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  Look for these exciting Western series from bestselling authors

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

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  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  A JENSEN FAMILY CHRISTMAS

  WILLIAM M. JOHNSTONE and J. A. JOHNSTONE

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  THE JENSEN FAMILY FIRST FAMILY OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  Teaser chapter

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 J. A. Johnstone

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4402-3

  Electronic edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4403-0 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4403-9 (e-book)

  THE JENSEN FAMILY FIRST FAMILY OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

  Smoke Jensen—The Mountain Man

  The youngest of three children and orphaned as a young boy, Smoke Jensen is considered one of the fastest draws in the West. His quest to tame the lawless West has become the stuff of legend. Smoke owns the Sugarloaf Ranch in Colorado. Married to Sally Jensen, father to Denise (“Denny”) and Louis.

  Preacher—The First Mountain Man

  Though not a blood relative, grizzled frontiersman Preacher became a father figure to the young Smoke Jensen, teaching him how to survive in the brutal, often deadly Rocky Mountains. Fought the battles that forged his destiny. Armed with a long gun, Preacher is as fierce as the land itself.

  Matt Jensen—The Last Mountain Man

  Orphaned but taken in by Smoke Jensen, Matt Jensen has become like a younger brother to Smoke and even took the Jensen name. And like Smoke, Matt has carved out his destiny on the American frontier. He lives by the gun and surrenders to no man.

  Luke Jensen—Bounty Hunter

  Mountain Man Smoke Jensen’s long-lost brother Luke Jensen is scarred by war and a dead shot—the right qualities to be a bounty hunter. And he’s cunning, and fierce enough, to bring down the deadliest outlaws of his day.

  Ace Jensen and Chance Jensen—Those Jensen Boys!

  Smoke Jensen’s long-lost nephews, Ace and Chance, are a pair of young-gun twins as reckless and wild as the frontier itself . . . Their father is Luke Jensen, thought killed in the Civil War. Their uncle Smoke Jensen is one of the fiercest gunfighters the West has ever known. It’s no surprise that the inseparable Ace and Chance Jensen have a knack for taking risks—even if they have to blast their way out of them.

  The Sugarloaf Ranch, Colorado, 1902

  Nobody thought about Christmas on the hottest day of the year.

  Denise Nicole Jensen wore a man’s butternut shirt with the sleeves rolled up over tanned, smoothly muscled forearms. After reining her horse to a halt, she lifted her left hand and removed the brown Stetson she wore. Thick, curly blond hair that had been tucked up inside the hat tumbled free around her shoulders.

  With her right arm, she sleeved beads of sweat from her face and said, “Well, hell.”

  If Sally Jensen had been here, she would have reminded her daughter that ladies didn’t curse, but Denny’s mother was miles away, at the headquarters of the vast Sugarloaf Ranch. And Denny was disgusted at the sight that met her eyes when she topped the rise, so she believed a little cussin’ was justified.

  She might do even more of it before she was finished here.

  She suspected the calf had wandered into the mudhole first and had got stuck, and then the mama cow had responded to her baby’s bawls for help, had waded out there, and had got bogged down, too.

  The calf was in the most danger of being sucked under, so Denny knew she needed to go after it first. She gathered up her hair with her right hand and stuffed it back under the hat. Then she unhooked the coil of rope from her saddle and started shaking out a loop as she nudged her mount down the slope.

  Her mother wasn’t particularly fond of Denny dressing like a man, riding the range, and working like one of the Sugarloaf’s regular cowboys, either, but Denny had an argument in her favor that was hard for Sally to dispute: Sally had done much the same thing when she and her husband, Smoke, Denny’s father, had established the ranch here in Colorado’s high country a quarter of a century earlier.
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br />   Denny rode to the edge of the mudhole, which was about thirty feet across. Both the cow and the calf were still struggling and bawling. Those pathetic cries were what had attracted Denny’s attention in the first place.

  She swung the loop over her head a couple of times and then cast the rope at the calf. Over the years, Denny had spent a lot of time practicing with a lasso, even when she was staying with relatives in Europe. The loop sailed out and settled flawlessly over the calf’s head.

