Beadle's New Dime Novels: The Death's-Head Rangers

About this issue

The opening installment of this dime novel is set thirty-five years prior in Kentucky and Tennessee, establishing the story's historical context of sparse settlement and regional distinctiveness. The narrative opens at a militia training-day near Lexington where Colonel Biggs attempts to drill four local companies—the Lexington Guards, Boone Invincibles, Patriot Fencibles, and Lexington Rangers—comprising frontier hunters in hunting-shirts and coon-skin caps. The drill dissolves into chaos when the tavern drums signal refreshment time. At Biggs's bar, the gathering devolves into a shooting match when Bill Yancey, a large braggart, is challenged by a diminutive, wizen old hunter to a wager: the little man bets he can place six bullets of seven into the same hole. Yancey accepts, raising the stakes to twenty-five dollars with his rifle to match.