Beadle's Pocket Library No. 484

Silver City Tom; Blue Belt's Barter By James L. Bowen, this serial installment (No. 484, from Beadle and Adams, 1893) establishes a frontier mystery. In Silver City—a ramshackle settlement of seven buildings—a well-dressed stranger, Charles Marline, arrives and meets secretly with an Indian named Blue Belt in the forest. Observed by the suspicious scout Tom Taylor, they perform a blood-oath ceremony, becoming "brothers." Back at the tavern, the landlord Bawny Corrol and Taylor drug Marline's coffee. Rendered senseless, he is visited by a young woman who mysteriously revives him by positioning his head at the window during a rainstorm, allowing cold rain to counteract the poison. Marline awakens confused but alive, realizing he has an unknown ally. The story combines frontier suspicion, secret alliances, and poisoning intrigue.