Snipers, Tattoos and Secret Caves

Dell Comics' Roy Rogers #3 (March 1948) was drawn by Al Micale and written by prolific scribe Gaylord Du Bois. Du Bois not only wrote around 3000 comic book and comic strip scripts over the years--I've only read a small fraction of them, but I have yet to run across a bad script. The man was amazing.

This time, he adds to the adventure canon of Roy Rogers. Roy is riding through Montana when he meets Nancy Kirkland and Andy Johnson, whose uncles both own nearby ranches. Roy soon gets a chance to.., well, to be Roy Rogers when he catches Nancy after she's knocked off her horse by several of the mean-spirited Roulette brothers. 

Andy gets to show his backbone as well when he slugs one of the brothers. Later, the three friends find evidence that the Roulettes are doing some rustling.

That's bad enough, but when they ride back to one of the ranches, three of the four local ranch owners (including Nancy's dad and Andy's dad) are shot by a sniper.

That means the only ranch owner left--and the one who will now inherent the surrounding land--is Pa Roulette. That seems suspicious, until it turns out Pa Roulette is also dead. He was killed in what his son's claim was an accident. 

But nothing can be proved about anything. One of the men shot along with Nancy's dad was the owner and his will left the land to the children of the other three now-dead men. Neither Nancy nor Andy had any siblings, so Pa Roulette's ten sons will now inherent most of the land.

But there's a hint of another later will. No one can find this, though Roy helps the sheriff find the rifle used in the triple murder stashed in a small cave. 

Remembering a tattoo needle found on one of the victims, Roy plays a hunch and gets a court order to dig up Pa Roulette. His sons show up to put a stop to this, but all but one of them are killed in the ensuing gun fight. Roy's hunch proves to be a good one--the new will (leaving the land to Nancy and Andy) is tattooed on Pay's back. 

That doesn't quite bring the story to a close. Roy still needs to rescue Nancy from the lone surviving Roulette brother. But Roy does stuff like this three times before breakfast and soon has the situation in hand.

It is a typically strong Du Bois script. The mystery is good, the action scenes help keep the pacing fast and everything flows along logically. And its all given visual backbone by Micale's strong art. 

Gee whiz, that Gaylord Du Bois guy knew how to WRITE!

You can read this comic yourself HERE.

Next week, we'll return to the Avengers and see how they are doing.