The White Tracker

The White Tracker; or, The Panther of the Plains

This 1874 Beadle and Adams dime novel, authored by "the author of 'The Boy Miners,'" opens on the Kansas River in 1824. Two trappers—Edward Murtel, an Englishman and deserter from the 1812 war, and Harry Harmer, a Kentuckian who fought under Jackson at New Orleans—watch their traps while exchanging stories. When Harmer claims disinterest in war narratives, Murtel urges an Indian story. Harmer recounts a harrowing Wisconsin hunting adventure from twenty years prior: pursuing what he believed to be a fleeing Native American through dense forest, only to discover he was being herded into an ambush by three warriors. After a desperate chase, Harmer leaps a fifty-foot bluff into a river, where his companion Tom provides covering fire from the opposite shore, killing two of the pursuers. The narrative breaks mid-action as Murtel suggests they attend their traps, though Harmer grows agitated at Murtel's skepticism about his veracity.