Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 107

# One-Eyed Sim: The Forest Home

This dime novel by James L. Bowen depicts a frontier emigrant party—Luman Leonard, his wife Maria, daughter Cora, son Alvin (age 15), and suitor Frank Sherman—establishing a camp in the western forest while seeking a permanent settlement. As they prepare an evening meal of fresh fish, a weathered scout arrives with urgent warning: hostile Pawnee Indians are nearby, having recently killed his companion Billy Larkin. The stranger, who has tracked the Indians for two days with his trained fighting dog, demands they extinguish their fire and depart immediately. Though hesitant, the group complies, hitching their wagons for rapid retreat toward the Mississippi River under cover of darkness. The narrative shifts to describe the scout—a tall, muscular frontiersman clad in animal skins, carrying rifle and pistols—whose singular appearance intrigues Frank, particularly an unspecified physical peculiarity the OCR text does not fully render.