Beadle's Dime Library No. 263

1883 · 32 pages

This pulp serial, "Iron-Armed Abe, the Hunchback Destroyer," by Captain Marek Wilton, is a Western adventure set in Arizona. Doctor Rube, a physician from the East, is forcibly taken by armed men to the hidden City of the Desert—a lush, flourishing settlement concealed in a mountain valley, complete with adobe and stone buildings. On the journey, Rube and his captors encounter the mysterious Black Riders, fifty identically-dressed horsemen mounted on black horses and carrying lances, whom Rube's captors treat with evident respect and fear. Upon reaching the city, a deformed hunchback with abnormally long arms—the fearsome Iron-Armed Abe—attempts to kill them by dropping a stone from a cliff. Abe mocks Solon Camp, Rube's leader, declaring himself invulnerable to bullets and prophesying doom for Captain Diamond, the city's leader, and his Black Riders. The narrative combines mystery, Western action, and Gothic elements, establishing tensions between the hidden city's authorities and the supernatural-seeming threat embodied by the hunchback.

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