Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 662

About this issue

The Specter Soldier of the Overland by Col. Prentiss Ingraham continues the Butterfly Billy serial. A cavalry unit camps with an old trapper, Bruin Bill, who recounts a tragedy: years earlier while guiding an emigrant train westward, he fell in love with the daughter of a respectable southern family, the Ashleys. The girl rode off chasing a deer, got lost, and during a night storm, Comanches attacked the train. Bruin Bill found only burnt corpses. Maddened by grief, he disappeared for weeks. Unexpectedly, the cavalry's young lieutenant reveals himself as Arthur Ashley, sole survivor of that massacre—he was captured, escaped, and reported an Indian plot to military authorities. The scout suggests the missing Ashley sister may have survived; a mysterious ranchero reportedly rescued a girl from the prairie years ago and married her. The lieutenant and Bruin Bill plan to examine the massacre graves and then seek out the "Prairie Hercules" ranchero to discover whether his wife is Arthur's lost sister.