Berthoud Community Library District

After retiring his guns to raise a family and build a herd, legendary ex-gunfighter Smoke Jensen realizes he must leave retirement or die when he accidentally rides into the middle of the biggest range war of the decade.

William W. Johnstone's vivid, uncompromising novels stand as violent portraits of the rugged American frontiersman and the forces that forged him. In this powerful novel, Johnstone tells the story of a young Missourian forced by fate and violence into lawlessness—where he sees a chance to right the wrong that shattered his family and his soul...

Smoke Jensen is a young man raised on loss and bitterness, nurtured by a mountain man named Preacher.

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Malcolm Theodore Puddle is a 21-year shipping clerk from way back East. The Mountain Man's former neighbor, Humboldt Puddle, died and left his crumbling 600-acre ranch to his only living heir just as a greedy and ruthless cattle baron began circling it like a vulture. Smoke is not the pitying kind, but poor, unsuspecting Puddle is walking into a death trap. Any enemy of Smoke's neighbor is his enemy, too, and kill-crazy gunmen are threatening the...

When an old friend's family is massacred, legendary mountain man Smoke Jensen hits the vengeance trail. He's soon riding into a bloody Colorado war that has militia cavalry volunteers and Kiowa warriors stalking each other across the territory.

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. Now, Smoke is going after...

Legendary mountain man Smoke Jensen rescues his friend from hanging and finds himself riding into a war between cunning railroad robbers and the organization sworn to stop him.

It's December 1890. A Texas Ranger named Big Ben Conyers has a deal with a Scottish-born, Wyoming cattleman named Duff MacCallister. Along with Smoke and Matt Jensen, the party bears down on Dodge, Kansas, to make a cattle drive back to Fort Worth. But before they can get out of Dodge, guns go off and a rich man's son is killed. Soon the drive turns into a deadly pursuit, then a staggering series of clashes with Indians and rustlers and a blizzard....

"It starts at a high-class auction for a pureblood Hereford bull. Smoke Jensen wins the bidding, and 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 he runs afoul of Quentin' all hell breaks 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...

Summary: Nursing a bitter hatred for Smoke Jensen, the man responsible for landing him in jail, Ralph Tinsdale manages to escape and rally a posse for the purpose of getting even, and his first act is to kidnap Jensen's wife.

Trapped in a remote cabin, surrounded by ruthless gunmen, Matt Jensen and his adoptive brother, Smoke Jensen, join forces with their old friend, Preacher, in the greatest fight of their lives. A ruthless cattle baron has waged an all-out war against the peaceful native tribesmen who have become Preacher's friends. In a bloodthirsty bid for land, power, and wealth, the baron has drafted an army of professional killers to destroy the homesteaders--and...