Shot in the head and left for dead, Smoke Jensen wakes up to find a bounty on his head, a target on his back, and a trigger-happy lookalike pretending to be him . . .
SMOKE JENSEN: WANTED DEAD OR DEADER
Reece Quaid doesn’t want to be known as “The Man Who Killed Smoke Jensen.” But when the legendary mountain man shows up in the middle of a stagecoach robbery, Quaid has no choice but to shoot him. He didn’t even know his victim was the famous Smoke Jensen—until he goes through his pockets and finds his papers. That’s when Quaid comes up with a plan. Since he resembles Smoke, he’ll simply assume his identy. Rob some banks. Hold up more stagecoaches. And shoot anyone who tries to stop him. Soon the whole world will be asking . . .
Has Smoke Jensen gone bad?
There’s just one problem: Smoke is still alive. Rescued by a lovely stranger and recovering from the head wound, he’s still a bit blurry about what happened—and who he even is. The only name he can come up with is that of a fictional bandit, which only adds to the confusion. Soon, the law is on the lookout for two outlaws now. But by the time Smoke comes to his senses, it may be too late. His lookalike is wanted for murder. His trail is getting bloodier every day. And Smoke is gearing up for the craziest showdown of his life—with a force of nature called Smoke Jensen . . .
Release date:
November 26, 2024
Publisher:
Pinnacle Books
Print pages:
352
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Smoke Jensen wasn’t quite ready to draw his gun, but he was definitely of a mind to punch someone.
That someone happened to be an ugly hombre—wildly askew red hair, a craggy face, and broken, jagged yellow teeth—standing at the bar not far from Smoke who had just said something very ungentlemanly-like to a lady.
The lady’s face glowed a bright, embarrassed red. Her eyes darted to the men who sat with her around the rough-hewn table at the stage station. They looked uncomfortable, too. Most of them dropped their gazes to the simple but filling fare spread out on the table. A couple muttered unintelligible comments. If they’d been standing, they would have been scuffing their feet on the hard-packed dirt floor.
But it was evident they weren’t going to stand up to the loud, obnoxious man who had just uttered the vulgarities.
Smoke wasn’t surprised. They all looked like townies. Men who were well insulated from the dangers of frontier life and unaccustomed to conflicts. He couldn’t blame them for that, but still . . . no matter a man’s station in life, he ought to stand up for a lady. Always.
So Smoke intervened.
He placed his coffee cup on the scarred bar top, turned to face the ugly patron, and said to the varmint, “Seems to me the lady isn’t interested in your advances. If I were you, I’d stop.”
The man continued to lean with his back to the bar, his elbows propped up on either side. He chuckled, but that was the only recognition he gave Smoke’s words. He kept his eyes on the lady.
Smoke found that rude, too.
Equally as offensive was the man’s stench. Not to mention the dirt that clung to the gray pants, tattered brown shirt, and gray vest he wore. There were a few stains that looked to be blood.
Someone else’s, more than likely, Smoke assumed.
The hombre opened his mouth to say something—no doubt something crude directed at the lady—but Smoke wasn’t about to let that happen.
He decided to shift tactics.
“Friend, I’d be happy to buy you a drink. One for the road. Then you just ride on. Safe travels.”
Smoke’s eyes darted to the short, balding man behind the bar. Sweat beaded his forehead. It was clear he didn’t want trouble in his humble establishment. It was probably a constant fear. They were in the middle of nowhere. The wild, tall uncut of Montana. The man probably saw his share of hard cases ride through.
“The d-drink is on the house,” the proprietor said hoarsely.
“See? Can’t beat that. I’d take the deal, friend,” Smoke encouraged.
Finally, the hombre took his elbows off the bar and turned to face Smoke. He must have recognized something in Smoke’s eyes because the fire temporarily dimmed in his. He recovered quickly. Or tried to appear that way, at least.
“You new to this country?” he growled.
Smoke smiled. “Not hardly.”
