Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 117

# Museum Catalog Description

This pulp magazine issue contains three interconnected narratives. "Three Acts of a Life Drama," attributed to Major Dangerfield Burr, is a melodramatic serial set partly in the American South and West. Act First depicts a dying woman (Gertrude) and her brother Guy at her deathbed; she begs forgiveness for an unnamed wrong and dies. In Act Second, Guy duels a rival on a moonlit Southern beach to avenge her, and is shot. Act Third shifts to snowy mountains where a half-frozen man discovers a gold-crazed hermit hoarding wealth in a cavern; they shoot each other.

The narrative then transitions to "The Pony Prince's Strange Pard," a Colorado mining story. At the settlement of Good Man's Gulch, anxious miners await the overland mail-coach and the "Pony Prince," an expert young express rider. He arrives with news of road-agents led by the "Black Captain" who waylaid the stage coach in Specter Canyon, killing an army sutler and wounding the driver Hank Holbrook before being repelled.