Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1111

About this issue

Beadle's Half-Dime Library, March 1901. By Ol' Coomes. The serial opens with two young Texas mustangers, Lasso Jack (twenty years old) and Henry St. Elmo, fleeing across prairie grassland while pursued by over sixty Comanche warriors seeking their scalps. The fugitives were chasing wild horses when they ventured into Comanche hunting-grounds. As they approach a stream with steep banks, they spot Apaches lying in ambush on the far side. The mustangers' horses successfully leap the creek, but during the subsequent chase toward the San Saba timber, St. Elmo mysteriously disappears from his horse's back mid-pursuit. The narrative then shifts to an emigrant encampment of twenty-two people led by retired military officer Captain Louis Gray, including nine army recruits, nine Santa Fe traders, an eccentric Englishman named Sir George Richardson, and Gray's two nieces—the beautiful fair-haired Mabel (eighteen) and the dark-haired, rifle-skilled younger Rosalind. During their evening meal, camp members notice a human skull in a nearby hollow tree.