Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 843

About this issue

This issue contains the opening installment of "Foiling the Prisco Sharp: A Story of the Mississippi" by Harold Payne, a Western adventure serial. Dan Louis, a young New York gambler and renowned pistol marksman known as "the River Sport" or "Dead-Shot Dan," pursues con artist Donald Foxen along the Mississippi River. Foxen has swindled Dan of mining profits in San Francisco and is now perpetrating a robbery scheme against an innocent elderly gentleman and his beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter, whom he falsely accuses of theft. When Foxen's vigilante mob attempts to transport them aboard the steamboat Gray Eagle, Dan intercedes with drawn revolvers, forcing the boat's return. The fugitives escape overland, then by skiff. During a dark chase through riverside woods, Dan nearly catches them but loses the trail when they board a passing steamer. The narrative emphasizes gunplay, river pursuit, and moral virtue rewarded through decisive action.