Beadle's Dime Library No. 877

# Prickly Pear Camp

Beadle and Adams, No. 88, 1895.

By John W. W. Osbon, author of "The Sport from St. Louis."

This frontier adventure serial opens with Jasper Fairfax discovering his homestead in a mountain valley devastated: his father, younger brother, and family servant dead; his sister Jessie taken captive. Following tracks, Fairfax finds a grave containing Elephant Tom, a known outlaw with his head severed from his body, which he realizes was done to hide identifying marks suggesting connections to a mysterious figure called "Prince Mars." He locates a written warning pinned to a tree where the captors held Jessie, demanding no pursuit and promising the captors' agent will contact Prickly Pear Camp with ransom terms. Riding toward distant gunfire, Fairfax encounters Rosa Lope, a girl in her teens, armed and guarding Sunset Ranch with a revolver, warning Kent Keene to leave. The narrative mixes frontier action with mystery elements regarding hidden identities among the outlaw band.