Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 49

This issue of *Beadle's Half-Dime Library* (No. 49, copyright 1878) features "The Masked Terror; or, Deadwood Dick in Danger" by Edward L. Wheeler. The story opens in Del Norte, Colorado, a frontier gambling town on the Rio Grande. Wheeler provides detailed description of the settlement and its main attraction, the "Oriental Palace," an elaborate gambling establishment. The narrative centers on a high-stakes dominoes game between Captain Bill Monte, a renowned gunfighter and sharper, and a mysterious stranger calling himself "El Gamin," who has just won heavily at faro. Monte, playing for his last eight thousand dollars against Gamin's equal stake, attempts to cheat during their final game. When Gamin exposes the fraud and threatens violence, the story cuts to a secondary plot beginning in Chapter I, "The Home of the Harrises—A Strange Message," suggesting the tale's continuation involves other characters and developments beyond the gambling confrontation.