Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 975

This issue of Beadle and Adams' dime novel serialization (No. 975, Vol. XXXVI, 1896) features the opening chapters of "The Lone Trail; or, The Buckskin Bravo" by Col. Prentiss Ingraham, author of Buffalo Bill novels. The western adventure begins when stage driver Nate Nixon encounters a deranged, long-haired soldier on the New Mexico trail who cryptically announces he is "looking for the dead." Shortly after, three masked road-agents ambush Nixon's coach carrying mining payroll. The mad soldier suddenly reappears, charging at the robbers with a sabre, scattering them in panic. Nixon shoots one agent dead. A young scout named Sure Shot, "the Buckskin Brave"—a sixteen-year-old in buckskin dress and cavalry uniform—arrives and questions Nixon about the incident, skeptical that any mad soldier escaped from Fort Comanche.