Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 705

1891 · 16 pages

This Beadle and Adams dime novel from January 1891 presents "Violet Vane's Vow," a serial by William G. Patten featuring adventure and melodrama. The prologue establishes Violet Vane—a mysterious figure of ambiguous gender who rides recklessly through a mountain storm to lead five desperadoes in swearing allegiance to "the Serpent Six," a gang marked by blood-red serpent emblems. Vane then rides to a mining town where dying Owen Wilson reveals his daughter Ione has been kidnapped by six black-clad assailants bearing those serpent marks. Wilson expires after extracting a sacred vow from Vane to hunt them down and rescue the girl. Chapter One introduces comic relief: a fat German immigrant named Snitchpfeffer is thrown from a runaway mule and encounters J. Milton More, a struggling poet hawking obituaries and anniversary verses. The narrative blends crime, western adventure, and theatrical melodrama with dialect comedy.

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