Beadle's New Dime Novels: Death-Trailer

This issue of Beadle's Dime Novels presents Death-Trailer: The Scourge of the Plain Crees by Jos. E. Badger, Jr., published in 1878. The frontier adventure opens with an Indian guide shot dead beside a campfire where voyageurs and a woman named Lucille Ampere have camped. An old frontiersman, Kit Duncan, emerges claiming to have saved Lucille's life. Duncan reveals he overheard a conspiracy: the guide was a traitor, poisoning one voyageur with snake-weed and planning to sabotage their weapons before ambushing them at Dead Pine ford on behalf of Crees and a white-skinned accomplice seeking to capture Lucille. Duncan offers to guide them safely to her father's post instead. The narratives foreground frontier peril, betrayal, and the rescue of a vulnerable woman by a seasoned wilderness operator.