Deadwood Dick Library, Vol. IV, No. 49

This issue of the Half-Dime Library (No. 49, February 14, 1900) is primarily a catalog of Edward L. Wheeler's Deadwood Dick, Jr. serial novels, listing over 280 installments with titles emphasizing adventure, detection, and Western locations. The featured story is "Sierra Sam, the Detective: A Tale of Fairy Flats," also by Wheeler. In this opening chapter, a masked storm rider discovers a young girl during a violent mountain tempest and learns her father, White Eagle—a wealthy half-breed educated man—lies dying at McGurdy's Ranch, poisoned by a female doctor claiming he has smallpox. White Eagle reveals to the stranger that the child is his illegitimate daughter, born to his estranged wife Clio Carlyle, a prominent Washington socialite who abandoned their brief marriage and denied the child's existence before placing her in a foundling asylum.