Beadle's Pocket Library No. 220

Crack-Shot Frank; or, Bill Bounce the Mountain Bravado

By Charles Morris, this dime novel serial opens in West Virginia's Shenandoah region. At a rifle competition near Sumter organized by a wealthy local offering prizes—from a two-hundred-dollar purse to a silver-mounted powder flask—a boisterous, red-shirted mountaineer nicknamed "Bill Bounce" dominates early shooting matches with his rifle "Betsy." A well-dressed young city gentleman named Frazer, accompanied by the lazy Bart and a taciturn Virginian, arrives and is provoked by Bounce's bragging. Despite warnings from Smike and Bart, Frazer challenges Bounce to a private match after the official competition concludes. Meanwhile, a gloomy young local marksman named Hardy, troubled by financial distress (the sheriff is foreclosing on his mother's house), struggles to compete under emotional strain. The narrative follows the various contestants preparing for the main event—a difficult three-hundred-yard shot at a small eagle-shaped target with a red painted center.