Beadle's New Dime Novels: Sonora Ben

This pulp adventure novel, "Sonora Ben: The Mountain of Gold" by Jos. E. Badger Jr., opens in 1844 Santa Fe with two young American cousins, Cyril Black and Ralph Eaton—barely eighteen, from St. Louis—involved in a street brawl with Mexican townspeople. After being insulted, they defend themselves with revolvers, killing a pelado leader. Mountain men including the gruff Roaring Tom and the wily Sonora Ben rescue them with Arapaho war cries, dispersing the mob. Exposition reveals the cousins arrived with trading wagons; Ralph recovered from fever while Cyril fell for a dark-eyed local woman. Their evening reconnaissance for her location sparked the violence. The group plans to continue to a fandango, expecting further confrontation from vengeful townspeople. The narrative employs frontier dialect and period racial terminology while developing a Western action-adventure plot combining romance, mob violence, and frontier heroics.