Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 618

This issue of Beadle and Adams' pulp magazine (No. 98, 1889) features "The Clincher Campaign," Chapter II, by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the Deadwood Dick novels. The serialized story introduces Jabez Clincher, an eccentric Cincinnati pork merchant, and Deadwood Dick Jr., a detective summoned from Washington. When Clincher searches for a man named Ezra Moore at the Palace Hotel, a confrontation erupts; the mysterious young detective intervenes. At Clincher's mansion, the merchant reveals his crisis: his educated, beautiful daughter Clara eloped with the seemingly wealthy "cattle king" Ezra Moore two years prior. Abandoned in Arkansas with an infant, Clara wrote begging money. Clincher sent five hundred dollars via registered letter, but the recipients—registered as "Mr. and Mrs. E. Moore"—fled unpaid debts. Dick suspects fraud.