Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 374

# Museum Catalog Note

The Broadway Spotter in the Black Hills, by Captain Howard Holmes, opens a serialized Western adventure. The story is set in Custer City, Black Hills, where a thirteen-year-old messenger called Quartz Kid attempts to deliver a letter to Major Max Blister at the Dolores House hotel. A mysterious gray-eyed man with a dark-brown mustache mesmerizes the boy through hypnotic ocular power and steals the letter before vanishing. Major Blister, a large man in dark clothes, questions Quartz Kid about the theft and recruits him to investigate. Blister's associate Poker Perry joins the hunt, suspecting the letter-thief may be Fred Ferret, whom they believed eliminated in New York. Blister retires to secret quarters above a saloon where he questions a waiter named Gideon about a trap set on Mulberry Street in New York, suggesting an ongoing criminal conspiracy spanning two cities.