Beadle's Pocket Library No. 155

# Museum Catalog Description

This issue of Beadle and Adams's weekly dime novel (Vol. XI, No. 155, December 29, 1886) features "Gold Plume, the Boy Bandit," by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, advertised as a sequel to "Little Grit, the Wild Rider." The story concerns Daniel Benton, a stock-tender on the Overland Pony Express who has secretly mined gold in a remote canyon. When a mysterious woman claiming to be the "Spirit of the Canyon" arrives at his cabin with armed men working for the outlaw leader Gold Plume, she demands either his daughter Bessie or the location of his gold. Benton refuses both demands and is captured. The narrative shifts to Rocky Glen, where frontier characters gather at the Rider's Rest tavern discussing recent events: Benton's death, the kidnapping of Colonel Hewlett's daughter (rescued by Little Grit), and the arrival of Buffalo Bill, a twenty-year-old Pony Express rider from Kansas, introduced as Benton's replacement.