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King Charlie. King Charlie was created by “John Frederick,” the pseudonym of Frederick Faust (Dan Barry, Blackie & Red, Border Bandit, Angus Campbell, Dave Clovelly, Jim Curry, Ronicky Doone, Firebrand (I), James Geraldi, Anthony Hamilton, Bull Hunter, Kid Montana, Doctor Kildare, Reata, Red Hawk, Silvertip (II), Thunder Moon), and appeared in three stories in Western Story Magazine in 1922, beginning with “King Charlie and His Long Riders” (Western Story Magazine, May 6, 1922).

King Charlie is a tramp and a wanderer who travels about through the American Southwest and West. He is fifty-four years old but despite being leathery and weathered looks much younger than he is. He begs by choice and has elevated tastes and preferences: if he is in the mood for sausage he will beg at twenty homes until he gets sausage. He is neatly-dressed and is jaunty, although his hands sometimes shake from “prison tremor.” The other tramps and hobos see him as “king” and treat him as such. He’s genial, but he has a hard side, and he will try to take revenge on hard-hearted towns, and when he meets an impressionable young man King Charlie tries to shape him into a “destroyer of society.”

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