Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 287

About this issue

This issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly dime novel (No. 287, January 33, 1883) contains "The Boy Rover of the Rio Grande; or, Terror Tom's Thorny Trail" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham. The story follows Billy Blue-Eyes, a sixteen-year-old frontiersman dressed in buckskin and armed with rifle and revolvers, who discovers a camp of Chaparral Pirates in the Texas borderlands. He recognizes their captive as Terror Tom, a legendary Texan borderman scheduled for execution at sunrise. Billy executes a daring rescue, freeing Tom from his bonds and helping him escape into a water-wash, though Billy himself is captured by a lasso-wielding guard. The outlaw leader, Lieutenant Hal, interrogates the boy, who identifies himself calmly as Billy Blue-Eyes, also known as the Boy Rover of the Rio Grande. The narrative combines frontier action, capture-and-rescue sequences, and character introductions typical of the period's adventure fiction.