Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 798

About this issue

This weekly dime novel, published by Beadle and Adams for 5 cents, opens with a mystery story titled "The Army Captain's Crue: The Romance of the Woman Shadow of the Fort" by Col. Prentiss Ingraham. The tale concerns a series of murders at a frontier fort. The Secret Service chief dispatches a young detective named Dick Doom (known as "the Ferret of the Golden Fetters") to investigate. Doom carries multiple badges and currently pursues a notorious criminal named Valentine Gibson, whom he believes escaped from an asylum twenty-two months prior rather than dying. The narrative shifts to Fort Faraway, where a mysterious assassin—"the Silent Slayer"—kills a sentinel with a thrown bowie-knife while a relief guard approaches. The killer escapes on horseback. In a parallel storyline set a year earlier, a young courier called Kit Kent (nicknamed "the Boy Scout" and "the Rattler") is accused of spying for outlaws after scouts report seeing him hide notes that are retrieved by masked men. When a stagecoach robbery follows, Kent is arrested for treason and faces execution without trial. The text breaks off at his arrest.