Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 601

This issue of Beadle and Adams' pulp magazine features the opening installment of "Red-Hot Times at Round-Up," by Lieutenant A. K. Sims. The story is set in the frontier town of Round-Up and centers on Nadine, a mysterious masked "Card-Queen" working in the Gold Mine saloon, who attracts crowds of miners and cowboys despite never revealing her face. Flavel Fox, foreman of the Double-Bar ranch, becomes protective of her. The narrative introduces Hans Swentzel, a jolly, stocky Dutchman who arrives searching for his brother Fritz. After Hans sings loudly in the saloon, Fox attempts to eject him and a violent confrontation ensues, during which Nadine intervenes to prevent murder. The action escalates into a street fight where Hans systematically defeats Fox—beating him with his own shoe, then later covering him with a rusty derringer pistol. The story combines Western frontier action with comic relief through Hans's exaggerated German-dialect dialogue and slapstick humor.