Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 168

This issue of Beadle and Adams' Dime Novel (No. 168, October 12, 1880) contains "Deadly Dash; or, Fighting Fire With Fire" by Joseph E. Badger Jr. The serialized frontier narrative opens with a lynch mob attempting to execute Joshua Bedell, a suspected horse-thief and murderer of Farmer Heywood. The town's constable, Will Rose, defends the jailed prisoner until overpowered. Bedell's daughter Sally attempts to shoot old Tom Mason with his own revolver to create an escape passage, but Mason strikes her unconscious. Despite Bedell's bound hands, he attacks Mason. The mob overcomes him and marches toward an elm tree near the Missouri River to execute Bedell by hanging, placing him in a wagon beneath the tree limb as they prepare the noose.