The Deadwood Dick Library, No. 27

This issue of the Half-Dime Library (No. 21, September 13, 1899) contains the opening serial installment of "Chip, the Girl Sport; or, The Golden Idol of Mt. Rosa," by Edward L. Wheeler, author of the Deadwood Dick novels. Set in Northern Arizona's mining town of Bummer's Bend, the story opens during a gala horse-racing day. The protagonist is an eighteen-year-old woman dressed in fashionable male attire—white breeches, vest, blazing diamond, velvet jacket—who arrives by stagecoach, armed with revolvers and twirling a gold-headed cane. She attracts immediate attention from townspeople, including a blonde buckskin-clad man named Captain Mayburn and his Chinese companion. The narrative establishes the rough mining settlement's three social classes: wealthy speculators, sports and gamblers, and toiling miners, while noting the danger posed by nearby Indian bands, particularly Apache chief Hoko-me-go-to (the White Face). Also cataloged are numerous prior Deadwood Dick, Jr. installments.