Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 756

About this issue

This issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly dime novel presents "The Renegade's Captive" and the serial "Dashing Charlie's Destiny" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, set in the 1850s American frontier. A Kentucky family receives a letter revealing that their runaway nephew Charlie has pursued his uncle Captain Emmett westward. The boy escaped assassination by hired guides, killed one attacker, captured another, and defended himself against pursuing Native Americans. He reaches his uncle's fur-trading expedition as a proven frontiersman, earning the nicknames "Dashing Charlie" and "The Boy Scalper." Two unscrupulous bordermen, Buck Baldwin and Bricktop, plot to intercept and kidnap the boy for ransom, discovering instead that the treacherous guide Limber Joe has killed his accomplice. The narrative follows multiple parties across the wilderness—the fur traders' train, pursuing Native American war parties, and the two kidnappers—through battles and river crossings toward inevitable confrontation.