Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 309

This issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly contains the beginning of Edward L. Wheeler's "Deadwood Dick's Big Deal; or, The Gold Brick of Oregon." On a mountain road, Cleveland St. Cecil, a mining company receiver traveling with fifteen thousand dollars, is stopped by a masked highwayman who reveals himself as "Crazy Chet," a man St. Cecil does not recognize. Rather than robbing him, Chet offers St. Cecil ten thousand dollars as a bequest, along with a bizarre inheritance: after Chet's planned suicide that evening, St. Cecil must break the bank of "Gold Brick," a wealthy female gambler who runs the Palace saloon at Right Bower Camp and has apparently limitless funds. Chet promises additional money will mysteriously appear if St. Cecil drops coins into a tube in his grave. In exchange, St. Cecil must resist Gold Brick's attractions and bankrupt her establishment. St. Cecil agrees to the strange compact.