Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 7

About this issue

This issue of Beadle & Adams pulp magazine features "The Destroyer; or, The Spirit Lake Avengers" by Oll Coomes, a frontier adventure serial based on the historical 1857 Spirit Lake Massacre. Eight young men—led by Fred Travis and including Omaha, a Native American scout—form a revenge league after the massacre destroys their homes and families. They pursue the raiders while tracking a mysterious figure called Death-Notch, a young scalp-hunter who marks victims with notches on trees. The narrative shifts to the settlement of Stony Cliff, where Sylveen Gray, a seventeen-year-old settler's daughter, meets her secret lover Ralph St. Leger, a trapper-boy, by the river. Her uncle Abel Hatch and rival suitor Scott Shirely approach by canoe, forcing the lovers to part. A Sioux warrior then stalks St. Leger into the woods; a death-wail follows. Omaha discovers the confrontation and reunites with the Avengers to investigate.