Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 58

# Silver Knife; or, Wickliffe, the Rocky Mountain Ranger

This serialized story by Dr. J. H. Robinson follows Hartley Ferguson, a young physician who abandons his St. Louis medical practice after meeting Baptiste Leroy, a weathered mountain hunter and trapper. Leroy captivates Ferguson with tales of the Oregon Trail, Rocky Mountains, buffalo hunts, and frontier dangers. Ferguson becomes infatuated with Leroy's daughters—particularly the spiritually beautiful Madeleine and her gentler sister Mary—both of mixed French and Native heritage. When the Leroy family decides to relocate westward despite Ferguson's warnings about savage dangers, he resolves to follow them. As he boards a steamer at St. Louis, an anonymous letter mysteriously delivered by a cloaked stranger warns Ferguson away from pursuing Madeleine, declaring she will marry another and threatening continued surveillance. The adventure narrative blends romance, frontier exploration, and mystery elements typical of the era's popular fiction.