Evening Star Newspaper, June 22, 1930, Page 84

T R St SO S AT T‘E"". SIYNDAV STAR, WASHINGTON, D. T. JUNE 22, 1930. Last of the DIME-NOVE [ HEROES - Fassing of Deadwood Dick Marks Vanished Era of the Stirring North American Plainsmen Whose Thrilling Exploits Made Possible a Brand o f Literature Now Headed for the Museums as Treasured A nfi(/uc’s. AR PR A £ BY HAL BORLAND. The man was tall, wiry, gracejul in figure, but looked odd in a suit of black, knee-boots, black slouched hat and a black mask upon his Jace, hiding all his jeatures except a firm mouth, a jetty mustache and a chin that bore signs of character. He was armed with another revolver besides the one he held in his hand, and a lasso hung from his hip. “Who are you?” Edith asked, suspiciousiy, *“why are the vigilantes chasing you and why have you entered my house in this manner?” *“The vigilantes are chasing me because they want the doubtful pleasure of stringing me up to the handiest tree they come to,” the stranger replied quietly. “My nmname is Deadwood Dick, they say—perhaps you may have heard of me?” NDEED, fair Edith had heard of Dead- wood Dick, as who hadn’t in those glo- rious days when Beadle & Adams were publishing dime novels by the million? And when fair Edith had saved Dick, the Prince of the Road, from the vigilantes and he had saved her from the villains on the last page of the book, the author, Edward L. Wheeler, confides that “Somewhere in the Colo- rado districts, hidden under the disguise of Phineas Porter, detective, Deadwood Dick lives with his new bride—his third wife, by the way—whose name is Edith.” Intrepid Deadwood Dick saved other fair damsels in dire distress, yea, a score of them, in other years, and when he could not marry them all himself he saw to it that they were happily wedded to the tall, beautifully propor- tioned young heroes who were forever riding the deserts with the Prince of the Road. Ed- ward Wheeler saw to that. His was a great trust, and he kept it well. No villain ever emerged triumphant, no hero ever was long at % disadvantage in Wheeler's books, nor in those of Sylvanus Cobb, jr.; Mayne Reid, Capt. J. C. Adams, Col. Prentiss Ingraham, Dr. Carver or the hundred other writers whose thrills could be purchased by the volume for one dime in the days before the movies, when “it” was still a prosaic pronoun. BL‘T all that was 30, 40, even 60 years ago. And today the awful perils of Deadwood Dick and Oregon Sol and Nevada Nat and Cali- fornia Joe may cost you as much as $65 & volume; they have become treasured antiques and musteum pieces. And yet Deadwood Dick in the flesh has just been laid away on the top of a mountain near Deadwood, S. Dak.; close alongside the grave of Wild Bill Hickock. Buffalo Bill has been dead only a few years, “Poker Alice’ Tubbs died within the year and the last of the old stage- eoach drivers still are living. The wild West era of the dime novel rose and decined and the men who lived the thrills themselves lingered on. The dime-novel era is gone, closed, but only now is the life that made the dime novel fading out. That it should all be so close upon our heels is hard to realize. There are men still Biving who could recall the first 10-cent books put out in 1860 by Beadle & Adams, the first real dime-novel publishers. Erastus Beadle was the moving spirit of the venture, a man as energetic and resouceful as the heroes of his books. Born in Pierstown, N. Y. on September 11, 1821, Beadle grew up with tales of the back- woods and the frontier ringing in his ears. When he was scarcely more than a youth he caved wood blocks to stamp flour bags and toured the country selling his wares. This turned him to printing, and when he started his first printing office in Buffalo he printed a dime songbook which had an immediate vogue. Heartened—and enriched—Beadle moved to New York. He would print fiction, sell it cheaply, perhaps make a real fortune. YHE first volume was prepared, offered to the public. It made a tremendous hit. Thou- Bbeands bought it, clamored for more. Manu- beripts began to pour into the office. The best were chosen, rushed to the presses and like- Wwise sold tremendously. Writers of recognized Manding were invited to work for Mr. Beadle, and among those who contributed were Col. A. J. Dugane, Francis Fuller Barritt, Judge Jared Hall, Mayne Reid. Mrs. Victor,’ James L. Bowen —all well known to past generatinons, Then the Civil War started. ‘Thoosands of The recent passing of Deadwood Dick, shown with two of the romantic tales of the Old West which he inspired, marks an end in the flesh of an