Beadle's Pocket Library No. 133

# Wild-Fire, the Boss of the Road

This 1886 serial romance by Frank Dumont, subtitled "The Wolves of Satan's Gap," unfolds in Helena, Montana during the silver rush. The story opens in a gambling saloon where Fred Gordon, a desperate young man, exposes a faro dealer's cheating scheme using a waxed ace card and recovers stolen gold-dust at gunpoint. Gordon's antagonist, Donald Stone—a vindictive rival from St. Louis—has engineered Gordon's ruin through gambling, seeking revenge over their shared past love, Edwina Dares. Stone had previously poisoned Edwina with toxin-laced flowers before their wedding; her body mysteriously vanished from the family vault. When Edwina suddenly appears alive in the saloon, Stone escalates toward violence, but sympathetic miners offer Gordon protection. The narrative combines frontier justice, romantic melodrama, and criminal conspiracy.