Sunset Carson Comics #4

Kit Carson, a young trapper, stands up to a towering French trapper who's brutalized two of his companions and relentlessly taunted him. Armed only with a pistol against his rival's rifle, Kit accepts a confrontation he can't back away from—a test of nerve in the unforgiving frontier.

Sunset Carson arrives in Horne City to find it held hostage by hired guns under Harry Delage's control—a ruthless operator who's seized the town after murdering its founder, Colonel Horne, and forging a fraudulent bill of sale. Joining forces with the Colonel's son Billy, Carson uncovers proof that Delage's claim to the city is a fake, and rallies the townspeople to reclaim what was meant to be theirs. Together they prepare to drive Delage and his killers out once and for all.

Colonel James Bowie earned his fearsome reputation as one of the frontier's greatest knife-fighters through legendary hand-to-hand combat across Tennessee and the Louisiana Territory, his skill with a blade so renowned that Eastern cutlery makers named their frontier knives in his honor. From a broken cavalry sword repurposed in battle to a desperate three-against-one knife fight, this biography captures the true stories behind the man and the weapon that bear his name.

When a young homesteader is accused of a bushwhacking he didn't commit, Government Marshal Sunset Carson must untangle a deadly frame-up orchestrated by a land-grabbing rancher willing to kill to expand his holdings. Racing against a lynching mob and a prisoner desperate enough to break jail, Sunset discovers that the real conspiracy runs deeper than anyone suspected—and that justice on the frontier demands more than a quick draw.

Sunset Carson, the roving marshal, tries to stay clear of Little Creek's sheriff election—until a forged message traps him and Sheriff Tom Benson in jail while criminals rob the town payroll, making the honest sheriff's reelection nearly impossible. When the criminal element's candidate, Kyle Wilson, starts gaining ground, Sunset must piece together who's really behind the robbery and expose the corruption before the election seals the town's fate.

Sunset Carson rides into Texas panhandle country to visit his old friend Mart Collins, only to discover that someone has been systematically poisoning Mart's cattle herd—a scheme that threatens to cost the newlyweds their ranch when the local banker forecloses on the note. As Sunset works to uncover who's behind the sabotage and protect his friend's claim to the land, he finds himself caught in a dangerous confrontation that will test both his quick draw and his loyalty.

This non-fiction Western feature explores the surprising origins of frontier practices, revealing that European colonists—not Native Americans—introduced scalping as a bounty practice during the French and Indian War, and that the iconic cowboy lasso actually came to America by way of Spanish settlers who had learned it from Asian sources. The piece also touches on other frontier oddities, from early wagon-wheel lubricants to the tools that shaped the Old West we think we know.