Gunsmoke Trail #4

When strangers seize a small frontier town and capture its lawman, Marshal Bob Allen arrives undercover to investigate—but his estranged brother, who despises everything about the law, is already caught up with the outlaws running the place. As Bob works to free the kidnapped marshal and his deputy, he'll have to navigate the dangerous secret of his own family connection before the criminals discover who he really is.

When a young brave named Swift Arrow sets out to prove his worth to his tribe during a warrior selection, his reckless confidence leads him straight into a deadly Apache ambush—but a bout of throat sickness changes everything about how his story unfolds. The tale reveals how a disease that silenced him became the unexpected source of courage and a hard-won place among his people.

An old hermit with aching bones falls for a traveling medicine show's pitch for snake oil tonic, only to discover the slick operator running the con. When the hermit learns he's been duped, he takes matters into his own hands and forces the charlatan to sample his own wares—with hilarious and fiery consequences that expose the fraudulent remedy to the whole town.

Johnny Hemp answers a help-wanted ad for a ranch foreman's job, but arrives to find the Bar L-B Ranch ablaze and its owner wounded by a gang of rustlers and raiders. After rescuing the rancher's son from the burning building, the boy reveals that the outlaws are working for Rex Springer, a wealthy land baron who's been systematically terrorizing the Caxton family to seize their property—but when the mysterious gunslinger known as the Rope arrives in town with young Jimmy Caxton, he discovers an unexpected ally in the boy's sister Gloria, who's been hiding in the hills and is just as determined to stop Springer's reign of terror. Together, they'll have to confront a criminal enterprise that spans from the countryside to the town casino itself.