The Doctor Detective in Texas

About this issue

This issue of Beadle and Adams's dime novel weekly (July 4, 1898) contains "The Doctor Detective in Texas; or, Jack Karbun and the Cowboys: A Romance of the Mystery of the Golden Coffin" by Lieutenant A. K. Sims. The opening depicts the execution of deserter Jason Kinglake before a firing squad in the Arizona desert near Chiricahua Apache territory. Colonel Armiston, the commander, secretly possesses a small golden coffin containing precious diamonds, rubies, and pearls—apparently taken from the condemned man. Armiston destroys Kinglake's final letter to his wife, which mentioned the missing coffin. The narrative shifts to western Texas, where Crystal Karbun, daughter of rancher Jack Karbun, rides an ostrich named Jupiter across the plains while Fort Mesquite conducts rain-making experiments using explosive "crack-rock" charges. Upon returning home, Crystal discovers her ranch house ransacked and her father missing, amid escalating tensions between cattlemen factions and encroaching settlers and soldiers.