Deadwood Dick Library No. 33

The Knight of the Gulch This pulp adventure serial, set in Deadwood City during the Black Hills mining era, introduces Rosebud Rob, a dandyish gunslinger and man of action described as "the Dandy, Sport, and Man to Suit all Circumstances." The story opens at "The Little Brown Jug" saloon, where rough miners and locals including Baltimore Bess (a woman in men's clothing), Colonel Bill Stokes, and thugs led by Hickory Hank gather. Rosebud Rob arrives seeking Munro Malvern, a wealthy but morally compromised mine owner of the Big Bullion claim. Malvern, living luxuriously despite arriving penniless a year prior, harbors designs on the virtuous eighteen-year-old Jessie Mapleton, a washerwoman whose father he wronged in a mining dispute. His parasitic stepson Ralph Lamont also pursues the girl while extorting money from Malvern for gambling debts.