On a still midnight in the Missouri wilderness a man hurries across the clearing and scratches at the door of Lindsay Carson's cabin. It is the signal of runners sent out to warn the settlers of an Indian attack. In less time than it takes to tell, the family is aroused and making ready to go to the safety of Fort Hempstead. Each member knows exactly what his share of duty is, and soon all are ready. Silently they file ahead on the narrow trail: Mr. Carson first, carrying his gun; Mrs. Carson next with the baby; then the two older girls, each in charge of a younger child. Next comes eight-year-old Kit, carrying a big water bucket, and following him are his three older brothers.

Kit suddenly realizes that his mother has forgotten the maple sugar she always takes along to quiet the baby if she should cry. Her crying might reveal them to the enemy! Without telling anyone, he returns to the cabin. In the darkness a hand suddenly seizes his arm. Kit looks up to see the painted face of an Indian! Is he friend or enemy? How will Kit get back to the fort?

From there Miss Stevenson's story goes into a series of exciting incidents that show Kit Carson's boyhood to have been as active as his later life when he was the most famous trapper and scout on the frontier.

How Kit tangles with the bully Zeke Hicks, and how Zeke, intending revenge, is, in the long run, responsible for Kit's giving the warning that saves the fort from the Indian attackers in just one of many thrilling episodes.

Not all the Indians are enemies, and Kit finds friends among them. From them he learns many of the things he will put to use later on. But it is his meeting with Daniel Boone, when Kit is nine years old, that proves to him he wants to be a trapper when he grows up.

He aims his life in that direction, and the things that happen to him all go to build the courage and resourcefulness he must have.

He had to be more than a trapper, for a trapper in those dangerous days could not last long if he wasn't able also to track Indians, to know their ways and meet them with equal skill and cunning. Kit Carson was in a thousand Indian fights. Quick action and quick thinking saved his life many times, and they were the things he learned as a boy.

Kit Carson was an American we can all be proud of—even the Indians respected him, whether they were fighting him or befriending him. President Tyler called on him for advice and help in expanding America across the plains to the West Coast. "There should be one America from the Atlantic to the Pacific," said Kit Carson, and he did more than his share in making this dream come true.

From the dust jacket