Beadle's Pocket Library No. 276

This issue of Deadwood Dick Trapped (No. 276, April 1889) features "Roxey Ralph's Ruse" by Edward L. Wheeler. The story opens in Pistolville, a small mining town in the Sierras, where the self-styled "mayor" Haunted Hank seeks a schoolmaster. Richard Gold-dust, a refined young artist from New York, arrives and reads the notice. After a confrontation with an insulter named Tra-la-lee Charley—whom Gold-dust knocks down—the townspeople vote to hire him as schoolmaster at twenty dollars weekly. Gold-dust meets Dora Dare, a gentle young woman studying in the schoolhouse, who reveals that her father has lost half-ownership of the Volcano mine to Tra-la-lee Charley through drinking and gambling. Roxie Ralph, an unconventional girl in masculine dress, also appears briefly. The narrative establishes romantic and criminal intrigue within the rough mining community setting.