This is the story of Mitchell Ford, a boy from southern Virginia, who, with his mother and father, the judge, undertook the long and dangerous journey up the Santa Fe Trail to the new land beyond. First, there was the long riverboat ride up the Missouri to Westport—now Kansas City—where the Ford family bought a prairie schooner for the trek up the Trail. It was here that Mitch was given the first rifle he had ever owned.

"Good hunting, but hunt only what you have to, son," were the parting words of the storekeeper.

In the days that followed, Mitch's rifle began to seem like a trusted friend, for he had need of it more than once, as the party followed the Trail through wild, rugged country. Indians and renegade white men were not their only enemies. Even the weather seemed to conspire against them, and once Mitch owed his life to his little paint pony's fleet feet. But the hardy pioneers pushed on, and eventually journey's end was in sight. When the caravan finally reached Santa Fe, another milestone had been reached in America's westward surge, and Mitch Ford was no longer a boy. He was a man.

From the dust jacket