Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 702

# Museum Catalog Note

The Red Hat Ranger's Red Hot Racket by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham is a Western romance serialized across three chapters in this issue. The narrative follows Lariat Dick, a Colorado miner and vigilante member who rescues a man named Trent Baxter from a lynch mob, doubting the victim's guilt. A week later, Lariat Dick and the recovering Baxter travel toward Baxter's home when they encounter Baxter's daughter Ruth being pursued by a man attempting to kidnap her—the actual criminal Hammond Hughes, disguised under the name Trent Baxter, who holds blackmail over the settler. Lariat Dick shoots Hughes, who falls into a canyon. The story then shifts to the Baxter family home, a prosperous settler's ranch in a remote valley. Over supper, Ruth reveals her father had invested in a Colorado mining partnership years prior but encountered unspecified trouble before locating his partner. Lariat Dick deliberately withholds his real name, though the family suspects he harbors secrets.