He thought about letting the man know exactly who he was. The name Smoke Jensen carried weight around those parts, even as far from the Sugarloaf as Montana was. But he decided against it. That may only provoke the man more. Being the man who killed Smoke Jensen would make someone awfully famous. Smoke didn’t want to pull iron if he could avoid it. The man before him was rude and obnoxious, no doubt about that. That didn’t mean he deserved to die, though.
He just needed to learn a good lesson.
The hombre studied Smoke and sneered as if he were a bug he wanted to squash. “Well, since you seem to think we’re friends, offering to buy me a drink and all, let me give you some friendly advice. Don’t go poking your nose where it don’t belong. Not around here.” He tapped the chipped handle of the iron pouched on his hip. “Could get a man hurt. Maybe even worse.” He chuckled.
Smoke sighed.
“What?” the man said.
“I wish you wouldn’t have done that.”
Smoke’s Colt was out, aimed, and cocked almost quicker than the naked eye could comprehend. Everyone in the stage station froze.
A long, heavy moment passed.
Finally, the man gulped, nodded, and slowly backed away. “You best hope we don’t meet up along the trail, friend.”
Smoke smiled. “I’ll be ready if we do. Can’t say it bothers me much one way or the other.”
“If I were you, I’d just leave this well enough alone!” the proprietor said to the redhead.
The ugly man glanced at him but didn’t respond. Smoke figured he realized it was best to quit while behind.
And with that Colt pointed squarely at his forehead, the man was clearly behind.
He backed out of the stage station without another word. A minute later, the swift rataplan of hoofbeats resounded loudly through the open door, hurrying across the prairie.
“Mighty glad you were here, mister,” the owner said, using a dirty cloth to mop the line of sweat from his wrinkled brow. “That could have turned into trouble mighty easy.”
Smoke hoped the barkeep wasn’t going to use that same cloth to clean the glasses and mugs, but he didn’t voice that concern. Instead, he pouched his iron and turned his focus back to the coffee. It was a bit cooler now but still drinkable.
“My goodness! Thank you, sir,” the woman said, rushing up to him.
She had long, silky brown hair, a smooth, unblemished face, and a shapely form. She was probably twenty-five or thereabouts. The blue-and-white gingham dress she wore hugged her curves in a way that could easily capture a man’s imagination.
“Don’t mention it. I’m just glad everything is fine now.” Smoke smiled at her, raised his coffee in a slight toast, and then took a sip.
“You could have been killed!” she said.
Her British accent was heavy. Smoke guessed she hadn’t been away from her homeland for very long.
“Did we watch the same ruckus?” one of the men at the table said. He was an old fellow in a dusty brown suit and matching derby hat. White muttonchops framed his face. “That was over before it even got started.”
“I ain’t never seen anybody draw so fast!” another man at the table said. He was a tall, lanky fellow with a bobbing Adam’s apple. His gray suit hung loosely from his frame.
“I have,” the old-timer said. “Saw Frank and Jesse James back in Missouri. You talk about fast! Heck, Jesse could pull and plug a man quicker’n anything you’ve ever seen. I saw him do it, too. Saw it with my own eyes!”
“You ain’t never seen Jesse James,” the lanky man said, shaking his head. “Sometimes I don’t know if you really believe the yarns you tell or if you’re just trying to be somebody.”
The old man bristled. He mumbled something and then said loud enough for all to hear, “I seen Jesse James. Sure as shootin’. And I’m telling you, I think this feller is as fast or faster than him!” He got to his feet and walked over to Smoke. “What did you say your name was?”
“Don’t think I did,” Smoke said with an affable smile. “Just passing through.” He took one more long swallow of his coffee, put a coin on the bar, and then tipped his hat to the lady. “Ma’am.”
Smoke smiled as he strolled toward the door. He didn’t know if the old man had actually ever seen the James boys. He sure had, though. Jesse, at least.
