Lash La Rue Western #49

Lash La Rue investigates counterfeit bills passed at Duke MacFee's gambling house, convinced the slick operator is running the scheme—but when he confronts Duke, he finds the safe emptied and the evidence nowhere to be found. With Duke in custody but no proof of the counterfeiting operation, Lash must untangle who really pulled off the robbery and where the phony money is being made before the whole town is flooded with bad currency.

Young Falcon has reclaimed his tribe's sacred totem from the renegade murderers who slaughtered his people, but his escape on horseback is cut short when he encounters a trapper with a broken leg in the forest path ahead. Torn between his own survival and saving an innocent man from certain death at the hands of Blackmoon's war party, Young Falcon makes a choice that will test everything he believes in—and leave him facing his pursuers alone and defenseless. With arrows drawn and the renegades closing in, Young Falcon must confront the consequences of his decision.

When Loco Lew fills in at the general store, a simple request for sealing wax leads to a hilariously confused misunderstanding about home improvement. Meanwhile, his cousin Cactus Brain struggles to rein in young Oswald's outrageous tall tales—though Cactus Brain's own exaggerations about how many times he's complained might suggest the problem runs in the family.

When a cowpoke tries to demonstrate just how dim-witted his friend Hammerhead really is, he attempts a classic prank involving a "soup sandwich"—but Hammerhead's innocent response lands a punchline that turns the tables on the joker. This 1954 Western humor tale proves that sometimes the fool's gold is in the setup, not the payoff.

When Roving Marshal Lash LaRue recovers a hat blown down from Stone Mountain, he stumbles straight into the middle of an outlaw scheme at a silver mine—and catches a bullet for his trouble. Playing dead while nursing a wounded arm, Lash must outthink a ruthless gang that's already claimed at least one victim and now has the local posse walking into a deadly ambush. With his whip hand out of action and the odds stacked against him, the marshal will need all his cunning and grit to stop these stone-hearted killers before more innocent blood spills.

Cactus Brain's got a bad day at the shooting range—he's wasted bullets all morning without hitting a thing—but when another bird flies into view, he's determined to take his shot anyway, loaded rifle or not. It's a quick, silly Western tale about stubborn persistence in the face of impossible odds.