Rocky Lane Western #56

Rocky Lane investigates a dangerous den of crooked gamblers when a man named Zeke vanishes after a brutal encounter with Gorilla Bates, the enforcer for the Flaming Flamingo gambling hall. With no body to prove foul play and Bates' story matching his boss Holbrook's account, Rocky and the local sheriff must find a way to hold the brutes accountable before more innocent folk disappear into the night.

Rocky Lane stumbles into a town for the night where a smooth-talking magician named Curly Carter has turned a gunplay performance into a robbery—and Rocky finds himself caught in the crossfire between the con artist and the local law. When the real bullets start flying and Carter's scheme unravels, Rocky has to make sure the varmint doesn't slip away into the dark.

Jean Fargo finds herself transporting gold to Buckletown when she encounters a mysterious stranger who's just survived a deadly encounter—and the townspeople mistake him for the new sheriff they've been waiting for. As the stranger's true identity remains unclear, Jean begins to suspect he may be connected to the outlaw Jeff Coulter, the killer everyone's been hunting. A tense game of mistaken identities unfolds as the stranger reveals he's been called many things, but never quite what the town assumes.

Rocky Lane is called to escort a group of scientists arriving by train—men from the East intent on extracting prehistoric specimens frozen in Rumford Glacier by melting it with naturally occurring gas deposits. When Rocky encounters a scheme to lure him away and steal his badge, he finds himself imprisoned in Death Cavern while an impostor takes his place and plots to claim the scientists' discovery for himself. Rocky must escape and expose the deception before the claim-jumpers make off with the fortune hidden beneath the ice.