Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 951

This is issue No. 98 of a Beadle and Adams dime novel pulp magazine, published weekly in 1895. The featured serial is "Deadwood Dick, Jr.'s, Right Bower: Shortest Time On Record" by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the "Deadwood Dick" novels. The story begins when a mysterious woman in a canyon gives a stranger named Gold Belt a mysterious paper, urging him to find a fortune and deliver it justly. Gold Belt arrives in Silver Valley just after the town's prominent citizen Andrew Stephenson is discovered murdered in his bedroom, stabbed with a knife. His son Simon assumes mayoral duties and offers a five-thousand-dollar reward. The murdered man had possessed a valuable paper containing a map to a vast treasure—tons of pure gold supposedly hidden at Devil's Gateway. The paper is missing, suggesting robbery as the motive. Gold Belt volunteers to help solve the crime, and Simon explains the paper's history: it was passed down through several men including someone named Bassatt, finally coming to Andrew. The townspeople discuss the mystery, and suspicion begins forming toward strangers in camp.