A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1891 — 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 · 1891

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 713: "Carl the Mad Cowboy"

1891 · Free to read

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About this issue

Beadle's Dime Novels, Vol. XXVIII, No. 713 (March 24, 1891) "The Lariat Queen: A Story of a Woman Righting a Wrong" by Col. Prentiss Ingraham follows May Lillie, an eighteen-year-old governess employed at Captain Vail's Texas ranch, who rides the prairie dressed in fringed buckskin and armed with rifle and revolvers. Carl Grafton, the reformed "Mad Cowboy"—once a reckless desperado now serving as captain of Vail's cowhands—waylay her on the trail to demand she marry him, claiming he saved her life from Comanches and reformed his wild ways for her sake. May refuses his passionate suit, ultimately revealing the reason: she is already married. The narrative explores the tension between Carl's reformed devotion and May's concealed matrimonial status, establishing a complex emotional triangle with hints of her love for another man. The serial combines frontier adventure, romance, and character redemption typical of the period's dime novel formula.

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