eighborhoods is something extraordinary, and from late reports,
under vigorous and earnest development are yielding beyond the most
sanguine expectation.

The placer mines west of Camp Crook are being opened to very
satisfactory results, and, in fact, from Custer City in the south, to
Deadwood in the north, all is the scene of abundant enthusiasm and
excitement.

A horseman riding north through Custer gulch, noticed the placard so
prominently posted for public inspection, and with a low whistle,
expressive of astonishment, wheeled his horse out of the stage road,
and rode over to the foot of the tree in question, and ran his eyes
over the few irregularly-written lines traced upon the notice.

He was a youth of an age somewhere between sixteen and twenty, trim
and compactly built, with a preponderance of muscular development and
animal spirits; broad and deep of chest, with square, iron-cast
shoulders; limbs small yet like bars of steel, and with a grace of
position in the saddle rarely equaled; he made a fine picture for an
artist's brush or a poet's pen.

Only one thing marred the captivating beauty of the picture.

His form was clothed in a tight-fitting habit of buck-skin, which was
colored a jetty black, and presented a striking contrast to anything
one sees as a garment in the wild far West. And this was not all,
either. A broad black hat was slouched down over his eyes; he wore a
thick black vail over the upper portion of his face, through the
eye-holes of which there gleamed a pair of orbs of piercing intensity,
and his hands, large and knotted, were hidden in a pair of kid gloves
of a light color.

The "Black Rider" he might have been justly termed, for his
thoroughbred steed was as black as coal, but we have not seen fit to
call him such--his name is Deadwood Dick, and let that suffice for the
present.

It was just at the edge of evening that he stopped before, and
proceeded to read, the placard posted upon the tree in one of the
loneliest portions of Custer's gulch.

Above and on either side rose to a stupendous hight the tree-fringed
mountains in all their majestic grandeur.

In front and behind, running nearly north and south, lay the deep,
dark chasm--a rift between mighty walls--Custer's gulch.

And over all began to hover the cloak of night, for the sun had
already imparted its dying kiss on the mountain craters, and below,
the gloom was thickening with rapid strides.

Slowly, over and over