Beadle's Pocket Library No. 89

This 1885 Beadle and Adams weekly features "Bill Biddon, Trapper; Life in the Northwest" by Edward S. Ellis. The opening follows William Relmond and Nathan Todd, two inexperienced gold-seekers traveling with an emigrant train across the Kansas plains toward California. After leaving the group to hunt an antelope, they become separated and must spend the night on the prairie. The next morning, they discover the caravan has changed direction—traveling southwest along the Oregon trail while they've been heading northeast. Now abandoned with minimal supplies, they decide to reach the Platte River and the Oregon trail independently, hoping to intercept another emigrant party or reach California ahead of their former group. Along the way they encounter Pawnee Indians in the distance, hunt buffalo for provisions, and reach the Republican Fork of Nebraska.