A Game of Gold; or, Deadwood Dick's Big Strike

About this issue

A Game of Gold; or, Deadwood Dick's Big Strike by Edward L. Wheeler, serialized in this June 1, 1880 issue of Beadle and Adams's weekly story paper. The installment opens in the mining settlement of Big Bonanza on a Sabbath morning. A sermon by Reverend Cinnamon Charley is interrupted when Deadwood Dick, leader of the outlaw gang known as the Rough-and-Readys, bursts into the church with masked men to capture a fugitive. Dick accuses a stranger named Frank Foster of betraying ten gang members to Judge Lynch for two hundred dollars. Foster denies the charge, but Dick proposes a wager: the two will throw dice, and the loser must walk a cable strung across a nearby abyss with hands tied. Dick wins the final roll (five aces to Foster's five fives), determining Foster must attempt the perilous crossing. The narrative continues beyond the excerpt's conclusion.