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THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY In this powerful new novel, William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone chronicle Smoke Jensen's early years, long before he became a legend . . . Kirby - later Smoke - Jensen has just earned his first paying job as a deputy U.S. marshal for the Colorado Territory and is sent to the lawless town of Las Animas. There, he finds a sheriff too cowardly to face the outlaw leader Cole Dawson, whose six-gun has left a lot of good men dead. Young Smoke feels no such fear. He takes Dawson down fast. Then the real fight begins. It turns out Dawson is only a cog in a crooked plot hatched by someone hiding behind the law. For a young deputy marshal, going up against the powerful and corrupt is almost certainly a fool's mission, but doing nothing is not a choice.