Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 408

1885 · 16 pages

"Old Jumbo's Curse" by Philip S. Warne This western melodrama, serialized in an 1885 Beadle and Adams publication, concerns the arrival of Maine farmers in Colorado, who establish the village of Glendale after a failed mining venture. The central plot involves a mysterious old woman—variously described as a former belle or quadroon—who claims supernatural powers and threatens the townspeople as "Mumbo Jumbo." After she publicly curses residents and a building burns, locals prepare to lynch her, but a daring youth called "Little Leather-Breeches" intervenes with pistols drawn, defending the witch's cabin. The narrative shifts to a village picnic where young women discuss the bold youth and debate the prophecies of Ben Souder, the village cobbler. Little Leather-Breeches, dressed in buckskin and sporting shoulder-length blonde hair, approaches the group, setting up further romantic and dramatic complications involving Belle Briggs and the heiress Kate Ashmead.

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