ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 207

· July 12, 1881

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 207
This issue of a pulp magazine from July 12, 1881 features "Navajo Nick, the Boy Gold Hunter; or, the Three Pards of the Basaltic Buttes," a Western adventure story by T.C. Harbaugh. Nick, a sixteen-year-old prospector traveling alone through Arizona to Mohave City with his horse Black Mahomet, encounters a suspicious stranger calling himself the Boss Cactus. Nick discovers the Cactus releasing a carrier pigeon bearing a message to unknown enemies, prompting his hasty departure. He flees to Mohave City but is pursued by Navajo warriors. Nick arrives wounded with arrows in his shoulder and horse, collapsing before townspeople who gather around him. Seeking a man named Dagobert he expected to meet, Nick describes his chase with approximately thirty warriors and his horse's heroic intervention during a lasso attack. The narrative emphasizes frontier survival and danger.

Public domain (pre-1929), restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain