First Appearance: Blaze Carson #1 (September 1948).
Appearances: Blaze Carson #1-5, Kid Colt Outlaw #5, Tex Taylor #2, 5-6, Two-Gun Kid #4, 8, 9, Wild Western #5-7, Kid Slade Gunfighter #8, Tex Morgan #5.
Years Active: 1870s?

Dave Carson was a young cattelman working for the Dean Hart outfit in Texas. Dave's first drive ended in Dodge City, where he and the other cowboys and drivers stopped to sell their cattle. But a group of "thieving coyotes stampeded the herd and rustled the best of the lot." Dave and Dean Hart himself went looking for the rustlers, but the first one they found was packing the gun of Billy the Kid, and in the shootout Dean Hart was killed and Dave Carson wounded by a head shot. Dave, however, killed the rustler, and when he recovered he was handed the marshall's star and The Gun. The marshall of Dodge City had been killed by Billy the Kid's gun earlier in the week, and the town needed a marshall, so Dave accepted the job.

Dave, still suffering from the occasional head pain, began well, but as time went by "young Dave slowly changed into a grim, ruthless, killing machine!" Eventually he heard of a shipment of $100,000 in gold, and, seemingly possessed by the gun ("$100,000? That's a HEAP of money! I wish my head would stop hurtin so's I could think straight! No one would suspect ME! I could KILL Richards and take the money! I wonder if I could get away with it? SURE I can get away with it! So long's I have the GUN, I can do ANYTHING! I'll blast down ANYBODY that stands in my way!"), set out to steal the money. When Dave arrived at the house in which the $100K was kept, he found a trio of men robbing the safe that contained the money. Dave gunned them down, taking another bullet in the head for his pains. He was found by 'wild-eyed townsmen," who thought he'd stopped the robbery, and was brought back to town. When he recovered he found that he had no memory except that of the gunfight in which he gained Billy the Kid's gun and the pains in his head. The town doctor tells him about how head wounds can affect the memory and cause people to change personalities and "even bring on criminal tendencies." Blaze, realising what he'd done, rides out to an arroyo and throws the "sinister, ugly, mocking thing" into the gulley. Then he rides south to Texas and becomes a town sheriff, proceeding to do the usual good deeds with the help of his horse Midnight.

Note: Need I go into any detail about the potential inherent in a cursed-gun-of-Billy-the-Kid story?