Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 485

The Boy Oarsman Detectives: Double Pull by George C. Jenks. A sporting mystery involving corrupt arrangement of a rowing race. Scrawny Will bets five hundred dollars with Frank Burton, a sporting-journal figure, that his unknown rower can defeat Burton's champion Stretcher Bull in a three-mile race on the Hulton course near Pittsburgh, scheduled for July 26th. Scrawny enlists Jim Cripps, a prize-fighter, to bribe Stretcher into throwing the race. A mysterious shabby-genteel man overhears their plot in a Bowery saloon and, revealed as an eighteen-year-old athlete named Owney the Oarsman, removes his disguise and follows Scrawny. Owney, Scrawny's unknown champion rower, has discovered he's being manipulated. The narrative then shifts to Mooney Baggs's sporting saloon on the Bowery, where Jim Cripps arrives to find Stretcher Bull during training preparations.