Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 489

1886 · 16 pages

"The Double Face of Bed-Rock" by William G. Patten follows events in the mining settlement of Bed-Rock. The narrative opens in Kent's Pleasure Parlors, a saloon featuring a bar, gambling rooms with faro-banks and monte-tables, and a dance floor. A red-headed miner recounts how a fashionably dressed passenger nicknamed "Kid-Gloves"—later revealed to be Velvet Vane, known as the Diamond Sport—heroically defended a stagecoach against road-agents, driving them off despite the driver being shot. Vane's arrival at the saloon attracts attention. When drunk miner Roarin' Bob provokes him, Vane reluctantly fights and defeats Bob through superior technique, knocking him senseless. Afterward, Vane gambles at faro, winning roughly one hundred dollars, then settles at a table to observe the crowd. The story establishes Vane as a dangerous but skilled gunman and fighter with a reputation as a "bad man."

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