Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 255

This issue of *Beadle and Adams' dime novel series (June 13, 1882) features "Captain Apollo, the King-Pin of Bowie; or, Flash o' Lightning's Feud," a western romance by T. C. Harbaugh set in the Shasta gold country. The serialized narrative opens in the mining town of Bowie with miners gathered at the Nugget Hotel, puzzled by a cryptic notice predicting Death's arrival on horseback at four o'clock. When a skeleton rider on a pale horse materializes and passes through town—unfazed by gunfire from the skeptical miners—the supernatural warning is apparently confirmed. Chapter Two introduces "the Queen of Bowie," a beautiful woman named Meda whom Captain Apollo (the ruling figure of Grizzly Gulch, physically described as handsome and formidable) has brought to town. The nervous miner Shasta, observing the captain with suspicious intensity, covertly enters the Nugget Hotel seeking her, while observer Perfection Pete predicts violence brewing between the men.