The Gunmaker

This is a Beadle and Adams dime novel catalog and the opening installment of The Gunmaker of the Border; or, The Hunted Maiden, a frontier serial by an unnamed author. The catalog lists numerous affordable instructional handbooks (ten cents each) across multiple series: speakers and dialogues for elocution and debate; etiquette and letter-writing guides for young people; cookbooks and household manuals for families. The featured serial depicts Green Jacket, a mysterious, skilled gunsmith living in an isolated cabin on the borderlands. When a well-dressed young easterner named Theodore Thurber arrives to repair his rifle, their conversation reveals Thurber's romantic notions about frontier life, which Green Jacket dismisses. Their meeting is interrupted by the dramatic entrance of a beautiful, terrified young woman fleeing a rough man who claims to be her husband. Green Jacket intervenes, refusing to let the man take her without explanation, and holding him at gunpoint when he threatens violence. The woman, named Louisa, appeals for protection and remains in Green Jacket's cabin.