Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1063

# Wild Bill's Weird Foe: The Mystery of Moaning Gulch

Beadle and Adams, December 7, 1897

William G. Patten's serial "Wild Bill's Weird Foe: The Mystery of Moaning Gulch" recounts Wild Bill Hickok's gold-prospecting expedition into the Black Hills years before official discovery. Led by the famous gunslinger and accompanied by prospector "Crab" Zeb Davis, the physically imposing Big Bruno, the taciturn young "Nervy" Ned, and blustering, cowardly "Ginger Jim," the party locates rich placer deposits in a remote, sinister gorge whose constant wind produces eerie moaning sounds. The narrative characterizes Hickok as a mild-mannered, blonde-haired dandy and skilled marksman reluctant to kill, haunted by his violent past. The cursed-seeming gulch simultaneously attracts and repels the men; a mysterious stream vanishes into a black hole. As they construct rockers and sluices for extraction, strange atmospheric phenomena and dream sequences intensify the supernatural tension.