Beadle's New Dime Novels: White Serpent, the Scourge

This 1878 dime novel by Andrew Dearborn, White Serpent, the Shawnee Scourge, opens in February 1742 along the Mohawk-Hudson junction. A hunter named Rhodan rescues a Dutch boy named Brom from an icy river, and the two travel toward Thorpe's isolated frontier cabin. Rhodan reveals his past: he and Eli Thorpe rescued Helen Ward from a Mohawk encampment where she'd been taken by a jealous suitor, Bill Rogers, working with the Indians. Brom asks what became of the other rejected lover; Rhodan cryptically suggests he focused on hunting and fighting Indians instead. Discovering fresh Indian tracks heading toward the cabin, the pair creeps cautiously forward and discovers a war party assembled nearby. Rhodan spots a white man among them—Rogers himself—confirming his suspicions of a plot. Discovered, Rhodan shoots two Indians and flees toward the cabin with Brom, drawing pursuing fire.