William W. Johnstone chronicles the West the way it really was: land of gunmen who became legends, pilgrims who became fighters, and dreamers who stood their ground--and shed their tears and blood to make it their own. Fontana, Colorado, is growing on gold: the discovery of a broken vein spreading out in all directions beneath the earth, including the lands of honest ranchers. Tilden Franklin doesn't care about any of that, or that Fontana's gold boom is sure to burn itself out. His plan is to get rich now. It's only Franklin's bad luck that one rancher has a secret past--and a future full of fight. Smoke Jenson has been living peacefully with his beautiful wife Sally, planted in the last place he intends to live and trying to forget how many men he has killed and how many miles he traveled to get here. Now, Tilden Franklin is trying to run Smoke and has neighbors off their land. But when the first bullets fly, the mysterious man known as Smoke delivers a grim calling card. He always lets the other guy draw first, then kills him anyway. Rich, vivid and gripping, Trail of the Mountain Man is a classic Western saga--full of the grit, violence--and the courage--that marked the taming of a wild American frontier.
