Beadle's Pocket Library No. 45

This 1884 Beadle and Adams pulp weekly features "Buckhorn Bill; or, The Red Rifle Team," a Western serial by Edward L. Wheeler, prolific author of Deadwood Dick stories. The narrative opens as sixteen-year-old Bill Burnham and his fourteen-year-old sister Maolin ride home across Dakota prairie to their father's ranch. Ambushed by masked outlaws calling themselves the Press-Gang—claiming to conscript fighters against Indians—the siblings are seized and interrogated about their father Phil's whereabouts. The gang's captain, known as Captain Coffin, reveals Phil abandoned the organization and has been hunted for a month. When the children refuse to divulge information, the captain executes Maolin before Bill's eyes, torturing him with her death. The narrative subsequently follows the now-vengeance-driven Bill as he becomes "Buckhorn Bill," a skilled rifleman hunting the Press-Gang across the frontier, having killed numerous members over two years.