Absaroka Ambush

SMOKE JENSEN

He drifted West with his pa, just a boy, right after the War Between the States ended. Hard work was all he’d ever known. After his ma died and his sister took off with a gambling fellow, Young Jensen had worked the hardscrabble farm in the hills and hollows of Missouri and just did manage to keep body and soul together. Pick up one rock and two more would take its place the next morning, seemed like. Then his pa came home.

They pulled out a week after the elder Jensen’s return home. Heading west. Young Jensen had him a .36-caliber Navy Colt that Jesse James had given him after the boy had let some of the guerrilla troops of Bloody Bill Anderson rest and water their horses at the farm. Jesse had seemed a right nice person to Young Jensen.

Jesse had give him an extra cylinder for the pistol, too. Neighborly, that’s what it was.

On the way West, an old mountain man fell in with the pair on the plains. Said his name was Preacher. Not thirty minutes after the introductions, a band of Indians looking for scalps hit the trio, and it was there that Young Jensen got the name hung on him that would stay with him forever. Although only a boy, Young Jensen fought a man’s fight and killed his share of those who were trying to kill them.

A thin finger of smoke lifted from the barrel of the Navy .36 Young Jensen held in his hand. The old mountain man smiled and said, “Can’t call you no boy now. You be a man. I think I’ll call you Smoke.”