Beadle's Pocket Library No. 261

About this issue

Blade, the Sport: The Giant of Clear Grit Camp by T. C. Harbaugh, serialized in Beadle and Adams' weekly dime novel (January 9, 1889). The opening establishes a western melodrama: a man called "Velvet Foot," crouching on a mountainside during a thunderstorm in Colorado's San Juan region, awaits a stagecoach. Inside the coach, a passenger named Blade and his companion Dynamite Dan travel toward the mining camp. An Indian figure climbs onto the stage roof; Blade confronts him, invoking shared violent history—robbery, betrayal, a canyon encounter years prior. The driver mysteriously vanishes; Blade stops the stage and leaps down to fight. Dynamite Dan reveals himself as Blade's enemy, offering combat with a fourteen-inch bowie knife. The narrative then shifts to Clear Grit mining camp, where eager prospectors await reports from scouts searching the distant Cochetopa Hills for gold deposits. An approaching stage excites the miners' hopes, only to disappoint.