Beadle's Pocket Library No. 398

This 1891 Beadle and Adams dime novel installment presents "Captain Jack in Rocky Roost; The Border Boy" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, based on the real scout-poet John W. Crawford. The story chronicles Jack's early career in Pennsylvania mining country. After immigrating from Ireland in 1856, young Jack becomes a messenger between mines and village, earning the nickname "Dare Devil Jack" by completing a dangerous run during a severe storm, arriving shoeless and hatless. In a subsequent chapter, Jack rescues two nuns from a masked highwayman named Nick Newton who has murdered the carriage driver; Jack shoots the robber, who survives to be hanged. A third chapter depicts Jack descending into a collapsed Kenneth Mine shaft on a rope to assess whether miners trapped below can be rescued, finding the shaft dangerously blocked by a large rock and debris.