Beadle's Pocket Library No. 214

About this issue

This serialized Western tale by T. C. Harbaugh follows events in Bowie City, a mining town in California's Shasta gold country. The narrative begins with a mysterious notice posted in town announcing that "Death and his pale horse" will pass through at four o'clock. When the appointed hour arrives, a skeleton rider mounted on a gray horse gallops through town, armed with a cocked revolver and impervious to gunfire from the miners. After the apparition vanishes, a man called Shasta—who had previously witnessed the skeleton on the "Lone Injun Trail"—declares that Death has come to Grizzly Gulch to stay. The arrival of "Captain Apollo," the settlement's dominant figure, and his mysterious companion Meda (the "Queen of Bowie") introduces romantic complications, as the long-fingered, gray-eyed Shasta exhibits dangerous interest in the newcomer.