Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1035

Catalog Note: Beadle's Half-Dime Library, No. 1035 (May 7, 1897) This issue features "Antelope Abe" by Oll Coomes, a frontier adventure serial. The eighteen-year-old protagonist, a skilled marksman and scout on the Des Moines-Checaque prairie, flees mounted Indian pursuers after a rifle engagement, methodically picking off mounted adversaries during a lengthy chase. Captured by lasso at a timber stand, Abe is detained by approximately fifty warriors and confronted by Tim Bodsford, a white outlaw seeking information about a stolen girl. When Bodsford moves to kill Abe with a knife, the youth executes acrobatic kicks—hand-springs and aerial leaps—that disable the outlaw and allow his escape through the ring of Indians. Pursued anew by mounted Bodsford and warriors across the prairie, Abe races toward a timber belt for cover but discovers ahead the "Wolf's Mouth," a horseshoe-shaped chasm over a mile long and thirty to fifty feet wide, terminating his escape options. The serial continues.