Beadle's Pocket Library No. 117

About this issue

This issue contains "Fancy Frank, of Colorado: The Trapper's Trust," a frontier serial by Buffalo Bill (Hon. Wm. F. Cody), published by Beadle and Adams in April 1886. The story opens with Mark Sanford, a buckskin-clad borderman on the Colorado plains, encountering a ghost-like figure in moonlight. Believing it supernatural, he fires his rifle and discovers he has fatally wounded a woman in her nightdress clutching a young child. She dies after extracting his promise to care for her baby. The narrative shifts to Fort McPherson, where a mysterious young girl—known as the Red Plume or Hermit Huntress—visits General Emory with critical intelligence: Lieutenant Rockwell and his cavalry are besieged in a canyon by Old Whistler's Dog Soldier Sioux. She offers to guide a rescue squadron but demands Emory pardon the condemned soldier Richard Sanford. Though puzzled by her interest in the condemned man, whom she claims never to have met, the general agrees. Sanford is released, and the maiden leads Captain Taylor's cavalry squadron toward the Republican River in pursuit of the besieged troops, with the mysterious Sanford secretly following.