Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 32

This dime novel installment by Edward L. Wheeler follows two linked episodes separated by five years. In the opening, the orphaned girl Nellie Allen faces outlaw chief Bob Woolf and his gang, who give her father Bill Allen—a spy against their interests—ten hours to evacuate their Kansas plain cabin. Nellie's parents die of smallpox during this period, and Woolf sets prairie fires that consume the homestead. Nellie survives and swears vengeance against Woolf and his entire band. The narrative then shifts five years forward to a mining settlement called Dwight's near Pike's Peak, Colorado. A Philadelphia lawyer named Cecil Burnett arrives on the evening stage and inquires about a man named Luke Rice, establishing the thread of his actual business beyond his legal profession. Wheeler's story interweaves frontier violence, familial tragedy, and mystery elements typical of Beadle & Adams pulp fiction.