Beadle's Dime Novels No. 264: Mountain Kate

About this issue

Mountain Kate: Love in the Trapping-Grounds by Jos. E. Badger, Jr., depicts three trappers—the veteran Tobe Castor and two wealthy settlers, Frank Yates and Tom Taylor—operating in the Powder River country in November. Yates discovers someone systematically stealing beaver from their traps while leaving them reset to avoid suspicion. While tracking the thief, Yates encounters a woman on a white mustang pony being attacked by a wolverine in a plum thicket. He shoots the beast, and it charges him; after a brutal struggle, Yates kills it with his knife. The story combines frontier trapping operations with action-adventure elements and introduces a mysterious female character of "uncommon" beauty central to the narrative.