Beadle's Pocket Library No. 264

This issue of a dime novel serial features "Denver Doll's Partner; or, Big Buckskin, the Sport" by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the Deadwood Dick series. In Chapter I, "A Villainous Bargain," the Murdock Brothers—a gang of stage robbers and horse-thieves hiding in a mountain cabin and hunted by the miner-scout Big Buckskin—are visited by an eccentric book agent named George Washington Gum, who boasts of improbable feats. A second visitor arrives: Red Eagle, a Native American messenger, accompanied by Jubal Andre, a clerical con man, and his daughter Agnes. Andre hires the outlaws for two thousand dollars to eliminate Joseph Wilton (Agnes's estranged husband) and locate a ten-year-old boy from their marriage. He reveals the boy, William, bears an owl-shaped birthmark and travels with Big Buckskin, a target the outlaws already pursue.