Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 491

Deadwood Dick, Jr.'s Compact: The Story of a Deadly Reprisal by Edward L. Wheeler continues his popular frontier series. Judge Gilbert, mayor of the mining camp Cascade City, discovers his daughter Gracie has vanished. His chore-boy Jimmy Junebug returns from searching town with an anonymous threatening letter bearing a coffin, skull and crossbones, signed by "Prince Pistol, King of the West," announcing "The first blow has been struck." Gilbert faints in horror. Meanwhile, the frontier character Old Avalanche, traveling through rainy mountains with a dapper stranger named Valentine Vassar, hears a cry: a young Seminole woman named Sunshine calls for help—her dying father, Storm Cloud the Indian Hermit (reputed wealthy), requests a white man's presence to leave him a final trust before death. The two men enter the hermit's hut to meet him.