The Demon Steer: The Outlaws on the Abilene Cattle Trail

This issue of *New York Ledger* (Vol. XXXVI, No. 456, July 20, 1887) opens "The Outlaws of the Abilene Cattle Trail" by Leon Lewis, a Western crime serial. Colonel Vann, a vengeful outlaw with long black hair and sinister features, has stationed six armed men in a wooded ravine along the cattle trail to ambush Sam Hooper, a wealthy Kansas cattle dealer traveling by stagecoach. Vann harbors hatred for Hooper's family, particularly for a girl who rejected his marriage proposal. Comanche Jim, Hooper's cowboy representative, rides past unknowingly toward the station. Simultaneously, a separate gang—the disreputable Thad Burrows ("the doctor"), Theopolus Drawback, and Rawdge—travels the same trail in a wagon with axes, planning to fell a tree across "Devil's Gap" to stop the incoming stage carrying Hooper, whom they believe carries $40,000–$50,000 in cash for cattle purchases in Texas.