Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 281

Plucky Phil, of the Mountain Trail; or, Rosa, the Red Jezebel This installment of a Beadle & Adams dime novel, serialized December 27, 1881, opens the adventure of seventeen-year-old Plucky Phil Steele, a determined tracker searching for survivors of a wagon train massacre in the Big Horn Mountains. Abandoned by six hired frontiersmen who lose nerve, Phil presses alone into a canyon pass where he discovers the remains of the attack—skeletal remains, burnt wagon debris, and a dying soldier's inscription scratched into rock by bayonet, signed "Campbell," confirming the train's destruction by approximately five hundred Sioux warriors. Refusing to abandon hope for a young woman named Nora Dalton, Phil vows vengeance. He then encounters two men: "Tana" and Coyote, a squaw-man with knowledge of the massacre. When Coyote claims all were killed, Phil emerges from hiding, rifle drawn, accusing Coyote of lying and demanding the truth about Nora's fate.