Beadle's Pocket Library No. 159

This 1887 Beadle and Adams dime novel, Patent-Leather Joe's Defeat, by Philip S. Warne, features serialized Western action. In Chapter I, undercover lawman Bob Bolton rides a stagecoach from Denver during a violent thunderstorm when road-agents attack. Bolton subdues the robbers while stage-driver Red-headed Rube falls wounded. The bandits' leader, Captain Mask, later shoots Rube (deliberately grazing his head) to maintain his cover. In Golden Gulch, young Alf Cheswick arrives carrying his unconscious seventeen-year-old bride Claire, having escaped the coach. A dead road-agent lies inside. Chapter II introduces Colonel Despard Dangerfield, a cold military figure, and shifts to the young couple's lodgings where a mysterious elderly visitor arrives with warnings of danger. The narrative combines stagecoach gunplay, undercover intrigue, and domestic peril.