Beadle's Dime Novels No. 272: Single Hand

"Single Hand" (No. 272), by W. J. Hamilton, is a frontier adventure serial set on the Texas plains. The story opens as two men—Ned Clayton, a young ranger of nineteen, and Jack Evans, a rough outlaw bound to serve a merciless master—shelter from a devastating norther (cold storm) that sweeps across the Texan border, overturning trees and driving herds of buffalo, mustangs, and other animals before it.

During the tempest's fury, a beautiful golden-haired girl of sixteen clings desperately to a wild black mustang as it bolts through the storm. The horses too frightened to pursue, Ned and Jack follow her trail through mesquite bushes toward Deep Gulch—a treacherous ravine. They discover the mustang crushed at the ravine's bottom, but find the girl unexpectedly alive, lodged unconscious in a pine tree forty feet above, having been thrown into a fork of branches during the fall. Ned descends by lariat to rescue her.