Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 394

This issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly contains the opening of a serial Western story titled "The Man Who Meandered in out of the Moist," beginning with Chapter I. During a violent mountain storm, a lone horseman dramatically enters a crowded log tavern called Hotel Hencoop, a stage stop between a Western railway and the mining town of Death-Rattle. The tavern hosts miners who struck it rich alongside card sharpers from Glendon. The mysterious, elegantly dressed visitor—carrying diamonds on his shirt and riding an ornate horse—introduces himself as Yreka Jim by claiming his name appears in his horse's left eye. Hencoop, the tavern proprietor, accepts this inexplicable proof and offers Yreka Jim a drink. The story continues into Chapter II, "The Arizona Cocktail," where a skeptical Eastern businessman named Girard Gambetta of Chicago questions Yreka Jim's claims about the horse.