Wild West Weekly, No. 29

This issue of Young Wild West, a weekly story magazine of Western life (May 8, 1903), features the serialized story "A Mayor at Twenty" by An Old Scout. The narrative opens in the mining town of Weston, Dakota, in the late 1870s, where a card sharp named Monte Pete runs a three-card game in front of the bank. A tall, thin stranger calling himself Darius Winkles—claiming to hail from Connecticut—challenges and beats Pete at his own game, winning ten dollars on his first try. When a brawny miner named Joe Lemperle subsequently attempts the game, betting a hundred dollars, Pete uses sleight-of-hand manipulation to make Lemperle lose, substituting the deuce of clubs for the queen of diamonds. A character identified only as "Wild" observes and comments on Lemperle's foolishness. The issue also includes extensive advertising for instructional books covering mesmerism, palmistry, hypnotism, magic tricks, boxing, fencing, letter-writing, and mechanical engineering.