Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 983

About this issue

This issue of Beadle and Adams' Half-Dime Library (May 26, 1896) features "Banty Billy's Bonanza; or, The Bear-Tamer's Disguise" by W.M. R. Eyster, author of "The Tie-Up Sport" and "Faro Frank." The Western serial opens with young Banty Billy Bruce, a keen-eyed boy with a Winchester, spotting two fugitives—an elderly wounded man and a sixteen-year-old girl named Josie—being pursued through a canyon by armed men. Banty decides to help but cannot reach them in time. The pursuers catch the pair; the old man (Josie's uncle) dies before revealing the location of important papers hidden in Josie's hat lining. When the ruffians threaten violence to extract information, Josie makes a desperate escape across the canyon rocks. One pursuer shoots at her; the bullet nearly kills her, and she tumbles from her perch, now hanging twenty feet above the rocks as the men position themselves below to catch her fall.