Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 386

The Brazos Bombshell; or, The Queen of the Lasso This Western dime novel by Big Benson concerns a girl named Rita whose mother dies after extracting a deathbed oath of vengeance from a man named Romero. The mother's dying words reveal that Rita's father was murdered nine years prior, his empty saddlebags left at the scene. Romero promises to train Rita in the use of the lasso—her mother's chosen weapon—so she might eventually track down and kill her father's killer. The narrative then jumps nine years forward to Coyote City on the Llano Estacado, where a notorious desperado called "Big Benson" or "the Brazos Bombshell" has arrived, boasting of his superiority with knife, lasso, and revolver. A young man named Dasher, intrigued by Benson's cryptic comments about lassoing men from Oregon to the Rio Pecos, pursues him on horseback toward Laredo, hoping to ask questions about a specific man from that region.