His mind raced back to when he’d been a boy. His pa away at war. His brother Luke gone, too. Young Smoke—Kirby as he’d been known back then—had tried hard to keep that Missouri farm going. But he’d only been one man. Not even a man, really. Just a boy forced to grow up too quickly. And that was a hardscrabble life, anyway, trying to scratch out crops in those rocky Ozarks.
Then one day Jesse had ridden in with the outfit he’d joined. Smoke had heard the stories. Those raiders were responsible for their fair share of looting and killing. Jesse had been nice to him, though. Even gave him the first pistol Smoke had ever owned.
That was a lifetime ago. Or it felt that way. Smoke wasn’t an old man, by any means. But he’d lived a lot in the ensuing years. More than most men do in a whole lifetime.
The group inside the station was still talking about him when Smoke closed the door. He went low, moving quickly, zigzagging to a nearby lean-to where he’d left his horse. He waited. Listened. Scanned the countryside. More than anything, he became one with it, connecting with its patterns. Breathing with it.
Being careful was a habit with him. It had kept him alive this long.
Once satisfied the ugly stranger had truly ridden away, Smoke swung up into the saddle and rode on down the trail. It was going to take him a while to get back to the Sugarloaf. The train he’d sent Pearlie, Cal, and the other hands back on after selling the herd would have been much quicker. But Smoke didn’t mind the trip.
He’d chosen it.
He didn’t mind the solitude, either.
He had more than enough memories to keep him company.
There were a lot of things about the old days that Smoke didn’t miss.
He’d ridden the vengeance trail. His first wife’s murder—and his father’s—had demanded he do so.
As he rode along through the beautiful Montana countryside, with the majestic, towering mountains around him, rising into the deep blue sky, his mind continued to drift . . .
Nicole had been beautiful. The first woman he’d ever loved. It had taken a while, there in that little cabin he and Preacher had built in Southwest Colorado. Neither he nor Nicole had jumped at each other the first chance they’d gotten. Smoke chuckled thinking about it. They’d both been shy about such things. Downright nervous, even.
That was back in the days after Preacher had taken him in, teaching him the ways of the mountain man. Then, one day, Preacher just up and rode away, getting one of those wild hairs he was prone to get. That’s what he’d said, at least. Smoke knew the truth—he’d wanted to give Smoke and Nicole some privacy. He’d figured that once the two were alone, love would blossom.
That plan of his had worked, too.
Smoke and Nicole couldn’t deny the feelings that tend to spring up between a young man and a young woman.
He chuckled as he remembered their first time. They’d both been so clumsy and awkward.
A pang of guilt stabbed at his insides. What would Sally think if she knew he was reminiscing about all this?
The guilt left as quickly as it had come. Sally wasn’t particular about such things. Granted, she wouldn’t like it much if Smoke was thinking about some living woman in such terms. But she understood that in a way, Smoke and Nicole would always be connected.
She’d borne him a child, after all.
The child that was ripped from him along with Nicole when vicious bounty hunters perpetrated an act of unspeakable evil.
Smoke had answered that horrible challenge. Or rather, his guns had. Every last one of those men had fallen at the barrel of his smoking irons.
They were hardly the last to do so.
Those guns had also roared with flame and death when he’d donned the alias of Buck West, pretending to be an outlaw so he could root out his father’s killers.
Emmett Jensen hadn’t been a perfect father by any means. He would have admitted as much. He’d left his family for the war. True, it was a cause he believed in. At first, at least. Smoke supposed like so many he’d grown disillusioned by the war’s end.
Years of bloodshed will do that to a man.
Yet Emmett Jensen had still been a man of principle. Nothing would have stripped that from him. So, when men who were supposed to stand on the same principles he did had made off with a shipment of Confederate gold and apparently murdered his other son Luke in the process of committing their villainous act, Emmett had to go after them. Even after Lee’s surrender.
Appomattox be damned.
Integrity meant something to the Jensens.
Yet Emmett hadn’t been able to finish the job. Smoke, however, had.
