Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 90

THE TEXAN DUELIST by George W. Browne This serialized frontier narrative, set in 1839 on the Texas border, opens with a woman's suicide in the Mississippi River, followed by a violent night raid on a settler's cabin in the Red Lands where a family is murdered and their home burned. The main plot centers on a shooting match in Chesterville, where Curtis Dash, leader of the settlement's Regulators, is challenged by a mysterious one-legged stranger who shoots copper bullets from horseback. After insulting Dash's marksmanship, the stranger—bearing a livid scar and displaying signs of madness—repeatedly outshoot him. The humiliated Dash challenges him to a duel to occur the following morning, the stranger accepts, and news spreads across the border, drawing crowds to witness the encounter.