Beadle's Dime Library No. 697

# "Opening Up a Lost Trail"

This 1892 dime novel by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham features Buffalo Bill's Buckskin Brotherhood and follows two connected narratives. In London, lawyers and military officers Lord Lucien Lonsfield and Captain Sir John Reeder learn that their kinsman, Major Granger Goldhurst—who killed Lonsfield's brother in a duel and became a wanderer—is potentially the sole heir to the title and estates of Lord Vancourt, with five heirs having died. Deciding to seek him themselves in America, they pursue leads to the frontier.

Eighteen years earlier, Goldhurst served as first officer aboard a merchant brig caught in a Caribbean tornado near the Bahama Islands. After the captain is swept overboard, Goldhurst takes command and navigates the doomed vessel to run ashore under an island's lee. He leads the lifeboat containing passengers including Lucille Hubbard, an eighteen-year-old planter's daughter traveling for her health, to safety. Other boats founder with most survivors perishing; the crew buries the dead and establishes a camp on the island.