Beadle's Pocket Library No. 168

# Catalog Note

Deadwood Dick's Ward: The Black Hills Jezebel by Edward L. Wheeler, serialized dime novel. A girl named Kentucky Kit (or Kate), dressed in boy's clothing, drives an overland wagon through the Black Hills with her hunchbacked father, whose mental state is deteriorating from some past trouble. When two rough hunters—Bloody Bill and Black Bob—shoot a deer she was pursuing, Kit forces them at gunpoint to butcher and carry the meat to camp. After they leave, the men realize "Kate" matches the description of a target mentioned in their instructions: they've been hired for a hundred dollars each to kill both passengers. They plan to poison the meat with arsenic and covculus indicus, creeping to the camp in pre-dawn darkness to coat the venison. The narrative breaks mid-sentence as they prepare their deadly work.