofold and simple: Wrest the timber-thick hills in New Mexico Territory from the Tua Pueblo and then populate the town with his own subservient labor force. But in his near-perfect campaign of terror, Satterlee has overlooked one mighty obstacle: Smoke Jensen.

Clint Black ran the biggest cattle operation in Montana. His Circle 45 spread controlled the best water, the richest graze, and he had his own personal army of cutthroats. And he didn't like competition. Only a fool could fail to see trouble when Smoke Jensen brought 3,500 head up from Colorado to sell to Black's neighbor. When Clint's greed overcomes his common sense and he butchers Smoke's entire crew, Smoke will seek a vengeance never before seen in the wild west. Clint Black has a lesson to learn, and this lesson will cost him the most important thing of all: Blood.

There were some who knew Smoke Jensen as a hero...and there were others who believed the dark side of the legend — that he was an outlaw who'd killed over 300 men. But when Smoke wakes up with a gut-wrenching headache in a New Mexico jail cell, he feels as helpless as a newly whelped cougar cub — with a lease on his life shorter than the blink of an eye.