The New York Dime Library No. 1002

# Silver City Sam, the High-Roller Detective

This dime novel installment, by Jos. E. Badger Jr., opens a Western mystery serial titled Silver City Sam; or, The Death-Watch of Gopher Slope. Samuel Sheldon, a traveler from Silver City, discovers a corpse branded with a mysterious black handprint on the chest and bearing a dagger wound below the left ear. Local men Esau Gray and Jack Ellison identify the dead man as Jonah Cain, superintendent of the Coupon Mine on Hindoo Hill, explaining he'd received months of warnings from a phantom killer called the "Death-watch" or "Skeleton Rider"—a figure apparently targeting mine workers. Before they can elaborate, armed men led by Perry Castle ambush the trio, accusing them of Cain's murder. Sheldon attempts to defuse the tense standoff through wit and diplomacy while tensions escalate among the miners over the superintendent's death.