Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 389

This issue of *Beadle and Adams'* weekly, published January 6, 1885, features the continued serialized story of Western adventure and intrigue. "Road Agents!" introduces Gilbert Garrick, a well-dressed New York gentleman bound for the newly established mining camp Lightning Lode. On a mountain stage coach, Garrick encounters Mambrinus Maccaw, a verbose bullwhacker who regales him with tales of the camp's denizens, including the mysterious Kid Glove Kate—a veiled, armed woman frequenting the saloons, and a recently abandoned infant adopted by saloon owner Red Ryan. When moonlight illuminates the coach's interior, Garrick and fellow passengers reveal themselves as armed agents, unmasking Maccaw as a suspected road-agent decoy. Before Garrick can extract information, actual bandits halt the stage. The narrative then shifts to describe Lightning Lode itself: a mining camp nestled in a mountain pass, built around a rich quartz lode discovered by a belated hunter during a dramatic lightning storm.