Beadle's Pocket Novels No. 41: Nat, the Trapper

About this issue

Nat, the Trapper and Indian-Fighter by Paul J. Prescott (Beadle and Adams, 1873) is a frontier adventure serial in two chapters presented here. Chapter I, "The Ledge," follows the capture of the resourceful trapper Nathan "Wild Nat" Rogers by a band of Indians led by a chief called the Wolf. After a brief skirmish on the plains near the Rocky Mountains, Nat is bound, lowered by rope to a narrow cliff ledge thirty feet up a ninety-foot precipice, and left to die of starvation and thirst. He escapes his bonds using a projecting rock edge and stands momentarily free, though trapped. Chapter II, "A Wild Chase," shifts to an emigrant camp near the Sweetwater River, introducing a young man and a free trapper observing distant movement across the valley. The narrative emphasizes frontier survival, pursuit, and combat across the American West wilderness landscape.