History
The horse that was later known as King lived during the days of the American Frontier, alone in a valley near the town of Jackspur. When Randy Clayton's horse Smokey was spooked by a mountain lion and was no longer good to ride, his guardian the Rawhide Kid took the boy to Jackspur to find a new horse. Finding none worth buying they were told by a man about a white stallion in the nearby mountains. The Rawhide Kid and Randy then succeeded in capturing and taming the horse with the help of Apache the Rawhide Kid's own horse. Once the stallion was tamed, Randy decided to name it King after the valley that he seemingly ruled as a king.
The horse took the Kid to such places before the horse brought him to Shotgun City where the hero lived for the remainder of his career.[1]
King was highly intelligent able to understand even complex instructions. This made the horse sought after by thieves such as Barlow who briefly stole the horse before it was rescued by the Rawhide Kid and Randy.[1] Much later when Rawhide and Randy were helping a Pony Express rider who narrowly avoided being robbed, King sensed the thieves -- the Sloan gang -- not far away and attacked them. Unaware that Sloan and his gang were responsible for the attempted theft, the Kid did not know why King was attacking them. Sloan attempted to use this to his advantage by filing a complaint to Shotgun City's Sheriff Ben Yarby. After a warning from the lawman, Sloan and his men set King loose and committed a series of horse thefts wherever King was spotted making everyone in town think that King had gone rogue, including the Rawhide Kid who failed to capture the horse. While the Sheriff and others were busy searching for King, Sloan and his gang tried to rob the Shotgun City bank, but were stopped by King himself, as witnessed by the Rawhide Kid who took them into custody and had King exonerated.[2] King later came to the aid of his master when Randy was captured by Crack, an outlaw who had a striking resemblance to the Rawhide Kid. Upon Randy's orders, King rode into town and got the real Rawhide Kid who rescued Randy from his lookalike.[3]