Rodéo (comics)

Lucky Luke arrives in Navajo City, a town about to stage a rodeo. In the saloon of the place he meets Cactus Kid, a thug who attacks him, but is no match for Luke. The rodeo takes place the next day. Presumed the favourite to win by the town and himself, Cactus Kid realises he may have met his match in Lucky Luke, and resorts to foul play, sabotaging Luke's lasso and then trying to cut the strap of his saddle. This time, Lucky Luke takes him by the wayside and beats him up. Luke wins the rodeo but Cactus Kid takes revenge by grabbing the prize money. The sheriff and several men run after him, but it is Lucky Luke who succeeds in capturing him.

• Cactus Kid: The town tough, he is Lucky Luke's main opponent during the rodeo.

Lucky Luke arrives in Desperado City, where two desperados, the Pistol Brothers, appear to be the source of local terror. They quickly confront Luke who captures them during a stagecoach attack. However, the town is flooded with bandits, unwilling to accept the enforcement of the law, and Lucky Luke finds himself attacked from every direction. The undertaker is the boss of all these people who free the Pistol brothers and succeed in capturing Lucky Luke. He was barely saved from hanging by a panicked herd of cattle. Lucky Luke then succeeds in neutralizing the undertaker (who benefits from the lawlessness), then the Pistol brothers. He then renames the city "Justice City".

• Pistol brothers: Bandit brothers who rule Desperado City.
• Bill Boney: The Sheriff of Desperado City - cowardly and incompetent, he shamelessly hides during gunfights. He later appears in the album Hors-la-loi.

Lucky Luke spots a sleeping prospector, and decides to play a practical joke on him, planting a little gold nugget in the pan. The prospector awakes to his greatest dream come true, and when Lucky Luke chases the euphoric gold digger and tries to reveal the joke, the prospector shoots at him, speeding into town to stake his claim and shout the news. The madness of a gold rush follows, bringing changes to Buffalo Creek of a greater scale than Lucky Luke expects, and when he makes a final attempt to explain the truth, he finds himself arrested. Unable to remedy the situation from inside a jail cell, Luke must let the situation run its course, a change coming undone as quickly as it started, as an expert examines the gold nugget and realizes that it was discovered in California fifty years ago. Buffalo Creek then empties of its inhabitants, becoming a ghost town.

• Joe: Old gold digger who believes he discovered gold at Buffalo Creek.
• Bill McCoy: Mayor (for a few hours) of Buffalo Creek.