Beadle's Pocket Library, No. 10

Buffalo Ben, the Prince of the Pistol This serialized adventure by Edward L. Wheeler continues the Deadwood Dick narrative. The story opens with a tragedy in an isolated Montana cabin where Old Zeke Ransom shelters a refined young woman fleeing persecution with her twin infants. The woman reveals she was secretly married to a wealthy, high-born man who rejected her and set assassins after her to prevent his illegitimate children from inheriting. Her own family, locked in a bitter feud with her husband's house, cast her out. While Ransom hides her written confession in his son Luke's cache, a band of hired killers—led by a sinister, well-armed man—emerges from hiding. They fatally shoot both Ransom and the woman. The narrative then shifts to Sunday in Deadwood, where thousands of miners crowd the main street. Wheeler employs frontier dialect throughout, mixing action, melodrama, and frontier setting conventions typical of dime novel adventure fiction.