Books: Buffalo Bill's Mentor

THE GREAT RASCAL (353 pp.) —Jay Monaghan—Little, Brown ($4.50).

Chief Tall Bull crashed to the ground, shot dead as a doornail by Major Frank North of the Pawnee scouts. Little did the poor Indian know that in biting the. dust he was launching a literary fad, and that it would change the lives of half the boys in the civilized world. For hot on the heels of North's bullet rode Ned Buntline, the famed dime novelist, all agog to plump Tall Bull's slayer into one of his thrillers. North, a simple soldier, refused to be...