Beadle's Dime Library No. 440

Museum Catalog Note This issue features the opening chapters of "A Tale of W[estern Adventure]" by Albert W. Aiken, author of several frontier serials. The story is set in Southwestern Texas near mining camps and follows Gideon Goldlace, a flamboyantly dressed stranger riding a white mule, who happens upon a lonely cabin where a young woman is being threatened by her brutish Irish stepfather, Turk McKinney, who demands she marry him after killing her mother through abuse. When the woman cries out in protest, Goldlace intervenes, kicks down the cabin door, and faces McKinney in a confrontation. After verbal sparring and insults exchanged between the two men—Goldlace identifying himself as "the High Horse of the Pacific"—they fight using boxing technique. Goldlace defeats McKinney twice with powerful right-hand punches, establishing himself as the woman's rescuer. The narrative combines Western frontier adventure with elements of rescue melodrama.