Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 504

"The Big Shell Out," by Jos. E. Badger, Jr., is a frontier romance serialized in this 1888 issue. Chapter II introduces a gaunt, melancholy tramp working a shell-and-pea con game to earn food. He demonstrates the scam on section workers, successfully cheating Pat McCarthy out of a dollar by palming the pea under his fingernail. McCarthy and the section gang attack him in anger. The chapter shifts to Long Jim Anderson, a towering six-foot-four bridge boss commanding a rival crew. Spotting the brawl ahead while operating a hand-car on the rails, Jim recognizes McCarthy's gang attacking a lone stranger and resolves to intervene, despite tension between the two work gangs and his numerical disadvantage. The narrative emphasizes physical descriptions and working-class railroad conflict.