In Colorado Territory, Smoke Jensen is trying to live at peace with the big, beautiful world around him. Then a tinhorn named Puddle enters his valley—and unleashes a hellstorm of a range war. 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: kill-crazy hired gunmen are threatening the whole valley and good men are dying.

Puddle may not be much, but he's all Smoke hasas a take-no-prisoners mountain man and a timid tinhorn make for an army of two...in one hell of a fight.