The Hunted Hunter; or, The Strange Horseman of the Prairie

This issue of the Beadle and Adams weekly contains the opening of "The Hunted Hunter: The Strange Horseman of the Prairie," a romantic tale of the southwestern border by Edward S. Ellis (author of "Seth Jones" and other frontier fiction). In Chapter I, Don Alfredo Seraville, a wealthy Spanish-descended New Orleans merchant, meets secretly with Colonel Charles Ovaton, a man of mixed European and Indian heritage. Seraville proposes paying Ovaton two thousand dollars to extend an expedition to Texas (scheduled for two to six months) to six months minimum, thereby separating his daughter Irona from Ross Welland, a wealthy young American with whom she has grown intimate. Seraville, bound by Spanish family pride, refuses to acknowledge Welland as acceptable. When Ovaton suggestively proposes ensuring Welland never returns, Seraville indignantly refuses, insisting the arrangement involves only separation. They formalize their agreement with signed documents. Chapter II begins as a mysterious cloaked figure arrives at Seraville's door.