Old Avoirdupois

# Catalog Note

Old Avoirdupois is a frontier adventure serial by W. J. Hamilton, appearing in Beadle's Dime Novels (No. 257, 1872). The narrative opens with a stout, skilled frontiersman nicknamed "Old Avoirdupois" camping alone near a Western stream, accompanied by his keen horse, Rocket. He encounters Captain Jim, a seventeen-year-old scout hiding in a tree, who reveals that his hunting party is trapped on a river island five miles upstream, besieged by Apaches. As the two men prepare to aid the party, they witness the arrival of Steel-Coat, the feared Apache chief clad in steel armor. When Captain Jim's horse inadvertently neighs, betraying their position, they are forced to flee. The narrative then shifts to the island, where white hunters hold off superior numbers of Native American attackers through disciplined gunfire. The installment establishes a multi-front action scenario combining frontier survival skills with impending Apache conflict.