Beadle's Pocket Library No. 394

This issue of Beadle's Dime Novels contains "Little Buck, the Boy Guide," by Barry Ringgold. Tom Temple, a sixteen-year-old from Brooklyn, arrives in the Montana wilderness searching for his missing father, who departed six years earlier. He awakens in a cave to find himself under attack by a wild cat and her kittens. Rescued by Buck Bowie, a skilled seventeen-year-old frontiersman and marksman, the boys quickly become friends. Buck offers to help Tom search for his father and teach him to shoot. The narrative follows their wilderness adventures, including a shooting competition with a young Snake Indian named Red-Hoof over a prized silver fox. An elderly Indian mentions a mysterious "magic-man" living in the distant Rocky Mountains, a figure who allegedly counsels peace between Indians and whites. Tom speculates this figure might be his missing father. The story emphasizes frontier survival, marksmanship, and the boys' developing partnership amid encounters with Native Americans and wildlife.