"Prince of the Road"

Finding new thrills for the masses who read their fiction in the newspapers is a taxing task for feature editors. Sex stories always sell, but detective stories, War stories, even gangster stories are becoming "old stuff." Last week, William Randolph Hearst's New York American, ever mindful of the classics, solved its feature problem by simply beginning to reprint that 50-year-old saga, originally printed in 64 nickel novels, Deadwood Dick, Prince of the Road by Edward L. Wheeler. Readers past middle-age, to whom the yellow paperbacked books were forbid den in childhood, fondly renewed acquaint ance with their clandestine friends Calamity Jane, Fearless Frank, Catamount Diamond, Sitting Bull. Younger fry read wonderingly of the swaggering, snarling, laughing outlaw of South Dakota's Black Hills, tried to picture his tight-fitting habit of black buckskin, his black "thorough bred steed," his broad black hat with "a thick black veil over the upper portion of his face through the eyeholes of which gleamed a pair of orbs of piercing intensity." Thrilling indeed to New Yorkers was it to follow the band of masked riders through the Black Hills, into stage coach holdups, battles with the Sioux, robberies, murders, escapes--always with dashing Deadwood Dick as the hero. Heard once more was Deadwood's "wild, sardonic, terrible bloodcurdling laugh--'Ha, Ha, Ha! Arrest Deadwood Dick! Isn't that rich!'" Also his ringing challenge, with the equally deadly Calamity Jane at his side : "'I've got the papers to prove my innocence'" .

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