Beadle's Pocket Library No. 217

Bald Head of the Rockies This 1888 Beadle and Adams weekly issue features "Bald Head of the Rockies: The Angel of the Range," a Western serial by Major Sam S. Hall ("Buckskin Sam"), set in Sardine-box City, Arizona. Chapter I introduces Giant George "Travels," a towering, heavily-armed borderman who enters a saloon with his burro (Don Diablo), demanding whiskey in wild frontier dialect. After forcing a card sharp onto the burro, he tears through town on horseback. Chapter II establishes the mining settlement's context: a prosperous but rough camp plagued by Apache raids and stage robberies. The arrival of a beautiful, mysterious veiled woman at the Nugget Hotel excites the entire male population. Hotel proprietor Hank Holbrook, glimpsing her face, declares her the prettiest woman south of the Union Pacific, then leads the entire town's population—miners, gamblers, and laborers—into a canyon to celebrate with drinking and dancing, leaving the town abandoned.