The Demon Steer: The Outlaws on the Abilene Cattle Trail

This issue of New York Ledger (Vol. XXXVI, No. 456, July 20, 1887) opens "The Outlaws of the Abilene Cattle Trail" by Leon Lewis, a Western crime serial. Colonel Vann, a vengeful outlaw with long black hair and sinister features, has stationed six armed men in a wooded ravine along the cattle trail to ambush Sam Hooper, a wealthy Kansas cattle dealer traveling by stagecoach. Vann harbors hatred for Hooper's family, particularly for a girl who rejected his marriage proposal. Comanche Jim, Hooper's cowboy representative, rides past unknowingly toward the station.

Simultaneously, a separate gang—the disreputable Thad Burrows ("the doctor"), Theopolus Drawback, and Rawdge—travels the same trail in a wagon with axes, planning to fell a tree across "Devil's Gap" to stop the incoming stage carrying Hooper, whom they believe carries $40,000–$50,000 in cash for cattle purchases in Texas.