The Huge Hunter; or, The Steam Man of the Prairies is a western novel set against the frontier west of the Mississippi in the 1870s. It tells the tale of Johnny Brainerd, a young inventor who builds a steam powered mechanical man. Brainerd's acquaintance Baldy Bicknell convinces him to take the creature across the western territories in order to test it out on the prairies and eventually help with Bicknell's rough miners who seek gold. On this adventure they are under constant threat from Indian attacks who can't deal with the mechanical creature.