Strike of the Mountain Man

the long version

Malcolm Theodore Paddle 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 not the pitying kind. But any enemy of Smoke's neighbor is his enemy, too: kill-crazy hired gunsmen are threatening the whole valley and good men are dying. Puddle may not be much, but he's all Smoke has - as a take-no-prisioners mountain man and a timid tinhorn make for an army of two... in one hell of a fight.