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
door, and stare at the receding cavalcade in a dazed sort of way.
Others, thinking that the noise is all resulting from an Indian
attack, seize rifles or revolvers, as the case may be, and blaze away
out of windows and loopholes at whatever may be in the way to receive
their bullets.

But the road-agents only pause a moment in their song to send back a
wild, sarcastic laugh; then they resume it, and merrily dash along up
the gulch, the ringing of iron-shod hoofs beating a strange tatoo to
the sound of the music.

Sleepily the miners crawl back to their respective couches; the moon
smiles down on mother earth, and nature once more fans itself to sleep
with the breath of a fragrant breeze.

* * * * *

Deadwood--magic city of the West!

Not dead, nor even sleeping, is this headquarters of the Black Hills
population at midnight, twenty-four hours subsequent to the rush of
the daring road-agents through Camp Crook.

Deadwood is just as lively and hilarious a place during the interval
between sunset and sunrise as during the day. Saloons, dance-houses,
and gambling dens keep open all n