A Game of Gold; or, Deadwood Dick's Big Strike

Museum Catalog Note *A Game of Gold; or, Deadwood Dick's Big Strike* by Edward L. Wheeler, serialized in this June 1, 1880 issue of Beadle and Adams's weekly story paper. The installment opens in the mining settlement of Big Bonanza on a Sabbath morning. A sermon by Reverend Cinnamon Charley is interrupted when Deadwood Dick, leader of the outlaw gang known as the Rough-and-Readys, bursts into the church with masked men to capture a fugitive. Dick accuses a stranger named Frank Foster of betraying ten gang members to Judge Lynch for two hundred dollars. Foster denies the charge, but Dick proposes a wager: the two will throw dice, and the loser must walk a cable strung across a nearby abyss with hands tied. Dick wins the final roll (five aces to Foster's five fives), determining Foster must attempt the perilous crossing. The narrative continues beyond the excerpt's conclusion.