Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 328

This Beadle and Adams dime novel, published February 4, 1885, contains the opening chapters of a frontier tale titled "King Kent" (author unnamed in visible text). Chapter I, "The Tortures of the Lost," depicts a young white captive—handsome, muscular, twenty-two years old—suspended thirty feet down a cliff above the Rio San Saba in Texas by the Comanche war party that captured him. The Indians leave him suspended between the rock face and river, aware that at sunrise thousands of bees from the honeycomb caves will attack him, intending his death by bee stings, hunger, and thirst. Chapter II introduces Landers Ranch on the Rio Leon: Colonel "Lucky" Landers, a wealthy rancher and Mexican War veteran; his daughter Lola, described as sixteen, golden-haired, and the belle of the region; and the ranch superintendent Richard "Daring Dick" Robinson, a tall, muscular man of exceptional strength and courage who serves as the story's hero.