As he rode along, he realized he didn’t miss the violence of those days. There wasn’t a chance to. His days were pretty violent still. While life had periods of relative peace with Sally there on the Sugarloaf, he still found himself involved in more than his fair share of scrapes.
Yet he wasn’t a man who relished spilling blood. He took no delight in killing. He just couldn’t sit back and watch evil men victimize decent folk. He feared there would come a day when men grew soft and complacent, unable to do what needed to be done in the face of evil, even making excuses for all the wrong being perpetrated on the world.
But Smoke would never abide that way. He couldn’t. So, more often than not, it was that sense of justice that fueled his many adventures. In the old days, though, it had been vengeance.
And vengeance is always a heavy load to bear.
No, Smoke didn’t miss that at all.
But he did miss how close to nature he used to be. There was something calling to him as of late. Something about the way he’d lived off the land back in those early years, carrying on the traditions Preacher had taught him, living as the mountain men had lived.
“That’s what it is,” he said aloud.
He turned his head slowly, admiring the wild country.
He’d been feeling nostalgic for that life of solitude, for being out where so few people were. It seemed as if the town of Big Rock was growing by leaps and bounds. Soon, the country would be so full there wouldn’t be any wide-open spaces left.
He wouldn’t trade his life with Sally for anything. He’d stay on the Sugarloaf until the day he died. Yet even the happiest, most content of men could yearn for those old days every now and again.
That’s all this little detour was. Sending half the money from the sale of the herd back with Pearlie, Cal, and the other hands, the rest was tucked safely in a belt that was strapped around his stomach inside his shirt. Now, he had nothing to worry about and plenty of time to enjoy the scenery, take a trip or two down memory lane, and daydream about the future.
Yet something in his gut told him trouble was just over the horizon. He wasn’t afraid. But he wanted to be prepared.
Could just be my imagination, he thought. Maybe reflecting on his time as Buck West and that vengeance trail he’d ridden just had him stirred up.
Or maybe it was something more.
His gut told him it was the latter rather than the former.
And Smoke Jensen was a man who’d learned long ago to trust his gut.
“I seen ‘em.”
“The ugly man from the stage station stepped off his mount and tied the horse’s reins to a branch. He ducked under the tree’s low hanging offshoots and walked toward the campfire where seven other men waited for the report.
The gang’s leader, Reece Quade, was already on his feet. He was a fair-haired, broad-shouldered man of medium height. His movements remained calm and casual. He wasn’t a man to get easily riled. Whatever report Al Kenner had to give, he’d spit it out eventually.
Reece’s legendary patience was tested, however, when Al started talking about something else entirely.
“This feller who gave me lip better be glad I didn’t pull on him.”
Reece kept his face impassive and gracefully brought the tin cup of piping hot coffee to his lips. He enjoyed the swallow and waited some more.
“He went to jawing at me and I—”
“No one cares about the guy at the bar,” another gang member said, standing. Unlike the group’s leader, this man didn’t mind showing his irritation and impatience. His given name was Richard Cranston. Most people called him Dynamite Dick. The moniker came from his ability and willingness to blow a safe—and his explosive temper. “Just tell us about the stage.”
Reece could have stepped in and reminded Dick who was in charge, but he let it play out. Dick was his right-hand man. Why not let him do the dirty work? His fiery rage kept the other men in line. So be it.
Al didn’t look happy, but even someone as brash and stupid as he was wouldn’t challenge Dynamite Dick. Not in a fair fight, at least.
“Yeah, like I said, I seen the stage. Ain’t much. Four passengers. Three men and a woman. The driver is older than dirt. Got someone ridin’ shotgun, too. He looks capable. I think it may be George Clemmons, but I didn’t see him up close enough to tell. He and the driver stayed in the stable, tending to things while the others went inside for a bite to eat.”
This had Reece’s attention. “The marshal?”
“Former marshal,” Dynamite Dick added.
“I don’t know about that. I just know he ain’t a marshal no more,” Al said.
“That’s what former means,” Dick said.
