Beadle's Half-Dime Library No. 109

This issue of Beadle's Half-Dime Library presents "Deadwood Dick as Detective," a western story by Edward L. Wheeler. The narrative opens in Rough Shod, a mining town in the Colorado carbonate region near Leadville. Mayor Clancy Adair hires the brutal proprietors of the Champion's Roost tavern—Captain Sal Savage and his ill-favored wife Nance—to murder an arriving stagecoach passenger named Carroll Holly for one hundred dollars. When the stage arrives that evening, several passengers register, including a young dandified stranger matching Holly's description, along with a white-bearded New York detective named Phineas Porter wearing green goggles. Holly, handsome and fair-haired, settles into the tavern's private room where he encounters a coarse, jeweled young woman who mysteriously recognizes him by his aliases—California Charlie and Buckshot Bill—claiming she knew him in Mexico three years prior.