Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 584

This is Deadwood Dick, Jr. in Denver, the featured serial by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the Deadwood Dick novels. The story opens with a blizzard trapping a westbound Union Pacific express train thirty miles from Denver. Among the passengers are three central figures: an eccentric, well-dressed nineteen-year-old woman who reveals herself as "Cool Kate," a notorious con artist; an elderly Kansas farmer named Uriah Glen, traveling to purchase ranch land; and a young man in a sealskin ulster who is actually the famous detective Deadwood Dick, Jr. (alias Bristol). Cool Kate befriends Glen on the train and offers to help him acquire a "Red Ranch" for ten thousand dollars. Upon arriving in Denver, Dick warns the city marshal about Cool Kate's swindle scheme. The marshal describes her as the "queen of crooks," a dangerous woman known for elaborate cons, repeatedly arrested but always evading justice through alibis and her lawyer. Dick dons a disguise—a gentleman over fifty with gray hair—to investigate and protect Glen from Cool Kate's clutches.