Deadwood Dick Library No. 18: The Hermit of Cascade City

"The Hermit of Cascade City" This issue of the *Deadwood Dick Library* series contains the serialized story "The Hermit of Cascade City," chapters I and II. The narrative opens in Hayward City's "Full Hand" gambling establishment, where a Spanish miner named Joaquin (claiming descent from the outlaw Joaquin Muriete) desperately wagers his young son, Little Pet, against an English aristocrat, Lord Byron Cavendish, in a poker game to recover lost money. Cavendish wins and takes the child. The character Baltimore Bess, a female gunslinger, and Rosebud Rob, a dandified "sport," confront Cavendish but he escapes with the boy. Chapter II shifts to a remote mountain valley featuring a refined young man (Sir Tom) discovering an elderly hermit who has spent eight years mining gold from sands replenished annually by cascade floods. The hermit mentions his daughter Idyl and speaks of considerable buried wealth.