Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 156

# Deadwood Dick of Deadwood: Or, The Picked Party

This 1880 Beadle and Adams dime novel by Edward L. Wheeler features the adventures of Deadwood Dick set around Billy-Goat Gulch and Skeleton Bend. The narrative opens with Edwin Booth Snowbank, a Black character portrayed as an aspiring Shakespearean tragedian, playing banjo in the wilderness while rehearsing passages from Hamlet. He is en route to meet Colonel Yankee Doodle Yuba at Skeleton Bend, where the Colonel plans to establish a church. Snowbank encounters a masked road agent, Captain Cutthroat, who interrogates him about Yuba's whereabouts before departing to commit robbery. The narrative then follows Cutthroat to a hidden camp in the Cat-Gut ravine, where he meets with masked confederates awaiting reports from operations in the Bend. The story combines Western frontier action with comedic characterization and robbery plots.