Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 286

This Beadle and Adams weekly (1883) features "Josh, the Boy Tenderfoot: The Wild Men of Buzzard Bar" by Captain Mark Wilton, a Colorado-set Western serial. Chapter II opens with two men—Randolph Barr, an Eastern businessman, and guide Paul Wilbur—riding through Gunnison County to claim the Cinnamon mine, which Barr legally owns but which others now work illegally. Wilbur advises that Western disputes are settled by revolvers rather than courts. Their ride ends abruptly when masked assassins in ambush shoot at them; both men and horses plunge into Barrel Chasm, apparently to their deaths. Chapter III shifts to Buzzard Bar proper, where eighteen-year-old Joshua Pepper—an awkward Eastern orphan—arrives by stagecoach seeking work. Despite his ill-fitting clothes and obvious inexperience, he attracts the rough miners' derision, though stage driver Long Tom Barney offers him sympathy. At Jack Magoffin's hotel, Joshua meets the hardened Dave French, who schemes fresh mischief despite Barney's protective presence.