Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 770

Content Note: The Tanderer Team's Thorny Trail (1892) This dime novel by Ed. L. Wheeler, author of the "Deadwood Dick" series, opens with a dramatic rescue on Basalt Butte, a Nevada mining camp of two thousand inhabitants. A woman riding a runaway horse toward certain death on a cliff edge is caught by a mysterious man dressed entirely in red and mask. The horse plunges to its death, but the woman vanishes. When a young man on horseback arrives moments later, he discovers not her body but only the dead horse—intensifying the mystery. The subsequent chapter introduces Mayor Archibald Grimm, a forceful fifty-year-old administrator, who insists he witnessed the horse's fall and saw no rider. The young stranger demands help locating his wife, whose miraculous disappearance defies explanation, creating the central mystery of the serial narrative.