Beadle's Pocket Library, Vol. II, No. 25

# Catalog Note

This issue of Beadle and Adams Weekly (Vol. II, No. 98, July 2, 1884) features the principal serial "Rattling Rube; or, The Night Hawks of Kentucky" by Harry St. George, author of "Roaring Ralph Rockwood."

The narrative opens with two hunters—the taciturn Rube Rand and a younger companion—discovering a man buried alive to the neck in a forest clearing, besieged by buzzards and threatened by a large gray wolf. Rube kills the wolf and helps rescue the man, identified as Tom Crawley, who claims the outlaw "Dare-Devil Dick" and his horse-thief gang buried him. Though Rube suspects Crawley of lying, they release him and proceed toward Clarksville seeking Turner Hall ("Wildcat Turner").

The young hunter questions Rube's judgment; Rube reveals his extreme hatred of wolves stems from a traumatic incident five years prior when hundreds of starving wolves killed his beloved friend Joe Burns during a brutal winter hunting expedition in the Rocky foothills. Rube survived by climbing a tree but found only bones of his companion.