Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 998

This issue of Beadle and Adams' dime novel (No. 998, September 1896) features "The Bluff Game of Gold Ledge City" by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the Deadwood Dick series. In Chapter II, an aged man named Henry Wheaton deposits a mysterious, tarnished silver casket—engraved with a curse—into the Gold Ledge National Bank for safekeeping, using a split-document verification scheme. Bank president Daniel Murray immediately recognizes the casket and reacts with shock, confiding to cashier Guerdon that he has seen it before but cannot explain why. Simultaneously, Murray and his son James discuss in private what appears to be a scheme involving fraudulent mining activity requiring immediate action. The narrative cuts to a young, dark-haired horseman traveling through a mountain gulch, the text becoming fragmented at the chapter's end.