Kiowa Charley, The White Mustanger

1879 · 16 pages

This December 1879 Beadle and Adams dime novel, "The White Mustanger: or, Rocky Mountain Kit's Last Scalp Hunt" by T.C. Harbaugh, features Kit Carson as protagonist. During a winter patrol along the Wichita River, the famous scout encounters a herd of wild mustangs led by a mysterious rider on a white horse. When Carson attempts to confront the stranger, he discovers the figure possesses a grotesque face—featureless except for a single eye in the center of its forehead. Terrified but intrigued, Carson returns to his camp, where he reunites with his men and a fourteen-year-old boy named Pepito (the "Seraph"), noted for his exceptional hearing ability. Pepito had independently detected the distant mustang herd by sound. The story develops as frontier adventure fiction, mixing pursuit across snowy plains with elements of the supernatural.

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