Dashing Diamond Dick, or, The Tigers of Tombstone

# Museum Catalog Note

This issue of Diamond Dick, Jr. (October 8, 1898) features "Dashing Diamond Dick: or, The Tigers of Tombstone" by W. B. Lawson. The story opens in a gold-rush Tombstone, Arizona, where feverish mining prosperity has spawned saloons, gambling dens, and lawlessness. The narrative establishes the setting through a saloon scene in which the drunk gambler "Tornado Tom" forces the portly German saloonkeeper Heinrich Schwauenflegle to dance at whip-point. The scene shifts to the arrival of a damaged stagecoach driven by express guard Walter James instead of the usual driver Sandy Rocks. James reveals that road agents—a masked gang calling themselves "the Tigers of Tombstone"—ambushed the coach, killing horses and fatally wounding Sandy Rocks. The leader wore yellow clothes with black markings and spoke in a soft, feminine voice. The express agent Jack Hamilton questions James about identifying the bandits.