Beadle's Dime Novels: Long Shot

About this issue

Long Shot; or, The Dwarf Guide, by Capt. Comstock (Beadle and Adams, 1874), is a frontier adventure narrative set in southwestern Missouri near the Osage River. The story opens when seventeen-year-old Mary Ward, daughter of the trapper "Lynx-eye" Benjamin Ward, encounters the persistent suitor Mark Wylde while drawing water. After refusing his marriage proposal, Mary witnesses a prairie combat between four mounted fighters: two white men (one a tall hunter called "Long-shot," revealed to be Kit Swift, and his diminutive companion, a dwarf guide of unusual appearance) and two Indian warriors. When Mark Wylde inexplicably refuses to aid the whites, Mary and her father rush to assist. The narrative emphasizes Long-shot's skill in horsemanship and rifle work, the dwarf guide's knife-fighting prowess, and an underlying romantic tension between Mary and Kit Swift, complicated by her father's prejudice rooted in Kit's English parentage.