What boy could think of resting and taking medicine when the wonderfully mysterious swamps of South Carolina lay practically in his back yard?

Francis Marion certainly couldn't, but he rested and swallowed the bitters when his mother asked him to. He was wiry and he felt as strong as his favorite horse, Star Bell, even though his parents worried because he was small and slender. He rode Star Bell over the savannah near the plantation until his four older brothers said admiringly that he was the best horseman of the Marions.

But his thoughts were always on the swamps. He knew there was danger in the dark regions where snakes and alligators lurked under the moss-covered trees. He was positive, though, he could learn the secrets of the swamps if he was cautious and alert.

He was alert the day he and his father and their handy man Prince arrived in Charles Town after the long journey along the Atlantic coast in a dugout. His quick wits saved the life of a man caught in a burning building. The grateful man several years later sent him a pistol and Francis lost no time learning to use it.

In the swamps with Prince, Francis had many occasions to fight off alligators and slithering snakes. But not until he met an Indian boy did he learn to penetrate really deep into the wilderness. Eagle Feather liked him and showed him how to swing over lagoons on a vine and how to follow hidden trails whose only markers were particular trees, lagoons and grasses.

This knowledge served Francis well when an expedition of his friends became hopelessly lost, and when an old Indian slaver made off with Prince and Eagle Feather's father. Francis rescued the captives, and the men of the search party told him he was as cunning and resourceful as a fox, a swamp fox.

During the Revolutionary War many years later, an exasperated British commander, Tarleton, held the same opinion. He was no match for Marion and his men, who struck and disappeared like lightning into the swamps their leader knew so well. The British were pushed out of South Carolina and Tarleton exclaimed, "Marion is a swamp fox. The devil himself couldn't catch him, once he's in a swamp."

From the dust jacket