Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1059

Catalog Note This issue of the *Half-Dime Library* presents the opening of "Ned Wylde," a frontier action serial by Texas Jack (J. B. Omohundro). The narrative opens with a young boy, Ned Wylde, camped beneath cottonwoods when three horsemen pass in moonlight—a bearded leader named Hart Moline, a stolid companion, and a gaunt man carrying the body of a dead woman bearing a throat wound. The men bury her secretly in the thicket, and the boy, consumed by curiosity, begins excavating the grave, discovering a diamond ring on her finger before gunfire erupts. Sioux warriors attack: Moline flees on horseback, pursued across the prairie, while Ned abandons the grave to fight from a prairie hollow with his Evans repeating rifle, dropping multiple attackers before facing overwhelming numbers. The serial blends Western adventure, mystery, and combat.