Hanging-Fever with Smoke Wade’s Neck Slated for the Noose

Dakota Territory: 1885. A violent band of Civil War veterans, who roamed the Badlands were roused from their restless inertia by the murder of the Colonel they idolized. The towns simmered, and hatreds flared up anew, and every stranger became suspect.

Since Smoke Wade was a stranger, when he stepped out of the hotel a dozen tough and sullen men were waiting for him. They followed him down the dusty street like a pack of hungry dogs stalking a young deer. Someone in their midst spoke the word. "Murderer." The word became a chant, a chant that seemed to sweep through the town. Hanging fever had come to the Dakota Territory!

Before long Smoke Wade paced a jail cell...listening to the angry rumbling of the mob outside. He had suspected it before, but now he was sure—someone was heating up that mob, trying to make sure he didn't leave his cell alive.

He remembered how he had ridden into this boomtown, a stranger with an itch to follow the wild wind, a simple cowboy with too much nerve and a ready gun. He had tried to help a man in a fight, and the next thing he knew he was in a cell, with a hangman's noose awaiting him.

Why? For the murder of a man he had never even heard of, a murder that had occurred two days before Smoke Wade had come to town!

As he listened to the bloodthirsty cries outside, his anger grew. He vowed to get out of there, clear his name and pin the guilt where it belonged.

Up to then, there had never been a horse Smoke Wade couldn't ride or a man he couldn't lick—but this time he’d have to fight a whole damn town!

He was a rough and tumble cowpoke, who never came across a fight or a bet he was afraid to take on, and was thought by most to be just another pistolero for hire. But he always seemed to be on the side of justice when the powdersmoke settled.