The Adventures of Deadwood Dick

Another great Old West partnership -Nat Love and roping. Nat Love (1854-1921) was born to slave parents on the Robert Love plantation in Davidson County, Tennessee. He was freed at the end of the Civil War, just after he turned eleven. At fifteen, he found a task he enjoyed, taming colts for a dime a head. Fortune smiled with a $100 raffle win, giving him enough bucks to split the winnings with his mother and head west. Outside Dodge City, after a wild audition on the back of a foul-tempered bronco called Good Eye, Love found work with the Duval cattle outfit from Texas. For three years, he was based in the Texas panhandle near the Palo Dura River. In 1872, he was in Arizona’s Gila River country working for Pete Gallinger as the resident authority on reading brands. In 1876, Love’s outfit received an order for 2,000 longhorns to be delivered to Deadwood in Dakota Territory. In Deadwood on the 4th of July, Love won a mustang roping contest and a shooting match. In addition to the prize money, the excited residents bestowed upon him the title of Deadwood Dick. In a time when men were known by their buckskin nicknames – Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill, Texas Jack – Love saw his dubbing as a badge of honor. Back in the Southwest, his party was attacked by warriors. Wounded in the leg, he passed out, only to awake in the camp of Yellow Dog. According to Love, he was told he was “too brave to die” and plans were made to adopt him. His ears were pierced with a bone from a deer’s leg. He was designated to marry Buffalo Papoose, daughter of the chief. A month later, with the wedding fast approaching, Love stole a pony and skipped out of camp. Twelve hours and one hundred miles later, he was back at the ranch. Meanwhile, in wild and woolly New York, author Edward Lytton Wheeler was finishing up a story for dime novel publisher Beadle and Adams. Wheeler had never been west of Pennsylvania, but on October 15, 1877, Deadwood Dick, the Prince of the Road; or the Black Rider of the Black Hills was published. Over the next eight years, Wheeler penned thirty-three Deadwood Dick novels, as well as a play, Deadwood Dick, A Road Agent, A Drama of the Gold Mines. The stories were so popular that faux Deadwood Dicks began crawling out of the woodwork. For more information about Beadle and Adams Dime Novels read The Raftsman’s Daughter by yours truly.