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. 229

1881 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 229 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

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About this issue

Colonel Prentiss Ingraham's serial follows dual plotlines converging in Texas. In the opening chapters, Judge Langdon and his disreputable son Loyd scheme to murder the judge's nephew, Lester Langdon, heir to a half-million-dollar estate in Texas; if Lester vanishes within five years, the fortune passes to charity—allowing Loyd to impersonate him later. Meanwhile, an eighteen-year-old cowboy (revealed to be Lester) grieves at the grave of Don Bartolo, a rancher who rescued him years earlier from destitution in Santa Fe and willed him his ranch. When the cowboy spots mounted men approaching with a bound woman captive, he methodically seizes the opportunity: disarming a cavalry messenger claiming to exchange horses, securing him with his dog Chief's guard, then confronting the remaining two men. One proves to be the woman, hands tied and rein-controlled, who begs rescue from her captor. The story establishes a western action narrative with fraud, inheritance, captivity, and frontier heroics.

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