Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 342

This 1885 pulp magazine issue features the opening of "Blanco Bill, the Mustang Monarch," a Western serial. The narrative establishes Last Lay-out, a newly formed mining town in the New Mexico Territory near the Rocky Mountains, founded after prospectors discovered silver-bearing quartz. The town consists of crude shanties dominated by the Benzine Bazaar saloon, run by Alamo Abe, a Texan who seeks to establish himself as the settlement's leader through liberal dispensation of whiskey. The story introduces William Williamson (Blanco Bill), an Apollo-like horseman dressed in ornate buckskin and silver, riding a magnificent black stallion named Black Hawk toward the mining district. Blanco Bill, described as a skilled buccaro and mustang tamer, approaches the settlement in melancholic contemplation, having abandoned ranch life to make his mark in the world.