Beadle's Dime Library No. 877

Prickly Pear Camp *Beadle and Adams*, No. 88, 1895. By John W. W. Osbon, author of "The Sport from St. Louis." This frontier adventure serial opens with Jasper Fairfax discovering his homestead in a mountain valley devastated: his father, younger brother, and family servant dead; his sister Jessie taken captive. Following tracks, Fairfax finds a grave containing Elephant Tom, a known outlaw with his head severed from his body, which he realizes was done to hide identifying marks suggesting connections to a mysterious figure called "Prince Mars." He locates a written warning pinned to a tree where the captors held Jessie, demanding no pursuit and promising the captors' agent will contact Prickly Pear Camp with ransom terms. Riding toward distant gunfire, Fairfax encounters Rosa Lope, a girl in her teens, armed and guarding Sunset Ranch with a revolver, warning Kent Keene to leave. The narrative mixes frontier action with mystery elements regarding hidden identities among the outlaw band.