“Set easy, and keep your hands from them guns....”

On a dusty trail above Elkhorn, three men sat motionless in their saddles. Two of the men were together—Bristol and Trugeon—and they nervously eyed the guns in the saddlebag of Smoke Wade. Bristol had spoken—and Wade knew by the hard set of his butt-like jaw he meant it.

Smoke felt his body tense, his every sense alert for trouble. His horse pawed the ground nervously, reacting to the hair-trigger tension of the puncher’s body. One wrong move on the part of man or horse could ruin a plan for desperate action—a showdown on which depended the lives and homes of many people Wade had never seen.... His lightning hands whipped to his guns—and made the first move....

Long before Smoke Wade rode into the drought-stricken valley his reputation as a feared gunslinger had been known. The ranchers knew him as a pistolero whose cool eyes and lightning hands were just what was needed to stop the Bristol gang. Even as he rode in, Smoke could sense the trigger-taut atmosphere of thirsty men and cattlemen who were itching to get at the bushwhackers whose guns controlled the waterholes. Tempers were getting shorter and guns were being loaded. It was to be a race between the madness of thirst or lead poisoning, Colt style—and the owlhoots asked themselves if even banded together they dared answer the challenge of Smoke Wade.

About Smoke Wade: A rough-and-tumble cowpoke who never came across a fight or a bet he was afraid to take on, Smoke Wade is thought by most to be just another pistolero for hire. But he always seems on the side of justice when the powder smoke settles.