Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 607

# Museum Catalog Description

This issue of Beadle and Adams pulp magazine (June 11, 1890) contains the opening chapter of a Western serial entitled "Joe Bowers' Racket at Ricaree City" by Albert W. Aiken. The story follows Gilbert Featherstone, a dapperly dressed "Cowboy Dude," and his superintendent Black Tom Murphy as they travel through Montana. Upon approaching Ricaree City—a lawless mining camp in the isolated Big Belt Mountain region—they encounter Joe Bowers, a disreputable, impoverished drifter of English origin. Bowers has been robbed of his horse and belongings en route and seeks opportunity in the rough mining town. Featherstone himself controls the surrounding Ricaree Valley through questionable land acquisition practices, having secured territory through multiple dummy settlers. The narrative establishes the valley's violent governance, including the unsolved murder of a resistant settler, and depicts Ricaree City as a refuge for criminal elements where frontier justice and dueling are customary. The interplay begins between the unscrupulous rancher and the vagabond character.