Buffalo Bill and three friends were in the booming town of Cyanide to investigate the disappearance of Matt Nightengale.  Cyanide was growing fast and a big Chinatown was emerging.  The story starts off at Moy Wing’s Chop Suey restaurant with the four men standing outside in the street.  The four men watch as a young man begs a girl not to go into the restaurant, but she ignores him and enters.  The men find this strange and follow the two into the restaurant, but are not allowed in the back room that the two went in.  Buffalo Bill and company stay for a while and then decide to leave when they do not see the two people again.  The girl and guy end up getting in an argument while sitting in the opium lounge and the guy is captured by the Chinese and taken away.  The guy wakes up in a secret underground room with his hands and feet bound.  A masked Chinese man talks to him about the girl, an oath and then says he will kill him.  The Chinese man then tosses the American guy in an underground stream.  The current is fast and the man tries to keep his head above water and fight off rats.  He eventually is dumped into a gorge and lands on a sand bank.  He has no strength left, but he tries his hardest to get back to town.

The man turns out to be Brodie Towne and he makes it to the hotel in town to enlist Buffalo Bill for help to find the girl who he thinks is being held in Moy Wing’s.  Buffalo Bill notices that Brodie used to smoke opium, but believes him and offers to help the next morning.  Brodie then leaves the hotel and as he leaves is taken by Chinese men and disappears.  Buffalo Bill and his three friends decide to go after the girl and Brodie who they believe are trapped in the serpent holes and dens rumoured to be below the Chinatown.  At first the men do not find any secret passages, but they find one and that leads to a whole system of underground tunnels and rooms.  The men eventually find Brodie Towne passed out in a box, Matt Nightengale in a room and the missing girl.  Fighting off Chinese at many points, the group makes it to the street level.  The story finishes up and we learn that Matt Nightengale was really a thief on the run, hiding at Moy Wing’s.  Brodie stops smoking opium with the help or a doctor and his girl friend does not trust Chinese anymore.  Finally, Matt Nightengale and Moy Wing are being held in jail thanks to Buffalo Bill and his pals.

“Buffalo Bill and the Heathen Chinee” addresses many themes of frontier life; one theme is racism.  The Chinese are often referred to as “chinks” or “slant eyes.”  Also, the Chinese are always sad to have devil like traits and are never spoken of in good light.  Except for the food, everything in Chinatown is bad such as drugs and gambling.  This story also shows Bill as the classic western hero who saves the day and the girl.  The setting is very important and it has many different aspects of western life such as a gorge, plant, hotel, Chinatown, ranchers, trappers, cowboys and guns.  This dime novel is a great look into the culture of the frontier during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Buffalo Bill was a very popular series and influential on its readers of that era.