Beadle's Pocket Library, Vol. III, No. 30

# Bob Woolf, the Border Ruffian

This 1884 dime novel by Edward L. Wheeler (author of the "Deadwood Dick" series) follows the title character Bob Woolf, a ruthless border ruffian leading a gang of outlaws on the Colorado-Kansas frontier. Woolf gives the Allen family ten hours to evacuate their isolated cabin or face prairie fire. When the girl Nellie Allen's parents succumb to smallpox during this interval, she escapes the ensuing inferno and swears vengeance against Woolf and his men. The narrative then jumps five years forward to Dwight's, a mining settlement near Pike's Peak, where Cecil Burnett, a Philadelphia lawyer, arrives claiming other business besides legal practice. Burnett meets the tavern proprietor Jonas Dwight and begins discreetly questioning him. The OCR becomes increasingly corrupted toward the conclusion.