Smoke Mountain

Malcolm Theodore Puddle is a 21-year shipping clerk — from way back East. What is he doing out here? The Mountain Man’s former neighbor, Humbolt Puddle, has died and left his crumbling 600-acre ranch to his only living heir, just as a greedy and ruthless cattle baron is circling the Humbolt ranch like a ravenous vulture. Poor, unsuspecting Puddle is walking into a death trap. Smoke is the not the pitying kind. But any enemy of Smoke’s neighbor is his enemy, too.

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.

Sally has traveled to the silver-mining town of Goth, Colorado to open a restaurant with a friend. That's where she crosses paths with five bank robbers in a hurry to strike it rich. With the local sheriff lying dead in a pool of blood, Sally fights for her life while a frontier surgeon tries to work a miracle. Burning with fury, armed with a gun and a badge, Smoke Jenson goes on the hunt - a posse of one against a gang of outlaws more dangerous than he can know.

Kate Coldane has sweated blood for this saloon, and she won’t let it go down without a fight. Silas Atwood may be the richest rancher in Hudspeth County, but that doesn’t give him the right to push her around. When Atwood sends one of his goons to cause trouble at her watering hole, Kate’s son Rusty guns him down. It may have been self defense, but Atwood is the law, and that means Rusty has to run.

For Smoke, it starts at a high-class auction for a pureblood Hereford bull. Smoke wins the bidding - and earns the hatred of Pogue Quentin, Santa Clara’s leading citizen and a man living on bloodshed and lies. Then Smoke’s friend Pearlie drifts to Santa Clara. And when Pearlie runs afoul of Quentin, all hell will break loose. Now Smoke Jensen is heading to Santa Clara to face a man who already wants him dead - but Pogue Quentin never met anything like the fire of a mountain man....

They're hanging Bobby Lee Cabot in Cloverdale, Nevada on Friday. Or so they think. Thursday brings Smoke Jensen to town. In another life, Bobby Lee was almost kin to Smoke, and guilty or not, Smoke will blast Cloverdale sky high if that's what it takes to set his old friend free. By midnight, Smoke and Billy Ray are riding hell-for-leather out of Cloverdale, and into a war between cunning railroad robbers and the organization sworn to stop them. Bobby Lee was working for the railroads until he was betrayed. Now, both men are pursued by deadly enemies on either side of the law.

They called him fastest gun alive, but Smoke Jensen is determined to stay on the right side of the law. That is, until he's jumped by six low-life robbers who steal his shirt - and his identity. Smoke's tried for robbery and murder, and sentenced to hang in morning. Someone's out to frame the Mountain Man...someone who's made a big mistake. Barely managing to escape on the morning of his hanging, Smoke's going after the desperados who've set him up.

If there’s one thing Smoke Jensen hates, it’s a man who fights dirty. And no one fights dirtier than a politician. Especially a lying, cheating, no-good grifter like Senator Rex Underhill. Luckily, with another election coming up, this senatorial snake in the grass has some serious competition: Smoke’s old friend, Sheriff Monte Carson. Carson’s an honest man, and he’s got Smoke’s full support. But Underhill’s got support, too: a squad of hired guns ready to hit the campaign trail - and stain it red with blood.

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.

He calls himself The King. Once a respected professor, he was ruined by scandal. Now, he rules his own “country” — an area of western territory where an army of outlaws enforce his laws. Any town he claims as his own must pay “taxes,” collected from bank, stagecoach, and train robberies. When he learns that President Rutherford B. Hayes and General William Tecumseh Sherman are venturing into the far west on a tour of the nation, The King devises a plan to kidnap America’s leaders and expand his empire.

Smoke Jensen never would have come back to the gold-mining town of Red Light, Montana, if it hadn't been for his sister Janey's estate. That isn't the only thing the Last Mountain Man has to settle, however. There's also the score between him and Major Cosgrove, the man who owns Red Light and who is trying to lay claim to Janey's land. All that stands between Cosgrove and the land is an avenging gunslinger with a blazing .44 - and a good reason to use it.

Framed for the murder of a rancher, Smoke Jensen must escape the angry lynch mob out for his blood, win the trust of the widow of his supposed victim, and clear his name by exposing the land-hungry killers responsible for the crime.

Smoke Jensen is the most powerful man on the Sugarloaf frontier - and he's all that stands between a greedy group of Eastern slickers and their schemes for a criminal empire in the Rockies. When Smoke heads back to Boston with his wife, it gives his enemies the opening they'd been waiting for: to kill the mountain man and take over the West. But even on the unfamiliar turf of back alleys and teeming docks, Smoke is more than most men can handle...until his wife is kidnapped.

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. Smoke once rescued her from raiding Cheyenne, but now Madame Francie is mysteriously dead...and Smoke's arrival in San Francisco is less than welcoming.

Original spiritual poetry. The words dance while your heart draws near to God. Do you have questions? There are answers. The printed book shows the poetry in elegant shapes. Most are wine glasses. The place where the piece comes together—where the listener can grasp hold of the message—is there a person picks up the glass to drink from. Contemplative complex poetry meant to feed the mind and soul with spiritual food.

Smoke Jensen was the last mountain man and the quickest draw in the West. But he was tired of fighting every punk who wanted to make a reputation for himself, so he hung up his .45s. Like Smoke Jensen, the two Mexican gunfighters known as Carbone and Martine had put away their six-guns, married, and turned to ranching down in Durango. Then they came up against an army of outlaws under a warlord who called himself Carvajal. That was when they called on Smoke Jensen. Smoke didn't waste a minute.