  Denny jerked it closed with a flick of her wrist, then took a dally around the saddle horn and started backing her horse. She couldn’t pull too hard, because she didn’t want to choke the calf. The extra support from the taut rope allowed the calf to get better footing and make some progress toward the edge of the mudhole. Denny continued backing her horse to keep any slack out of the rope.

  A few minutes later, with a sucking sound, the calf broke free of the mud. The thick brown gunk coated the critter’s legs, belly, and chest.

  Denny dismounted and went over to take the rope off the calf’s neck. She rubbed its nose and said, “There you go. Now I’ll get your mama out of—”

  Free again, the calf turned and lunged right back toward the mudhole, obviously intent on reaching its mother.

  Denny’s eyes widened in surprise. She exclaimed, “You little bast—” as she threw herself toward the calf and grabbed it around the neck to try to stop it from getting right back into trouble.

  The calf was strong and jerked Denny off her feet. She managed to hang on for several seconds before her hands and arms slipped on the mud-slick hide. The calf had pulled her into the mudhole, so when she lost her grip and fell, she landed face-first in the smelly stuff.

  Gagging and gasping, she pushed herself up before the mud filled her nose and mouth, although it covered her face and the front of her body. She wasn’t far into the mudhole, so she was able to turn herself around, crawl out, and flop down on the grass next to it.

  Meanwhile, the calf promptly got bogged down again and started complaining.

  Denny lay there for several minutes, too disgusted by this turn of events even to move. Then she sat up, pawed mud away from her eyes, and started blistering the air with a blue streak of curses that would have shocked any of her father’s ranch hands but made them proud of her inventiveness.

  The sound of delighted laughter from the top of the rise behind her made her fall silent.

  Denny remained seated on the grass but half turned so she could look up the slope. The sight of her mud-masked face drew renewed gales of laughter from the three men on horseback who sat there looking at her.

  “What the hell’s so funny?” she demanded.

  Her twin brother, Louis Arthur Jensen, wiped tears from his eyes and grinned as he said, “I was . . . I was just thinking that if all those dukes and counts who tried to romance you over in Europe could see you now, they wouldn’t be so quick to try to seduce you!”

  “You just shut up, Louis.”

  The two men with Louis were also twins, although the resemblance between them wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it was between the younger siblings. William “Ace” Jensen was dark haired and broad shouldered, while Benjamin “Chance” Jensen was slender and had sandy hair. They were forty years old, almost two decades older than their cousins.

  Ace studied the scene briefly with keen eyes and said, “What happened, Denny? You pulled that calf out, and then it ran right back in and pulled you with it?”

  “That’s right,” Denny said. She struggled to her feet, a filthy, bedraggled figure now. “Maybe I’ll just shoot both brutes and be done with it.”

  “No you won’t,” Louis said. “You’d never harm a defenseless animal, and you know it.”

  Denny’s eyes narrowed as she said, “Maybe I’ll just shoot me a laughing hyena instead.”

  Ace heeled his horse into motion. “Come on, Chance,” he said. “Let’s drag those cows out of there.”

  Chance said, “Do I look like a cowboy to you?”

  It was true. In his brown suit, white shirt, string tie, and cream-colored Stetson, he wasn’t dressed for range work. Chance’s natural habitat was saloons, where he excelled as a poker player. From time to time, he and Ace took jobs—usually something that involved guns and trouble—but it was mostly Chance’s skill with the pasteboards that supported their drifting ways.

  “All right, I’ll take care of it,” Ace said.

  While Louis and Chance rode down and dismounted to stand with Denny on the mudhole’s bank, Ace shook out a loop and dabbed it on the calf first. When he had pulled the calf to safety, he snubbed the rope shorter and dismounted, leaving his horse to stand and prevent the calf from returning to the mudhole.

  Then he swung up into the saddle of Denny’s mount and used her lasso, which was still wrapped around the saddle horn, to catch the mama cow’s horns and gradually work her out of the mudhole. Ace could have been a top hand if he’d wanted to be, so it didn’t really take him long to rescue the two animals.

  He turned them loose and sent them trotting off, then started coiling the ropes.

