Gabby Hayes Western #13

Chief Gray Matter gets an unwelcome visit from a notorious loudmouth who's proud of his recently returned son—but the Chief has some candid news about whether the boy has really improved during his year away. It's a quick frontier laugh at the expense of a family's blind spot, with no shortage of sass from a cranky Native American who's tired of showing patience to show-offs.

Corker, Gabby's trusted horse, witnesses a holdup in the hills and tries desperately to warn his partner back in town, but the spooked animal's wild behavior convinces everyone in Rawhide that he's eaten loco weed and gone berserk. As the town prepares to put Corker down and a posse chases after Gabby and his four-legged friend, the real culprit behind the mayhem—a local desperado who's kidnapped a wealthy businessman—remains at large in the hills.

When the boisterous Big Paul rolls into Rawhide spouting threats and destruction, the town's ammunition is depleted and its lawmen are laid up—leaving Gabby Hayes to talk a big game about stopping the rampaging lumberjack in an hour. What Gabby discovers is that Big Paul's ornery nature and superhuman strength mask a single vulnerable point, and it takes some clever concocting and nerves of steel to turn the tables on the seemingly unstoppable newcomer.

Young Falcon encounters a despondent youth whose tribe's winter provisions—a bag of gold pieces meant for supplies—were snatched from a campsite by a massive eagle and carried to its nest high on an unreachable crag. When the young man despairs that no one can scale those treacherous peaks and survive the fierce birds that guard them, Young Falcon resolves to attempt the climb and retrieve the gold for the struggling tribe. What awaits him at the eagle's nest will test his courage and skill against nature's most formidable hunters.

When a mysterious stranger claiming to be a reporter shows interest in his trick horse Corker, Gabby Hayes finds himself caught in a dangerous scheme by two would-be saboteurs determined to keep him out of the rodeo's lucrative trick-riding contest. As Gabby unknowingly demonstrates Corker's remarkable abilities—kneeling to mount, side-stepping, and picking up handkerchiefs from the ground—his rivals grow increasingly desperate to prevent horse and rider from reaching the arena. Will Gabby see through their trickery in time, or will these dastardly hombres finally succeed in their plot?

Loco Lew sits down to compose a letter—but when a curious friend asks who he's writing to, Loco reveals he's penning a message to himself, with the twist that he won't know what it says until it arrives tomorrow. This one-page Western humor bit plays the gag for all it's worth, complete with some ornery reactions from the folks around him.