Author's Note

Ethan Allen was quite a man. They say he stood six feet eight in his stocking feet... that he could and did chew iron nails...that he could catch deer by running them down. It is said that he once killed an enraged bear by ramming his powder horn down its throat.

What do we really know about Ethan Allen?

We know that as a boy on the Connecticut frontier he showed he was brave and could think quickly. His race to the tree and his trips to Brownson's mill are well-known stories. The New York landlord's treatment of farmers and the Acadian family settling in Cornwall are both matters of record. Ethan studied for Yale until his father's death when he became head of the family. He really collected that debt from Mather, too!

At nineteen, he went to fight at Fort William Henry. From this point on, Ethan's life is well-known. His deeds appear in the records of New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Canada. Then, too, we have Ethan's own story, "A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity."

Ethan's life reads like an adventure story—he was that type of man.

Sheldon N. Ripley

Ethan hitched up his belt as he limped across the clearing. He tried once more to brush the dust off his shirt. Rubbing his sleeve across his face, he saw that his nose still bled a little. He had pinned together the tear in his trousers with two thorns, but he knew it would do no good. He had been in another fight!

But young Ethan soon learned he couldn't solve all his problems with his fists. Always big for his age, he grew to be a giant of a man but a man who was also big in spirit.

He became the popular leader of the Green Mountain Boys in their bloodless fight against the "Yorkers" over ownership of land in the Grants (now Vermont). Then when War broke out he led his Boys against the British and captured Fort Ticonderoga. But he was himself captured as he attempted to take Montreal, and imprisoned for three years.

Even his captors admired him and recognized what George Washington later called Allen's "original something." When he was finally freed the three-day celebration was proof no one in the new Republic of Vermont he had worked so hard to found had forgotten him, and when he died eleven years later the Boys came from near and far to mourn him.

In narrative as lively as his subject Mr. Ripley has re-created the life of one of America's most colorful leader-heroes—the "hero of Ticonderoga"—who will long be remembered for his courageous part in the fight for freedom.

From the dust jacket