The New York Dime Library No. 988: Rocky Mountain Rob

# Rocky Mountain Rob: The California Outlaw

This Beadle and Adams dime novel, serialized as "Rocky Mountain Rob; or, The Vigilantes of Humbug Bar" by Albert W. Aiken, opens in a California mining camp where a lynch mob threatens Dick Talbot ("Injun Dick") and his Indian companion Mud-turtle. Three ringleaders—Jim York, Kangaroo Denton, and Rackensack—demand summary execution. A mysterious young stranger intervenes, advocating fair trial over mob justice and offering to defend the prisoners. His appeals to the miners' sense of honor succeed; a makeshift court convenes and acquits Talbot, finding the killed men had drawn first. The young man, who reveals he has been hunting Talbot for a year and intends to give him one more year before killing him for personal vengeance, escorts Talbot out of camp. The narrative then shifts one year forward to the Montana Territory, where stage coaches run from Bannock city toward the Humbug Diggings mining region.