Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 570

The Skeleton Trail: A Story of a Detective Nemesis by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham appears in this Beadle and Adams dime novel (Vol. XXII, No. 98, 1888). The opening chapters present Camille Cameron, an Italian-American woman of refined background, who becomes engaged to the reckless Texan Kent Kingdon but breaks with him when she meets the noble college student Horace Manners. Kingdon duels Manners over Camille's photograph in his album, mortally wounding him. Manners dies, and Camille swears at his grave to become "an avenging Nemesis" against her lover's murderer. She then mysteriously disappears from her New England home with a substantial inherited fortune, leaving her guardians believing she has drowned herself. The narrative shifts to Kingdon, now a fugitive drifter on the western frontier near a stage station, his father's fortune lost and his dissipated gambling money exhausted. Resolving to obtain gold "fair or foul," he boards an Overland coach carrying a mysterious young woman traveling westward to find her father.