Beadle's Pocket Library No. 323

This 1890 Beadle and Adams dime novel presents "Dead-Shot Ike" by Roger Starbuck. The serial follows Ike Ward, a sixteen-year-old sharpshooter in Arizona, who hunts antelope in a willow grove but is interrupted by pursuing Apaches. Escaping through a valley, Ike meets Hezekiah Helper, a lanky Vermont entrepreneur planning to establish a museum featuring a captured wild Indian (admission: twenty-five cents for men, twenty cents for women). The two boys collaborate against Apache attackers on a river log, using gunfire and quick thinking to escape. After regrouping in the mountains, they discuss partnership while sharing supplies—Hez's tea, brown bread, and baked beans alongside Ike's antelope steak. They establish a defensive position, with Ike suggesting the Apaches will avoid the area due to nearby Navajo enemies.