Beadle's Dime Novels No. 71: The Lost Trail

Beadle's Dime Novels, No. 72 This issue features two frontier adventure narratives. "The Moose Hunter" by John Neal, a celebrated delineator of American character making his novelistic return after nearly two decades of silence, is advertised as his best production—a romance set in Maine's northern woods combining humor and pathos with stirring hunting adventure and New England character portrayal alongside regional superstitions. The primary serialized story, "The Lost Trail: A Legend of the Far West" by Edward S. Ellis, opens on an 1820 Mississippi River tributary where a young man named Harvey Richter, his wife Cora, and an Irish workman named Teddy navigate by canoe. Mysterious bowlders rolling from a riverbank signal human presence; a rifle shot from hidden shrubbery follows. A gaunt, scowling rifleman emerges—Harvey Richter's apparent antagonist—who deliberately fires at distance, claiming numerous missed opportunities. The party camps ashore nightly, currently unmolested but under observation.