Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 389

This issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly, published January 6, 1885, features the continued serialized story of Western adventure and intrigue. "Road Agents!" introduces Gilbert Garrick, a well-dressed New York gentleman bound for the newly established mining camp Lightning Lode. On a mountain stage coach, Garrick encounters Mambrinus Maccaw, a verbose bullwhacker who regales him with tales of the camp's denizens, including the mysterious Kid Glove Kate—a veiled, armed woman frequenting the saloons, and a recently abandoned infant adopted by saloon owner Red Ryan. When moonlight illuminates the coach's interior, Garrick and fellow passengers reveal themselves as armed agents, unmasking Maccaw as a suspected road-agent decoy. Before Garrick can extract information, actual bandits halt the stage. The narrative then shifts to describe Lightning Lode itself: a mining camp nestled in a mountain pass, built around a rich quartz lode discovered by a belated hunter during a dramatic lightning storm.