Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 991

This weekly dime novel installment (No. 92, Vol. XXXIX, July 23, 1896) presents "The One-Armed Boss of Shakedown City," a mining camp mystery by T. C. Harbaugh. A middle-aged stranger is found murdered near Shakedown City in the Mariposa Range—unidentified, stripped of identifying marks. Two well-dressed young men, Bob and Ben, arrive by stage and create immediate tension at the saloon The Comet by defeating the local tough Larry in combat through superior martial skill. When questioned about a man named Bob Minan (whose father was allegedly whipped from Camp Rattlesnake three years earlier), they deflect. Later, they visit the corpse at Goldbug Dan's shanty and cryptically recognize the dead man but refuse to identify him, claiming they'll explain later. Mountain Kidd and the assembled miners demand answers, suspicious of the strangers' involvement in the murder.