Young Wild West and the Purple Plumes

Catalog Note This issue of *Wild West Weekly* (No. 712, June 9, 1916), published by Frank Tousey, contains the story "Cheyenne Charlie's Close Call" by "An Old Scout." The narrative follows a stagecoach robbery on the route between Eureka and Split Cliff, Nevada during a November rainstorm. Five passengers—a taciturn Westerner, a meek, clerical-looking man, an Eastern businessman and his teenage nephew, and an Irish woman named Mary Ann Gilligan—are held up by a masked gang called the Purple Plumes, identifiable by their distinctive purple hat plumes. The robbers forcibly extract money and valuables from the passengers and force two men from the coach. Upon arriving at Split Cliff, the survivors relate the attack to locals. The story combines frontier adventure elements with stagecoach robbery action typical of the pulp Western genre.