Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 285

Denver Doll's Decoy: Little Bill's Bonanza This story, the third in the "Denver Doll" series by Edward L. Wheeler (author of the Deadwood Dick novels), features the outlaw Murdock Brothers—Burk and Jack—and their gang of stage robbers, murderers, and horse-thieves hiding in a remote Idaho mountain cabin. The narrative opens with a farcical interruption: a persistent book-agent named George Washington Gum arrives selling various publications and narrowly escapes execution before being concealed. Later, a mysterious Reverend Jubal Andre arrives with his beautiful daughter Agnes and a guide named Red Eagle, seeking to hire the outlaws for sinister purposes. Andre explains that his daughter was married as a child to the worthless Joseph Wilton; now that Wilton has completed his prison sentence for manslaughter, Andre wants him "disposed of"—both to protect himself and because Agnes cannot inherit or remarry while Wilton lives. Complicating matters, a child from their union survives, currently traveling with a detective called Big Buckskin, whom Murdock recognizes as a formidable enemy.