Eight-year-old Jimmie lived with his family on their Louisiana farm, which was surrounded by a wilderness. Always seeking adventure, Jimmie and his brothers explored the hazardous bayous and hunted alligators and bears. Frontier life was not easy. Jimmie had to learn how to throw his hunting knife with the speed of lightning, how to think quickly when danger threatened, how to face fearlessly strength greater than his own.

As the Southwest frontier of the early 1800s moved westward, Jimmie dreamed of going to Texas. It was a new, growing territory, and he had heard that a fortune was to be found there. But Texas was almost two hundred miles away; it would take courage to travel through untamed lands inhabited by wild animals and Indians. Even on the trail to Natchez, where his father was going to sell his crop, Jimmie had had a narrow escape from Indians. And it wasn't only on the trail that Jimmie's bravery and skill as a boy frontiersman were tested.

One night someone tried to steal the Bowie's horses. Suddenly, out of the darkness, something flashed by the window. Jimmie leaped to the back door, plunged into the woods. As he reached the trail the sound of horses' hoofs pounded in his ears. The thief was close. Jimmie aimed his gun. ...The boy frontiersman could not be frightened by Indian or bad man.

Some time after that Jim and his brother Rezin saw a herd of buffalo galloping across a plain. Without warning the herd turned and charged on them. The boy frontiersman could not be panicked by buffalo. Jim saw that there was only one thing for him to do....

Jim Bowie took a model of the knife he had always wanted for hunting to a blacksmith, and from this model the first "Bowie knife" was made. It became famous all over the world.

Some years later, in 1836, James Bowie, now a celebrated Indian fighter, took a valiant part in the war of Texas against Mexican tyranny. At the siege of the Alamo the Mexicans far outnumbered the Texans. In hand-to-hand combat Bowie died fighting heroically alongside other famous American frontiersman—among them Davy Crockett.

From the dust jacket