As a boy Kit Carson was such a backward little runt that his stepfather was almost ashamed of him. The idea of making a rugged frontiersman out of the shy, bandy-legged boy seemed laughable.

But Kit had different ideas, and at sixteen he joined a wagon train and was heading over the Santa Fe Trail for Taos, the little Mexican settlement that had become headquarters for the mountain men.

From then on, Kit was always on the move—trapping beaver, fighting Indian raiders, pushing into the new territory of the Western frontier. At twenty he was as tough as leather. He could ride any wild horse on the prairies and could shoot the eye out of a racing jack rabbit.

Soon older and more experienced mountain men were turning to Kit Carson as their natural leader. They found he kept his word steadily as he held a rifle and was willing to tackle what others called impossible.

In Kit Carson and the Wild Frontier, Ralph Moody tells a swift-paced story of the mountain man who became a national figure in the early days of the West.

From the dust jacket