  “Don’t feel bad, Denny,” he told his young cousin. “You would have gotten them out.”

  “Sooner or later,” Louis added, earning himself another glare from his sister. “You know, I believe there’s almost as much mud on you as there is in that bog.”

  Chance picked up Denny’s Stetson, which had fallen on the grass when the calf jerked her off her feet.

  “Your hat’s all right,” he said. “I suppose that’s something to be thankful for, anyway.”

  Denny snatched it away from him and hung it on her saddle horn.

  “There’s a swimming hole in the creek about half a mile from here,” she said. “I’m going to go wash this mud off.” The hot sun would dry her clothes and hair quickly enough, she thought. “Mother doesn’t have to know about this . . . debacle.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Ace said.

  “You most certainly will not!” Denny’s face flushed warmly.

  “We’ll keep our backs turned,” Louis said. “Nobody’s interested in peeking at a scrawny little thing like you, anyway.”

  “We’ll sort of stand guard while you clean up, in case some other riders come along,” Ace said. “Just cousins helping each other out.”

  “All right. I suppose.” Denny took hold of her horse’s reins but didn’t mount. She didn’t want to get mud all over the saddle. Instead, she began walking, leading the horse.

  Her brother and cousins came with her, leading their mounts, as well.

  Rocks in the creek had formed a partial dam, creating a natural swimming hole. Trees on the bank shaded it, giving it a cool, appealing look even on a blistering hot day like this one. Louis, Ace, and Chance sat on a fallen log, with their backs to the swimming hole, as Denny waded into it and then dived under the surface. When she came up, she began taking off the soaked, muddy garments so she could wash them out.

  “As filthy as Denny was, it may take a while for her to get clean,” Louis said. “We’ll have to pass the time somehow. Have the two of you had any new adventures since you last visited the Sugarloaf?”

  “Adventures? Us?” Chance scoffed. “You know things are always peaceful wherever we go.”

  Ace said, “Actually, we haven’t run into any trouble for awhile. Life’s been downright tranquil.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Louis said. “Trouble always seems to follow anyone named Jensen.”

  “We got that idea, even before we knew we were part of this family,” Ace said.

  Denny could hear them from where she was in the swimming hole, so as she scrubbed mud out of her shirt, she said, “That’s right. The first few times you got mixed up with our father and Uncle Luke, you didn’t know yet that you were related, did you?”

  “No idea,” Chance said. “We just thought we had the same last name.”

  “We started to get a mite suspicious, though,” Ace said, “wh
en Luke mentioned he’d known a woman with the same first name as our mother. And it wasn’t a common name, either. Lettie.”

  Chance said, “I figured Ace was just thinking too much. He’s got a habit of doing that. Of course, in this case, it turned out he was right. Your uncle Luke really was our father.”

  “How did you finally find out?” Louis asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that story.”

  “Neither have I,” Denny said. “I’d like to know.”

  “It’s a long story,” Ace warned. “It’ll take a while to tell.”

  “We have the time,” Louis said, “and nothing else to do while Denny tries to get all that mud off.”

  “I’m working on it!” Denny said defensively from the swimming hole behind them.

  Ace thumbed back his black hat and said, “Well, this was more than fifteen years ago when it all got started, and the weather sure wasn’t as hot as it is right now. In fact, Christmas was coming on, which means it was mighty cold here in this part of Colorado . . .”

  CHAPTER 1

  Big Rock, Colorado

  The blue sky was so clear, it almost glittered, but the sunshine didn’t pack much warmth as a cold breeze swept along the streets of Big Rock, Colorado. Smoke Jensen’s wife, Sally, had insisted on pulling the thick lap robe over his legs, too, as they rode in the buggy to town, and if Smoke was being honest about it, he didn’t really mind. The robe felt good.

  She had said that he ought to wear his gloves, too, but he wasn’t willing to go that far. A man couldn’t draw and fire a gun as quickly when he had a glove on. Even though Smoke wasn’t expecting any trouble in the settlement, he knew better than to run unnecessary risks.

  Being careless wasn’t how he had survived all the dangers that had come his way during more than three eventful decades of living on the frontier.