A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1881 — all 16 pages of painted-cover fiction magazines that launched science fiction, horror, and hardboiled crime, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.

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A complete issue · 16 pages · 1881

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 216

1881 · Free to read

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About this issue

This dime novel by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham features a Gold Rush narrative centered on two former schoolboy rivals and romantic competitors: Hugh Arleigh and Burt Bernard. Both arrive impoverished in California's mining country seeking their fortunes. After a month sharing a cabin, Arleigh discovers substantial gold ore, triggering gold fever and exhaustion that leaves him delirious with fever. Bernard, consumed by jealous rage over Arleigh's fortune and their shared romantic past with the now-deceased Helen Tracey, succumbs to temptation and attempts murder, throwing his fevered companion into a swollen river during a storm. The narrative then shifts to San Francisco, where a now-wealthy Bernard enters a gambling establishment and loses heavily at faro—115,000 dollars—before a young army officer intervenes, inexplicably winning back Bernard's lost fortune at the same table. The officer mysteriously departs, having left his cloak behind. The story incorporates elements of melodrama, frontier adventure, and moral struggle surrounding greed and redemption.

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