Trail Smoke

THE ECHOES OF A BULLET IN THE NIGHT MEANT BUCK SURRATT MUST KILL OR BE KILLED... FIGHT TO THE FINISH They dropped their gun belts to fight it out another way. Buck Surratt knew his adversary had the strength of a rock-crusher. There was immense power in those ropy shoulder muscles, the girth of his neck, those thick wrists and fists, giving his arms the look of heavy-knobbed clubs. And yet Surratt goaded him, and so Bill Head threw himself across the room toward him. Surratt's mind told him he had made another mistake. Head slammed terrifically into him and threw him against the wall. His skull struck the boards, his brain roared. Head's fists were like axes chopping into his temples, driving daylight and memory out of him. Strength left his legs entirely, and thus blinded and stunned and momentarily helpless, he reached for Head's waist and caught it to weather the storm... But that wasn't to be the end of it... THE STRANGE WAYS OF A MAN'S LIFE always caught up with him, Buck Surratt realized, after he had crossed the desert to find ease and rest, there in the green forests of a new mountain world. But the ancient pattern of trouble was already cast upon even these hills, and he was once again trapped in the deadly pattern... At the start they told him he would have to work for Bill Head or go to jail. Or leave town—if he could, alive. The whole thing was going to lead him deeper and deeper into a perilous situation. And Judith Cameron, the girl with yellow hair who dressed in Levi's, what part would she play in the curious setup? The famed Western novelist, whose over forty books have sold millions of copies in paperback—with many turned into highly popular films and adapted for TV.