Beadle's Pocket Library No. 277

# The Idiot Boy Avenger: Captain Wild-Cat's Band

This serialized adventure, authored by Albert W. Aiken, unfolds in the San Juan region of Colorado. A fragile youth and a resolute girl traveler flee pursuers through mountain terrain toward Juanapolis, a six-month-old mining camp in Death Valley. An enigmatic, skin-clad mountain dweller warns them away from the valley, invoking the "massacre of Conejos," but the girl insists they proceed. In Juanapolis, the narrative introduces the town's principal characters: Desmond, owner of the "Desperado's Den" saloon, and "The Doctor," proprietor of the "Tenderfoot Rest" hotel, a mysterious stranger of middle age and courtly bearing who arrived under unknown circumstances and inherited the hotel after nursing its dying former owner. Both figures possess concealed histories. The story emphasizes the isolated mining settlement's rough conditions and establishes a framework of secrets and flight that will apparently motivate the central plot.