Beadle's Pocket Library No. 65

# Lightning Jo: The Terror of the Prairie

This weekly pulp narrative, published April 8, 1885, features the opening of "Lightning Jo: The Terror of the Prairie" by Captain J. F. C. Adams. The story begins with a desperate courier delivering a message to Fort Adams from settlers besieged in Dead Man's Gulch. Under sustained Comanche attack led by the warrior Swico-Cheque, the trapped party—twenty men and a dozen women and children—faces annihilation without reinforcement. Courier Jim Gibbons arrives on a horse that dies at the fort gates, having ridden forty miles in two days. Colonel Greaves reluctantly commits a hundred mounted men to rescue, though reinforcements cannot immediately include the celebrated scout Lightning Jo—until Jo returns from a buffalo hunt. The narrative emphasizes frontier military logistics, Native American conflict, and introduces Jo as a legendary figure known for exceptional speed and skill in combat.