The Cowboy Duke

Museum Catalog Note "Lasso Louis' Strange Mission" by Edwin Brooke Forrest appears in this October 4, 1887 issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly dime novel (No. 532). The opening chapters introduce Louis, a seventeen-year-old rancher's son—the "Cowboy Duke"—living with his father, the French Duke de Chambertain, in Texas. On Louis's birthday, his father reveals that he has recently inherited the French dukedom following his father's exoneration. More pressingly, the Duke warns Louis of a deadly enemy: the renegade Count Rudolph Fonthellevue (also called "the White Apache"), a former political opponent from France who has allied with the Apache chief War Cloud. A warning letter reveals their plot: War Cloud's Apache band, led by the towering chief in full war paint, is gathering to raid the ranch at midnight to steal mysterious important papers and murder both Chambertain and his son. The narrative follows the Apaches' nocturnal approach and the tension between War Cloud and his white conspirator.