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, Deadwood Dick, outlaw, road-agent and outcast, read the notice, and then a wild sardonic laugh burst from beneath his mask—­a terrible, blood-curdling laugh, that made even the powerful animal he bestrode start and prick up its ears.

“Five hundred dollars reward for the apprehension and arrest of a notorious young desperado who hails to the name of Deadwood Dick!  Ha! ha! ha! isn’t that rich, now?  Ha! ha! ha! arrest Deadwood Dick!  Why, ’pon my word it is a sight for sore eyes.  I was not aware that I had attained such a desperate notoriety as that document implies.  They will make me out a murderer before they get through, I expect.  Can’t let me alone—­everlastingly they must be punching after me, as if I was some obnoxious pestilence on the face of the earth.  Never mind, though—­let ’em keep on!  Let them just continue their hounding game, and see which comes up on top when the bag’s shook.  If more than one of ’em don’t get their fingers burned when they snatch Deadwood Dick bald-headed, why I’m a Spring creek sucker, that’s all.  Maybe I don’t know who foots the bill in this reward business; oh, no; maybe I can’t ride