Beadle's Pocket Library No. 211

# "Despard, the Duelist: A Sequel to 'Patent Leather Joe's Defeat'"

By Philip S. Warne, this Western melodrama serializes in Little Giant and His Band. The story opens with two prospectors, Foxy and Tidy Tip, witnessing a supernatural execution: skeletal figures bearing luminous bones and flameless torches execute James Kane for seducing a woman, a band calling themselves "Skeleton Avengers." The narrative then shifts to Joe Smedley, the heroic vigilante captain of Hell Hole mining camp, whose reunion with townspeople is disrupted by the arrival of the mysterious "Queen of the Green Cloth"—revealed to be Hortense, now married to Iron Despard, who operates a new faro gambling establishment. A jealous woman watches Joe's emotional reaction to Hortense. After a tense roadside confrontation between Joe and the married Hortense, Joe encounters what appears to be a phantom woman's spirit beckoning him toward a precipice, suggesting his doom approaches.