Beadle's Pocket Library No. 443

The Masked Avenger: Death on the Trail

This serial installment, written by Col. Prentiss Ingraham (known for Buffalo Bill stories), concerns a loosely organized band of frontier outlaws encamped in southwestern Texas. The outlaw chief, the dark-eyed and aristocratic Dante, enforces rigid discipline despite the band's mixed composition of Americans, Mexicans, Comanches, and Europeans. Tension erupts when veteran officer Red La Roche insults young lieutenant Ford Balfour's courage. Dante arranges a pistol duel between them, but as the confrontation begins, a mysterious masked horseman on a hilltop fires a rifle shot that kills La Roche instantly. The stranger, dressed in black velvet and armed with an array of exotic weapons—seven-shooting rifle, boomerang, bow and arrow, lance—sits mounted on a black horse against the skyline. He raises his hat in salute and vanishes into the forest, igniting a chaotic pursuit by the outlaws.