Summary: Smoke Jensen, a young boy with a thirst for vengeance, accompanied by Preacher, an elderly mountain man, journeys westward from his Missouri farm.

Smoke Jensen saddled up and didn't stop until he reached his wife's side. She had been shot 3 times and lay close to death. He knew the outlaws had come to kill him and was going after them.

Big Max Higgins ran the outlaw town of Hell's Creek up in the north Montana Rockies ... and he decided to include the nearby town of Barlow in his cutthroat operation. What he didn't know was that Smoke Jensen was there with his wife, visiting relatives. It didn't take Smoke long to rout out the lot of them with angry fists and blazing guns ... but Smoke didn't count on Big Max doing something as daring, desperate, and stupid as kidnapping his wife-and...

In the town of Red Light to settle the estate of his late sister, Smoke Jensen discovers that Major Cosgrove has taken over the town and intends to mine the gold beneath Jensen's sister's lands.

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 would fail to see trouble when Smoke Jensen brought 3,500 head up from Colorado to sell to Black's neighbor. Jensen was willing to talk to the man, but Clint Black was more hardheaded than sensible, more bloodthirsty than businesslike...

He rode into bloody Durango looking for trouble...