Deadwood Dick Library, No. 4

This issue of the Half-Dime Library (April 5, 1899) features "Buffalo Ben, the Prince of the Pistol; or, Deadwood Dick in Disguise," a serial by Edward L. Wheeler, presented as a sequel to "The Double Daggers." The narrative opens in a remote Montana cabin during a harsh January winter, where an elderly fur trapper named Old Zeke Ransom shelters a refined young woman of twenty-three and her infant twins. The woman reveals she is fleeing fifteen pursuers hired by a wealthy man—her secret husband—who seeks her death and that of their children to secure a million-dollar inheritance. She entrusts Ransom with a written confession of her history, which he hides in his son Luke's cache of pelts. The story centers on themes of pursuit, betrayal, and survival on the frontier, with the woman's desperate escape forming the central plot.