Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 61

1878 · 16 pages

Buckhorn Bill; or, The Red Rifle Team This Beadle and Adams dime novel, by Edward L. Wheeler (author of the Deadwood Dick series), follows a frontier adventure set in Dakota Territory. Sixteen-year-old Bill Burnham and his fourteen-year-old sister Maolin ride home across the prairie after searching Fort Alexander for their missing father. They are ambushed by twenty-five masked ruffians belonging the "Press-Gang"—a criminal organization that conscripts men into forced service through violence and murder. The gang's captain interrogates Bill about his father's whereabouts, revealing that Phil Burnham had been one of their members but deserted and betrayed them a month prior. The captain reveals he has already murdered Bill's mother when she refused to disclose information. When Bill cannot—or will not—reveal his father's location, the captain executes Maolin before Bill's eyes. The narrative breaks off as a mysterious horseman charges into the gorge to intervene.

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