“The Bandit of the Devil’s Canyon” (1925) is Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first novel—the progenitor of American adventure and science-fiction literature. Burroughs’s western paints a true picture of Arizona ranch life in the 1880s: a gang of villains plots to seize the ranch and the gold mine of a cozy beauty, and to swindle her out of her lawful inheritance. They also want to prove that the girl’s old friend is a bandit and a robber. But the heroine comes out with dignity from even the most complicated situations—there are stagecoach robberies, shootouts, and even abduction! Yet the identity of the mysterious villain remains unknown until the last pages of this gripping tale…