Dusky Dick

"Dusky Dick, or Old Toby Castor's Great Campaign" This 1872 dime novel by Joseph E. Badger Jr. opens with frontier melodrama. Edward Wilson, an aging settler, receives a threatening nighttime visit from Dusky Dick Morgan—a powder-scarred desperado named for his discolored complexion—who arrives bearing news of an impending Sioux uprising. Morgan demands Wilson's eighteen-year-old daughter Annie's hand in marriage as payment for protecting the family during the coming conflict. After Wilson angrily refuses and ejects him, Morgan threatens violence, but Annie intervenes with a rifle, forcing his retreat. The tension dissolves with the arrival of Toby Castor, a backwoods character and old family friend, whose appearance delights Wilson. The excerpt ends as Castor cryptically refuses to discuss his business until beyond earshot of listeners.