Beadle's Pocket Novels No. 163

About this issue

Hank, the Guide; or, The Wrong Trail by Harry Hazard is a Western adventure novel serialized in Beadle and Adams's pocket novel series (1877). The narrative follows Old Hank Triplett, a weathered frontier scout leading an emigrant wagon train across barren prairie toward a remote fort. The plot centers on tension between Hank's warnings of imminent Native American attack and Colonel Pinger's determination to camp in a timber grove despite danger. Pinger's charming daughter Josie persuades the reluctant guide to relent. At camp, romantic entanglements develop: Josie grows interested in the ambulance driver Basil Croteau, while her spinster aunt Miss Medora openly courts Hank himself. The story balances frontier action—detailed descriptions of wagon trains, prairie landscape, and indigenous threats—with domestic drama and character development, establishing multiple narrative threads as the party settles into the woods.