Beadle's Dime Library, No. 13

This issue of the Beadle & Adams dime novel series features "Nick Whiffles, the Old Trapper of the Nor'west" by Dr. J. H. Robinson, a frontier adventure serial presented complete in one number.

In Chapter I, "The Silent Tragedy," trapper Nick discovers his trap line repeatedly raided. While hiding to investigate, he witnesses a nocturnal scene: six armed men, dressed as Mexican bandits in frontier garb, bring a bound young woman to a mountain stream. The leader, wearing a red sash and carrying a carbine, refuses her desperate pleas and jewelry offerings. The men bind her to a stone and throw her into the dark water to drown. Nick strips and dives to rescue her, retrieving her body and reviving her on the bank just before the assassin briefly returns to verify his work.

Chapter II shifts to springtime, introducing Nick's physical appearance—over six feet tall, straight-built, with a comical, hopeful expression and deep-set cheerful eyes. A skilled hunter and nomadic frontiersman, he observes five horsemen approaching: four natives and one white captive—a mature, rough free trapper bearing signs of violent capture, his hands bound, clearly destined for torture at his captors' camp.