Old Kyle, the Trailer

This is Beadle and Company's "Old Kyle, the Trailer; or, The Renegade of the Delawares" by Henry J. Thomas (Dime Novel No. 181, 1868). The featured story concerns Brandon Havens, a hunter separated from his party during a hunting expedition in frontier Iowa. Caught on a peninsula between the Rattlesnake River and its tributary during a catastrophic freshet, Havens finds himself marooned on rapidly flooding land. Unable to construct a raft from standing timber, he attempts to swim to a drifting log but discovers an unmanned Indian canoe. Inside, he finds a mysterious woman, apparently asleep, identifiable only by her small, delicate moccasined foot. Havens boards the canoe with his dog Wolf and begins paddling downriver toward uncertain destination, wondering whether the woman is alive, dead, or a captive. The narrative combines frontier survival adventure with romantic mystery elements.