Beadle's Pocket Library No. 429

Alone on the Plains

By Edward Willett. A frontier adventure serial in which Walter Bligh, a twenty-five-year-old Missourian, leads a caravan carrying trade goods and currency from Missouri toward Santa Fe in New Mexico. His trusted guide, the weathered mountain man Bill Beeler, conspires with the dissolute clerk Simon Leonard to rob and abandon Bligh on the prairie. Leonard recruits the three teamsters through promises of wealth and intimidation, and even coerces the young orphan Charlie Simbell into complicity despite his devotion to Bligh. During an encampment on the barren sage plains, Beeler and his conspirators seize the sleeping Bligh, bind him, and announce their intention to leave him to perish in the wilderness. Bligh appeals individually to each man—recounting kindnesses rendered—but they refuse, driven by greed, grievance, or fear. Leonard reveals his particular hatred stems from Bligh's interference in his courtship of a wealthy widow.