Several of the men still sitting around the fire chuckled. Al’s back stiffened. His nostrils flared. Once his anger passed, he said, “That little gal is mighty purty. I’d like to have a go at her.”
“Tell me more about the passengers,” Reece said. He took another sip of coffee.
Al shrugged. “Well, not much to tell. They didn’t look like much. One of ’em is probably as old as the driver. Other two didn’t even step in when I started talkin’ to that gal. They won’t give us no trouble.”
This elicited a sigh from Reece. He tossed the remainder of his coffee, sat the cup on the ground, then strolled a few inches toward Al.
The fact that his right hand rested near the walnut grip of his gun—even as casual as it appeared—was not lost on Al.
His whole body tensed.
Reece let a few long moments draw out.
This only agitated Al more. He was sweating now. His hands shook slightly. He chided himself for letting others see his reaction.
Reece Quade just had a way of getting to a man. It wasn’t that he flew into a rage. He wasn’t the type to scream or shout threats. That was what made him even worse for some. He was like a panther. Poised. Controlled. But always in control of his surroundings.
A natural predator.
“What, boss?”
A slight smile tugged Reece’s lips upward. He resembled a father who’d caught his young son getting in the cookie jar.
“I sent you there to have a look-see. Not to talk to some girl.”
“But . . . well . . . I didn’t do anything that—”
“You drew attention to yourself. You were told to simply have a drink and leave.”
“Hey, hey,” Al said, spreading his hands. “I knew you needed me. That’s why I didn’t push that feller that gave me lip. Didn’t want to get caught up in all that. You were waiting on me, boss. I wanted to get back and report in.”
“Was that it?” one of the other men called. “Or did you know you’re slow as molasses in wintertime?”
Everyone laughed.
Everyone except Al, that is.
He shot the hombres around the fire an angry look. “I’m quick enough, Pyle. You best remember that.”
“I’m just joshing with you,” the man said, but he didn’t sound particularly apologetic.
A few men were still chuckling.
Caring only about the stage and the strongbox it held, Reece said, “This man who braced you. Was he with the stage?”
“No. Rode in on his own accord.”
“So we don’t need to factor him in?”
“No need to. He wasn’t with ’em.”
“Good. That’s real good. Sounds like this should be an easy job,” Reece said.
Al licked his lips. “I call first poke at that girl. You boys hear that? I don’t care what you do after that, but she’s mine first.”
Reece didn’t respond. He had that faraway look in his eyes as he thought of the potential profit. It wouldn’t be enough to retire on. It would put him one step closer, though.
“You know, with all the money we’ll get, you can buy as many pokes as you want as soon as we get into a town,” Pyle said. He smiled before taking a pull from a jug of whiskey the men had been passing around.
“No need to pay for something I can get for free,” Al said, easing down on a log beside one of his partners. He held his hands out for the jug. When it got to him, he smiled before taking a drink, saying, “Trust me, boys, this little filly was something else. You’ll want your turn. If there’s anything left of her when I’m done.”
A few of the men laughed.
Dynamite Dick sighed. He aimed an impatient glare down at Al. “Just don’t do anything to jeopardize the job. Got it?”
Al waited a moment before answering, his mind racing as he determined just how far he wanted to push the ill-tempered man. It wasn’t worth it, he finally decided. “I know how we do things. This ain’t my first time.”
“Yeah, but it will be your first time for something else, when you get ahold of that girl,” Pyle said.
Everyone howled with laughter.
“Shoot, I knew he ain’t ever been with no woman,” another man said.
“That’s a damn lie!” Al said.
“We’re just joshing you again. Settle down, you coot,” Pyle said.
Reece still didn’t hear any of it. His mind was thinking about that job. It had been too long since their last payday. This would tide them over until they could pull something bigger. Something that would really allow him to retire and settle down. Maybe even buy a place down in Old Mexico.
He was under no false illusions that this would be the job to net him a windfall profit. But his instincts told him that job was coming soon.
He just hoped those instincts were right.
Smoke was eager to hit the t. . .
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