Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 227

This pulp magazine installment features "Buckshot Ben, The Man-Hunter of Idaho," by Captain Mark Wilton, serialized in Beadle's Weekly, February 28, 1888. The story concerns Ben Brown, a refined but rugged miner at Cactus Creek, who suspects the apparent suicide of "Placer Pete" is actually murder. Through careful forensic deduction—noting the bloodless hand grasping the revolver, insufficient blood in the cabin, marks of strangulation, and the revolver's blood having partially dried before being grasped—Brown concludes Pete was murdered elsewhere and staged as suicide. A cryptic letter signed "Eagle Eye," addressed to "John Marble" in Shaker Gulch, fuels his investigation. Brown travels north to Shaker Gulch, where he encounters a deaf-and-dumb half-breed youth near the post office, beginning his detective work into the mystery surrounding Pete's death and the letter's origins.