The Desperate Dozen

This issue of Beadle & Adams' dime novel series (July 22, 1885) contains "The Desperate Dozen; or, The Fair Fiend of the Cour d'Alene" by Captain H. Holmes, a western serial. The story follows the "Desperate Dozen"—twelve outlaws controlling Satan's Own, an isolated Idaho gold camp with strict population limits. When a Chinese prospector named Fin Fin arrives and proves skilled at poker despite the men's attempts to fleece him, the volatile Merced Monte expels him at gunpoint, suspecting him a spy. Fin Fin cryptically threatens revenge. Three months later, a mysterious beautiful woman called Canyon Clara arrives and demands to marry Merced Monte on the spot, holding him at gunpoint until Gospel Noll (an itinerant preacher in camp) performs the ceremony. The narrative combines frontier desperado action with romantic melodrama.