Beadle's Pocket Library No. 126

About this issue

This issue features the opening installment of "Blue-Blazes," a Western adventure serial by Frank Dumont, author of "The Branded Hand." The narrative opens with a stagecoach robbery in Idaho's silver country. A masked outlaw chief known as "Blue-Blazes"—identifiable by the blue rockets he signals with—orchestrates the heist in a ravine, killing the driver and robbing passengers of valuables. However, the robber is shaken upon glimpsing a pale, consumptive young woman inside the coach and flees in apparent distress. The second chapter reveals the woman is Edith, a dying girl whom Blue-Blazes (revealed to be a young man named Fred) had previously abandoned. She confronts him outside a Boise City gambling saloon, professing undying love despite his desertion. Fred offers friendship only. Edith shoots herself rather than live without his love, collapsing dead at his feet before he rushes into the saloon. The narrative emphasizes pathos, betrayal, and frontier lawlessness.