Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 1003

# Gold Dan: or, Talbot in Utah

This serialized dime novel by Albert W. Aiken (Beadle and Adams No. 1003, January 1893) depicts a Danite meeting on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, spring 1869. Elder Gideon Biddeman convenes the "Destroying Angels"—Mormon enforcement agents—to confront their leader John Clark, the "Duke of Corinne," with accusations of treason: Clark allegedly spared an emigrant during the Mountain Meadows massacre, allowing a witness to survive. Clark vehemently denies the charge, confronting Biddeman with a revolver and questioning the massacre's morality. The elder, seeking to move past the accusation, assigns Clark two tasks: investigate rumors that a man named Gold Dan (supposedly killed months earlier in an Indian fight on the Montana trail) has returned to Corinne to criticize the Mormon church; and suppress prospecting activities northeast of town. Biddeman hints at further private business requiring Clark's services.