Beadle's Pocket Library No. 115

Catalog Description This issue features the opening of "Deadwood Dick's Double: The Ghost of Gorgon's Gulch," a Western serial by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the Deadwood Dick novels. A wagon train of colonists, led by Judge Judson Elliott and including his daughter Ethel and suitor Alf Montague, arrives in Wild-Cat City expecting a prosperous settlement. Instead, they find only a crude casino run by Bill Myers and a Chinese employee. The land agent who sold them the property has deceived them—the valley is wild and undeveloped. When a horseman named Chris Carleton arrives, claiming to represent the outlaw Deadwood Dick, who allegedly owns the territory, Elliott refuses to be intimidated. Carleton delivers a warning that Dick will not tolerate settlers. The narrative establishes conflict between the colonists' claim to the land and Dick's assertion of prior ownership.