Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 6

This issue of Beadle's Half-Dime Library (No. 98, 1877) contains the opening installment of "Bill Biddon, Trapper; Life in the North-West" by Edward S. Ellis. The narrative, presented as first-person memoir, follows William Relmond and his Maine-born companion Nathan Todd as they journey westward during the California Gold Rush. After separating from their emigrant train while pursuing an antelope near the Kansas plains, the two become lost on the prairie. Discovering their caravan has changed route toward the Oregon Trail without them, they resolve to reach California independently. The episode chronicles their night journey across the moonlit prairie, their encounter with distant Pawnee Indians (which they avoid), and their hunting of a buffalo for provisions. The frontier adventure continues with their discovery of a stream at nightfall.