Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 141

Solid Sam, the Boy Road-Agent This 1880 dime novel by Edward L. Wheeler, published April 6 by Beadle and Adams, presents a frontier revenge narrative set in Wyoming. The story opens with a dastardly crime: two hired ruffians, Black Eph and Bosting Bill, set a woman named Mrs. Hathaway and her two children adrift on a raging raft during spring flooding on the Yellowstone River, acting on orders from her unfaithful husband Guy Hathaway. A young hunter rescues the girl; an old white-bearded man—later revealed as deeply connected to the family—finds the boy alive and the mother dead. Six years later, the narrative shifts to a band of sixty stampeders (mining prospectors) descending into a canyon where the old man has established a mining claim and residence. The excerpt ends as they arrive at his cabin, their intentions toward his property clearly aggressive.