Deadwood Dick Library No. 17

This Deadwood Dick pulp serial, titled "Deadwood Dick's Strange Duel," concerns outlaws and mining camps in the Dakota territory. The opening chapter introduces Edwin Booth Snowbank, a Black banjo player and self-proclaimed Shakespearean tragedian rehearsing in Billy-Goat Gulch. He encounters Captain Calvin Cutthroat, a masked road-agent and outlaw leader, who interrogates him about his destination—the settlement of Skeleton Bend, where Snowbank claims to meet Colonel Yankee Doodle Yuba to start a church. Cutthroat reveals he intends to execute a man at the Cat-Gut ravine that night. The narrative then shifts to Cutthroat's hideout, where his gang delivers a captive young miner named Fred Flash. Cutthroat announces his intention to lynch Flash as part of the "Picked Party's" operations, despite Flash's defiant protests of innocence.