Beadle's Dime Novels No. 268: The Specter Riders

About this issue

This issue of Beadle's Dime Novels contains two featured works. The first is an advertisement for the forthcoming serial "Lasso Jack, the Young Mustanger; or, The Red Terror of the Pampas" by Will Dexthr, depicting life among wild horses on the Texas plains with Comanches as antagonists and featuring the titular hero alongside an English guide, a trail hunter, and a U.S. Colonel whose two nieces figure prominently in the narrative. The second, primary work is "The Specter Riders" by George Gleason. Young hunter Edward Westlake, mounted on his white horse Cherokee, flees three silent pursuers across the prairie at night. When Cherokee stumbles and falls, Westlake fires his pistols at the approaching riders. In the sudden moonlight, he witnesses a horrifying sight: three skeletal figures in white sheets astride horses. The apparition vanishes, leaving Westlake shaken. Old trapper Adam Griff appears, helps free Cherokee from an entangled lariat, and Westlake confesses to seeing "the Specter Riders," mysterious supernatural phenomena neither man fully comprehends.