The King-Pin Detective

This issue of Beadle & Adams' dime novel (No. 835) features "Red Water City Clean-Out" by Albert W. Aiken, author of western fiction series. The opening serial installment depicts a train robbery on the Southern Pacific Railway near Tucson, Arizona. Masked outlaws, distinguished by their inverted coats, surround the midnight express at Gum Tree Watering Tank. After firing shots to intimidate passengers, they breach the express car with a sledgehammer, wounding express agent Charles Bradstreet. The gang extracts a safe containing ten thousand dollars in government money destined for military payroll and approximately one thousand dollars in express funds—totaling eleven thousand dollars. The outlaws, led by a medium-built chief and including a giant wielding the sledge, a tall thin man, and a short stout fellow, interrogate the tank-tenders before departing with their haul. The narrative establishes pursuit by local sheriff Jim Peters, federal marshals, and military cavalry as inevitable consequences.