Outlaw Jack

Outlaw Jack; or, The Mountain Devil By Harry Hazard, this serialized pocket novel is set during the California gold rush of 1850. An emigrant wagon train of nearly one hundred souls, led by Caleb Mitchell, rests in a mountain valley after a tragic accident: a rifle discharged in Mitchell's wagon fatally wounded his wife. As the party awaits her death to resume their journey before winter, two young men—Burr Wythe and Pauley Duplin—discover gold. Duplin reveals he has found a gold placer while hunting, discovering nuggets in a dry creek bed. He recruits Wythe and another emigrant, Jack Tyrrel, to keep the discovery secret and devise a plan to exploit it. The narrative involves the tensions between gold fever, loyalty to the wagon train, and the suspicious attention of a man named Nate Upshur, who glimpses the nugget and grows interested in its origins.