Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 977

This issue of Beadle and Adams' dime novel series (No. 977, April 14, 1896) features "Deadwood Dick Doomed" by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the Deadwood Dick series. The Western adventure opens with the outlaw hero captured by Captain Lucifer (Melvin Munson) and his gang, who tie him to a wild horse named Black Thunderer to drag him to death across a barren plain. Dick miraculously survives and awakens in a cabin, where a woman mistakes him for her husband, George Grill, whom she believed dead. The plot thickens when Munson reveals he holds the real George Grill captive in a rocky prison, torturing him for an unknown secret. Grill refuses to divulge the information despite threats of extended imprisonment and harm to his wife and child, trapped in a cycle of psychological torment that leaves his ultimate fate uncertain.