Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 387

"Warpath Will, the Traitor Guide" This Beadle and Adams serial (Vol. XV, No. 387, December 28, 1884) opens with an emigrant wagon train stalled on the western plains. Their guide, Warpath Will, has vanished; scout Guy Marsden finds only the guide's dead horse and moccasin tracks—signs of capture or death. Guy, a seventeen-year-old plainsman with two years' frontier experience, offers to guide the train onward. His account includes harrowing details: he arrived home after an Indian ambush killed three companions, then nursed a wounded comrade for three weeks before continuing alone. Most emigrants vote to return for a proper guide, but Guy's mother—ill and desperate to reach Guy's gold-prospector father in the Rocky Mountains—insists on continuing westward with her children. The narrative shifts to the mountains, where Guy's father awaits them, preparing a cabin beside a mining claim he has struck.