Beadle's Pocket Library No. 430

"The Dwarf Guide" by Captain Comstock. A Western romance serialized in this Beadle and Adams story paper. Mary Ward, an educated seventeen-year-old trapper's daughter in Missouri, encounters repeated unwanted advances from Mark Wylde, a half-Indian suitor she disdains. Witnessing a prairie skirmish, she recognizes the tall white combatant as Kit Swift, "Long-shot"—a young hunter she loves, whom her father distrusts due to past grievance with Kit's deceased father. Alongside Kit fights Nick Gnarl, a dwarf with a large misshapen head and bulbous nose, who delivers a letter revealing that Ward has inherited substantial property (worth $200,000) from a dying cousin. Nick, who understands the prairie and possesses Indian knowledge, will serve as guide. The installment concludes as Ward prepares to learn the letter's full contents.