A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1889 — 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 · 1889

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 602

1889 · Free to read

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About this issue

This issue contains "The Vagabond of the Mines: A Romance of Detective Work on the Frontier" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, author of Kent Kingdom the Card King and Pawnee Bill. The narrative opens with a horseman, Borden Branch, discovering a dying man shot on a Rocky Mountain trail. The victim, Leonard Delorme—a former physician educated in Paris who fled civilization after embezzling fortunes—entrusts Branch with restitution papers, a map to a newly discovered gold mine, and instructions to distribute the fortune among defrauded parties and charities. After Delorme's death, Branch buries him and is himself shot by an unseen assassin from ambush. The text then shifts to a desperate, ill-provisioned man pursuing Branch on foot, having trailed him across plains and mountains. This pursuer, "the Vagabond of the Mountains," positions himself on a ridge to ambush Branch, determined to kill him for possession of Delorme's secret and papers. The narrative culminates with the Vagabond preparing to fire again.

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Each page has its own page — the cartoon, who’s in it, and what the satire means.