Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 464

This issue of Beadle & Adams' pulp weekly (No. 464, September 14, 1887) features "Sandycraw, the Man of Grit" by Major Daniel Boone Dumont, an adventure serial set aboard the Mississippi River steamboat Emperor. The story concerns a poker dispute: Colonel Tazewell, a wealthy Mississippi planter, catches young Jack Jones cheating and demands his money back. The intervention of Sandycraw (Alexander Crawley), a professional gambler and confidence man, defuses the confrontation through witty rhetoric and deliberate absurdity, leaving the colonel embarrassed before the assembled passengers. Sandycraw cryptically warns Tazewell against striking the youth, suggesting he might unknowingly strike his own son—a reference that deeply unsettles the colonel. In the second chapter, Tazewell confides to Clifford Darrell, a young Kentuckian, that his infant son was stolen years ago, and Sandycraw's words have reawakened painful memories and suspicions about the boy's possible whereabouts and identity.