Moonshine Massacre

them the Jensens, the only men brave enough to stand in his way.

Now, Matt, Smoke, and Preacher face their ultimate and most deadly challenge—and share their hopes, fears, secrets, and dreams—in what could be their final, most desperate hour. No matter what happens, they are the family Jensen. Surrender is not an option.

THE FAMILY JENSEN

Coming in May 2010, wherever

Pinnacle Books are sold.

Prologue

The temperature in the small stone-and-log cabin climbed steadily during the afternoon. The single room was about twelve feet by twelve feet. There were no windows, and the door was closed and barred. The only light and air came in through gaps between the logs where the mud chinking had fallen out.

And through the loopholes that had been carved in those logs so that men who had to fort up in this cabin could fire rifles at their enemies.

Shots blasted occasionally from outside, but the bullets stood little if any chance of penetrating the thick walls. Lead smacked harmlessly into stone or logs.

The three defenders fired even less often. They stood at the loopholes, two at the front wall and one at the back, sweat trickling down their faces, and waited patiently for a target to present itself. When they had a good shot, they took it quickly, without hesitation.

The oldest of the trio, who was manning a loophole in the rear wall, squeezed the trigger of a heavy-caliber Sharps rifle. The weapon’s boom was so loud it was almost deafening in the cabin’s close confines. The acrid smell of burned powder already hung in the air, and this latest shot just added to the sharp tang.

“Got that son of a buck,” the old man said with satisfaction. “That’ll learn him to stick his ear out where I can see it.”

“You blew his ear off, Preacher?” one of the younger men asked.

The old-timer called Preacher turned his head and spat on the hard-packed dirt floor as he lowered his Sharps and started reloading the single-shot rifle. “Damn right I did.” He paused and then added slyly, “O’ course, since his brain was right on t’other side of his ear, I reckon that ball went on through and messed it up a mite, too.”

That brought grim chuckles from the other two men, but the respite lasted only a moment before one of them warned, “Hombre coming up on your side, Matt.”

A wicked crack came from Matt’s rifle, and he said, “Not anymore. Obliged for the heads-up, Smoke.”

Smoke Jensen grinned and gibed, “Somebody’s got to watch out for you, youngster.”

Preacher snorted. “You’re a fine one to be callin’ anybody youngster. You ain’t much more’n a kid yourself, Smoke. Why, it don’t seem like it’s been more’n a year or two since I first come on you and your pa, down on the Santa Fe Trail.”

“That was nigh on to fifteen years ago, Preacher,” Smoke said.

The old man snorted again. “When you get as old as I am, the years flow by like water in a high mountain crick.” He grinned, revealing teeth that were still strong despite his age. “The years are as sweet as that water, too, and I still drink deep of ’em.”

“I believe that,” muttered Matt Jensen, who was the youngest of the three men.

They had been holed up in the cabin since a little before noon. It was probably around two in the afternoon now, and the sweltering cabin would just get hotter as the day went on. With the coming of night, though, the temperature would cool off fairly quickly at this elevation. Smoke, Matt, and Preacher weren’t really looking forward to that, however, because darkness also meant that the small army of gunmen out there that wanted them dead could get close enough to toss some torches onto the roof. When that happened, they could either stay inside and die from the smoke and fire…

Or they could go out that door with guns in their hands, fighting to the end, dealing out blazing death to their enemies.

Not a single one of the three had to ponder the question.

They knew what they were going to do.

Unless they could figure out some way to turn the tables on the gunslinging bastards who had forced them to take shelter here.

Preacher ran his fingers through his tangled white beard. He was dressed head to foot in buckskins and had a broad-brimmed leather hat thumbed back on thinning white hair. An eagle feather was stuck in the hatband. He had a Colt .44 holstered on his right hip and a sheathed bowie knife on his left. This was his eighty-first summer, but somewhere along the way, he had become as timeless and ancient as the mountains, weathered slowly by the passage of time but hardly weakened. He could ride all day, and he could whip men half his age, and he could drink just about anybody under the table. He’d been naught but a boy when he went west, and he had been here, by and large, ever since, for more than six decades.

He was a mountain man, one of the last of that hardy breed.

He was also something of a surrogate father to Smoke Jensen, having taken the boy under his wing when Smoke’s own father Emmett had been killed. Smoke hadn’t been known by that name then; he’d been given the name Kirby Jensen when he was born. Preacher was the one who had dubbed him Smoke that long-ago day when Kirby, Emmett, and Preacher had been ambushed by a Kiowa war party. Maybe it was because of the powder smoke that filled the air when Kirby Jensen received his baptism of fire, or maybe it was because his ash-blond hair was almost the color of smoke, but whatever the reason, the handle stuck, and from that day forward he’d been Smoke Jensen.

He wasn’t a boy any longer, but rather a man in the prime of life, just over six feet tall with shoulders as broad as an ax-handle. Down in Colorado, he had a damn fine ranch called the Sugarloaf and an even finer wife named