CHAPTER 1
Sugarloaf Ranch, Colorado, 1902
The door slammed so hard it shivered in its frame. The echoes of its violent closing mingled with the sound of a loud, disgusted, very unladylike snort coming from the hallway just outside Smoke Jensen’s study and office, followed by angry footsteps stomping away.
“Well”—Sally Jensen looked at her husband from the depths of a comfortable armchair across the room—“aren’t you going to go after her?”
Smoke leaned back in his chair behind the desk and looked at his wife, still slim and beautiful more than a quarter of a century after he had first laid eyes on her. The faint lines around her eyes and mouth, the streaks of silver here and there in her thick dark hair, were invisible to him.
“And do what?” he asked. “Denny’s a grown woman. I can’t exactly put her over my knee and paddle her.”
“I don’t recall you ever doing that even when she was a child. But you could give her a stern talking-to.”
Smoke cocked his head a little to the side and frowned. “You know our daughter as well as I do. Do you really think that would do any good?”
“So you’re just going to let her be headstrong and stubborn?”
“At this point, I don’t reckon we have a whole heap of choice in the matter.” Smoke shrugged. “But that doesn’t mean she’s going to ride in that race.”
“How are you going to stop her?” Sally wanted to know.
“The Sugarloaf is still our ranch. I reckon we’ve got some say in what happens around here.”
“I’d like to think so.”
Smoke stood up. Like Sally, he looked a good ten or fifteen years younger than he really was, a powerful, broad-shouldered man apparently in the prime of life. In his study in his own house, he wasn’t wearing a gun, but a walnut-butted Colt lay on the desk within easy reach and on a rack behind him rested several fully loaded Winchesters and shotguns. He was the fastest, deadliest man with a gun in the history of the West, and having shooting irons all around him was as natural as breathing, although these days he considered himself just a middle-aged, peace-loving rancher.
Sally stood up, too, and moved to put a hand on his arm. “I’m too protective of her, aren’t I? She’s proven more than once that she’s her father’s daughter.”
“She’s tough and capable when she needs to be,” Smoke agreed. A wistful smile touched his face. “But she’s still my little girl, too.”
“She and Louis spent so much time away from here while they were growing up, it seems like we missed their childhood.”
Smoke rested his hands on his wife’s shoulders, then drew her into an embrace. “We did what we had to because of Louis’s health problems and to give him the best chance for a normal life. Look at him now, studying law, marrying a fine young woman, and getting a son of his own in the bargain. I’d say things turned out all right.”
“But you’re an optimist, Smoke. You always think things turn out all right . . . and if they don’t, you make them turn out all right, at the point of a gun, if need be.”
“Well, I always said that a gun’s just a tool, so you’d better use it the right way.” His voice hardened slightly as he added, “I’ve known plenty who tried to use one the wrong way, and we might run into hombres like that again.”
“Oh,” Sally said, “I don’t think there’s any doubt of that.”