Lash LaRue Western #7

A young woman stranded in the desert stakes everything on an unlikely wager with a masked stranger—and learns that thirst can make a person risk far more than she bargained for. This humorous tale from the Lash LaRue Western tradition plays with desperation and survival in the unforgiving frontier, where sometimes the smallest decisions carry the biggest consequences.

When Bradley Hedgegrove's gambling debts come due at his ranch, witnesses swear they saw him shoot and kill the collector Blacky Phillips—yet when Lash LaRue arrives to make the arrest, the body has vanished without a trace. With no corpse to prove the crime, Hedgegrove walks free, leaving the fearless marshal to devise an ingenious plan to flush out the truth.

Lash LaRue, the roving marshal, steps in when a land dispute between two ranchers turns deadly—one man will stop at nothing, including poison and murder, to seize his neighbor's property. When cattle mysteriously sicken and a hat is found at the scene, the trail of blame leads somewhere unexpected, and Lash must untangle a web of greed and betrayal before more blood is spilled.

A birthday boy's search for a dollar to send his parents a congratulatory telegram turns into a comedy of circular logic when he tries his luck with various townspeople, including a fellow who's convinced that laughing is something to be avoided. Hippety Hopp's tall tales and peculiar reasoning about why he can't hold down a job test the patience of everyone around him, leading to the inevitable payoff that makes you groan and smile at once.

Dusty finds himself dealing with Fletcher F. Fletcher, a film producer who's looking to shoot a movie on the ranch and needs to rent the land along with a cow for his picture. What follows is a clash of wits between the straight-man producer and the sharp-tongued rancher, full of misunderstandings about what "shooting" means and a hilariously derailed arithmetic lesson that neither one wins.

When Molasses Mouth is sent to the general store for a simple errand—picking up diapers for Mrs. Holmes' baby—a misunderstanding about the bill leads to a laugh. The good-natured character's confusion over the word "tax" makes for a quick, punchy frontier joke that plays on the literalness of a willing helper.

Lash LaRue is tracking a dope-peddling operation run by Kurr, Mangy, and their mysterious supplier, Captain Blutter—but when the criminals devise a scheme to split his attention, Lash finds himself in over his head aboard the riverboat "Dreamer." With help from an ally called Frontier, Lash must outgun the entire operation and bring the ring to justice before the paddle wheel does him in.