Beadle's Dime Library No. 739

This December 1892 Beadle and Adams dime novel installment features "The Masked Driver of Death's Canyon: The Romance of the Fatal Run on the Overland Trail" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham. At a remote Overland stage station in the Wild West, the boss offers two hundred dollars for a driver brave enough to pilot a coach through Death's Canyon—a route where twelve drivers have been killed by gunfire from ambush. Buffalo Bill arrives and persuades three volunteer drivers to undertake successive runs: Chispa Charlie accepts first, followed by Ben Bolt and Harkaway Harry as backups. Buffalo Bill hints to Colonel Miles at Fort Rest of a fourth mysterious volunteer if the first three fail. The narrative establishes the canyon's lethal history: Indian battles, cavalry skirmishes, massacres of supply trains, and robberies have left it strewn with graves. Chispa Charlie departs at dawn with eight passengers, including a young girl who requested the box seat, heading toward Fort Famine with relay stations at fifteen and thirty-five miles.