Jack Sevier gave a start. Was that sound the cracking of a stick? Or was it a deer? An Indian? He crouched behind a fallen tree and propped his rifle against the trunk. His heart skipped a beat as he saw a huge black bear lumber out of the woods toward him. He would wait to shoot until it came closer. The bear looked around, then slowly ambled toward the place where Jack was hidden, his great head swinging back and forth. Jack tried to remember everything Hunter Joe had taught him. He sighted down the long barrel and aimed right behind the bear's shoulder. Carefully he squeezed the trigger. The shot echoed like a cannon in the quiet woods.

The bear grunted and tossed his head. He turned slowly and moved toward Jack. Jack was puzzled. Could he have missed? Quickly he poured another charge into his rifle. The bear, with fire in his eyes, was halfway across the clearing now. Jack took aim again, but before he could fire, the bear fell and rolled over not ten feet from him. He had shot Old Cripple Foot through the heart! At seven years old, Jack Sevier was a full-fledged hunter.

Young Jack lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the middle of the eighteenth century. His father had a trading post on the Wilderness Trail, and from the settlers who came along Jack hear of the wide lands to the southwest beyond the mountains, of the Indians there and of a new frontier opening up. He was determined to be an Indian fighter when he grew up, a founder of settlements, a leader of men.

He learned to shoot under Old Hunter Joe, and his best friend, Flying Arrow, taught him the ways of the forest. He could track a panther, imitate an owl's hoot and trail a man through the woods.

All this woodlore stood him in good stead when the Indians, roused by the French, swept down on the English colonists.

Later his frontier experiences as a boy were the mold for the resourcefulness of the man. Jack led his backwoodsmen against the British at the Battle of King's Mountain and helped to achieve a victory that turned the tide of the Revolution.

"Nolachucky Jack " became famous as an Indian fighter, but even more so as the governor of the State of Franklin, and the first governor of Tennessee, five times re-elected.

The author, William O. Steele, is a Tennessean himself, a writer of popular books for children. In this fine story of a notable pioneer boy he makes his first, and a very delightful, contribution to the Childhood of Famous Americans Series.

From the dust jacket