era which furnished material for thousands of dime novels. men went to battle and they demanded reading matter for their leisure moments. Beadle & Adams cashed in. They poured hundreds of thousands of volumes into the Army ecamps Frontier tales, Revolutionary War stories, In- dian tales, romances of the city and the eoun- try—all were ground out and fed into the wide maw of public demand The Civil War ended. Thousands of soldiers returned to their homes with a taste for the Beadle books. The market was doubled. New authors must be had Beadle scoured the country for prolific writers. Finally he went West. The “wilderness” west of the Mississippi was newly opened up and out there were scores of picturesque characters Those who could write signed up. Those who could not write agreed to dictate their most thrilling yarns to hack writers. The Army men and the scouts came into the fold like sheep. Capt. Monstery, Capt. Prederick Whittaker, Lieut. J. H. Ron- dolph, Maj. Henry Stoddard, Lieut. Alfred ‘Thorne, Ensign Charles Dudley Warner, Capt. D. B. Shields—scores of them were listed on the Beadle roll. Then there were the plains- men and the scouts, J. B. Omohundro, better known as Texas Jack; Maj. St. Vrain, Col Prentiss Ingraham, Joseph Badger, Dr. Carver, T. C. Harbough, even Buffalo Bill, And with these new writers came the feal thrillers. There had been exciting novels be= fore this on the Beadle list, but none of the Indian atrocities or narrow escapes of the Eastern scouts and heroes could measure up with these tales by the men who had tramped the Rockies from end to end, faced grizzlies and Comanches, Blackfeet and Apaches, fought Mexicans and highwaymen and courted death almost every day of their lives. So now there came such books as “Dick Darling, the Pony Expressman”; “The Pony DIxpress Rider,” “Buffalo Bill's Bet,” “The Death's Head Rang- ers of Texas,” “Oregon Sol,” “The Yellow Chief” and, capping them all, “Deadwood Dick, the Prince of the Road.” Deadwood Dick, like many of the heroes of these dime novels, was a real character. Rich- ard Clarke was his real name and he had first proved his mettle in helping pilot a group of emigrants from Minnesota to South Dakota. Along the trail his unerring aim in fighting off Indians earned for him the sobriquet “Dead- shot Dick,” but when the town of Deadwood was founded Clarke's name was altered to fit the circumstances. Thereafter he was “Dead- wood Dick.” ‘The real Deadwood Dick, in his earlier years, was a typical plainsman, swaggering, boasting, always ready for excitement, handy with fists or guns and chivalrous as the traditional plainsman—that is to the n'th degree. He ' drove a stagecoach, he worked as a miner, he rode the pony express, he was a member of a vigilante band. He hobnobbed with notoriotis characters, was a friend of Wild Bill Hickock, one-time two-gun marshal of Abilene, Kans. He knew Buffalo Bill, Capt. Jack Crawford, Texas Jack and all the others. He was, as all the rest, a colorful figure, and he had a color- ful name, It was this name that brought him into fiction Edward Wheeler heard it and was inspired. He inquired, heard some vivid stories of the West, some stories about Deadwood Dick and he wrote a novel. Beadle published it, and there was a demand for more. Wheeler wrote another and another, and yet another. It grew into a Deadwood Dick series and time it became the Deadwood Dick Library, with weekly issues. It was a strange coincidence that Wheeler should have started the Deadwood Dick vogue and built up the legend about the man, for in his later years the real Deadwood Dick was as shy and retiring as Mr. Wheeler seems to have been much of his life. From pictures of him, Edward Wheeler is seen to be a frail, esthetic-looking man, almost an invalid. Mis face was pale, his shoulders narrow, his hands soft. Yet this man. whose fingers probably never so much as gripped a gun, turned out these marvelous thrillers about a heroic Dead- wood Dick, took him through a thousand gum fights, rescued him from them all, made him fall in love hundreds of times and happily married him at least a score of times—wrote, perhaps, 5,000,000 words about him. But hair-raising fictions were not the whole of Beadle's books. There were biographies that would make your flesh creep. Historieal remances flourished, the Gulf pirates were ex- ploited, the Civil War, the Seminole War, the French and Indian War and all the Western Indian wars. Aiken wrote the story of Kit Carson’s Jife. Joseph Badger wrote an suto- biography under the guise of a biography by Continued on Fifteenth Page