Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 81

"The Terror of the Prairie" by Capt. J. F. C. Adams

This frontier adventure opens with a desperate messenger arriving at Fort Adams bearing a plea from J.T. Shields: a party of twenty men, women, and children are besieged by Comanches forty miles away in Dead Man's Gulch, having endured two days of continuous attack with heavy casualties and no water. The dust-covered courier reveals himself as Jim Gibbons, a former fort employee. Colonel Greaves, despite garrison pressures and fears of coordinated tribal attack under the Comanche leader Swico-Cheque, authorizes a hundred-man relief expedition. As they depart, the scouts under "Lightning Jo"—a renowned western celebrity known for extraordinary speed and strength—return from buffalo hunting and assume command of the rescue party. Lightning Jo, who gained his reputation through incredible swiftness and a famous boxing victory over a California pugilist, leads the company southward toward the beleaguered band.