Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 188

# The Border Boy: The Mad Hunter of Powder River

T. C. Harbaugh's serialized romance opens with seventeen-year-old Ned Temple and the beautiful Cyrille Averill discovering Fort Reno abandoned and burned in Montana. Cyrille's uncle, Thornton Hardinge, a military officer, deliberately left them stranded in hostile Sioux territory. As night falls among the ruins, the eccentric Sam Wildcat—a boastful frontier hunter claiming to kill Indians and wildcats daily—appears on horseback, soliloquizing about the fort's destruction. Cyrille recognizes him as a man who previously harassed her at Fort Buford. When Wildcat kills two Sioux warriors, his gunfire attracts a massive Indian war party led by Red Cloud. Ned and Cyrille take defensive positions with weapons. Through the moonlight, Cyrille spots her uncle riding alongside Red Cloud, appearing complicit rather than captive, deepening her suspicion of his treachery. The narrative emphasizes frontier peril, military conspiracy, and Hardinge's villainy.