Smoke Mountain

There is a place where bears can live in peace, where there is sea-ice all year, where the forests are full of prey, where flat-faces never go. Polar bears Kallik and Taqqiq, black bear Lusa, grizzly Toklo, and the shape-shifting Ujurak believe that this fabled bear paradise must be the destination of their quest. But the path they follow is dangerous. The burning Smoke Mountains are more treacherous than anything the bears have faced before, and tensions run high as they encounter obstacle after obstacle.

From his Missouri farm, the boy traveled west. In his hand was a Navy Colt given to him by Jesse James. By his side was the old mountain man named Preacher, who would teach young Smoke Jensen everything he needed to fight like the devil and die like a man. And in his heart...was vengeance. His enemies destroyed everything he'd ever loved. But they made one mistake. They let Smoke Jensen live.

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.

Smoke Jensen couldn't have cared less about a range war that had erupted in far-off Montana. But when his cousin Fae is stuck right in the middle of the hundred-gun showdown that's exploding in bullets and blood, he rides to intercede in the name of family. He's joined on his mission by the Moab Kid and legendary gunfighters Charlie Starr and Pistol Le Roux.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He was raised by the mountain man called Preacher, and he was said to be the fastest gun alive. Until he hung up his gunbelts to raise a family. Smoke Jensen was the last mountain man and a force of nature. But Lee Slater and his gang of low life desperadoes didn’t know that. Stirring up a motherlode of trouble for the retired gunslinger was Slater’s first mistake. Shooting Smoke Jensen’s wife Sally was his second.

They busted out of prison, armed and ready to wreak havoc in the high country. Outrunning and outfighting the US Cavalry, more than 30 murderers and thieves would leave a trail of burned out ranches, robbed trains, and slaughtered innocents. Now, Smoke Jensen is going back to the place where his legend was born to wipe out a plague of low life vermin that have flooded the land he loves.

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.

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.

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.

When Big Max Huggins, the outlaw leader of a nearby cutthroat town, tries to impose his influence on Barlow, Smoke Jensen promptly sends the gang packing, but they retaliate by kidnapping his wife, and Smoke must save her as well as the town.

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.

Somewhere in his past, Smoke crossed paths with a lowlife who has now built a little kingdom as a frontier sheriff. For the corrupt lawman, holding Smoke's friend hostage is the perfect way to lure Smoke into a deathtrap. Now there's no choice for the mountain man. He knows how many guns are waiting up ahead. But he won't ever leave a brother behind. And this time, there won't be an enemy left standing — or a bullet left in Smoke's gun....

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 sat in a cave and boiled the last of his coffee. He figured he was in Idaho — somewhere south of Montpelier — but he was certain about only two things: He was cold and he was being hunted by a small army of men. Smoke knew why he was cold — it was winter. He just didn't have a clear idea of why anyone was after him.