so numerous with my name, especially with five hundred dollars affixed
thereto, as a reward."

* * * * *

Midnight.

Camp Crook, nestling down in one of the wildest gulch pockets of the
Black Hills region--basking and sleeping in the flood of moonlight
that emanates from the glowing ball up afar in heaven's blue vault, is
suddenly and rudely aroused from her dreams.

There is a wild clatter of hoofs, a chorus of strange and varied
voices swelling out in a wild mountain song, and up through the very
heart of the diminutive city, where the gold-fever has dropped a few
sanguine souls, dash a cavalcade of masked horsemen, attired in the
picturesque garb of the mountaineer, and mounted on animals of
superior speed and endurance.

At their head, looking weird and wonderful in his suit of black, rides
he whom all have heard of--he whom some have seen, and he whom no one
dare raise a hand against, in single combat--Deadwood Dick, Road-Agent
Prince, and the one person whose name is in everybody's mouth.

Straight on through the single northerly street of the infant village
ride the dauntless band, making weirdly beautiful music with their
rollicking song, some of the voices being cultivated, and clear as the
clarion note.

A few miners, wakened from their repose, jump out of bed, come to the