Originally Aired: December 14, 1938
The Lone Ranger #918, "Rain Making Gun," finds a Kansas farming community in desperate straits as a severe drought threatens to destroy the entire wheat crop. Clem Barker, a local leader, calls a meeting with his neighbors including Jim and Leif to propose a plan: pool their money to hire men to haul water from Mud River to save at least one field, which can provide seed for everyone next year. The farmers reluctantly agree, scraping together about a thousand dollars for the effort.
However, word of the farmers' plan and their pooled cash reaches a fashionable swindler named Kincaid, who stages an elaborate con with his accomplice Lorimer. When Clem arrives in town to hire workers, he overhears Lorimer praising Kincaid's miraculous "rain-making gun" that supposedly saved crops in Dakota with just three shots. Despite the outlandish claims about bursting rain clouds through scientific disturbance, the desperate Clem falls for the scheme and agrees to pay a thousand dollars to rent the device. As the deal is struck, a mysterious tall stranger quietly slips away from the scene, reaching for a distinctive white hat hanging on his silver stallion's saddle.