Beadle's Dime Novels No. 245: The Red Prince

# Catalog Note: The Red Prince; or, The Last of the Aztecs

This Beadle's Dime Novel, by Frederic Whittaker, opens in fall 1865 in the Sierra Madre mountains near Sonora, Mexico. General Armistead, a ruined Confederate officer, leads a party of Mexican smugglers and his daughter Lily across the border seeking gold and Montezuma's legendary treasures. Lily, an eighteen-year-old horsewoman and skilled marksman raised without maternal discipline, rides ahead of her guardian Mart Bradford and disappears. The General and scout search for her in the wilderness. Meanwhile, Lily reaches the valley where the camp is being prepared and discovers her father and Bradford have gone looking for her. The narrative introduces the resourceful heroine navigating dangerous terrain and suggests forthcoming encounters with Apache and indigenous peoples as conflict builds in this Western adventure-romance combining frontier action with hints of lost antiquities and colonial history.