Beadle's Dime Library No. 818: "Gentleman Dave, the Dead Game Sport"

This issue features the first installment of "Gentleman Dave, the Dead Game Sport; or, The Card Queen of Silver Seam" by William R. Eyster. The western pulp serial opens with Dave Warner, down on his luck, approaching the mining camp of Silverado. He is ambushed and lassoed by masked men working for a mysterious boss who mistake him for someone else. After being judged wrong, Warner is thrown into a prospect dump-hole. His captors then prepare to capture a second victim. Among them is Ragged Rufe, a vagrant roper coerced into the scheme, who grows uneasy about the murderous nature of the operation and resolves to observe what follows as another target approaches. The narrative establishes a tone of frontier violence and criminal conspiracy, centering on mistaken identity and predatory activity in a rough mining town.