Fourteen-year-old Chris, bitterly hating the Yankees for invading his Tennessee mountain home, learns a difficult lesson about the waste of war and the meaning of tolerance and courage when he reports the approach of a Yankee supply troop to the Confederates, only to learn that his brother is probably part of that troop.
Z období pionýrského období americké historie, zakládání severoamerických kolonií. Výpravy z roku 1750 – Thomas Walker, z roku 1763 – Elisha Wallen, z roku 1775 – Daniel Boone a z roku 1783 – John Filson.
Ten-year-old Flan Taylor figured he wasn't much count. He was small for his age and couldn't shoot a rifle. He couldn't even chop down a tree or skin a deer. But none of this seemed to bother Chapman Green, the Long Hunter with whom Flan was to make the dangerous journey over the Wilderness Trail from the Holston River settlement to the French Salt Lick. As the days came and went, Flan came to realize that size wasn't everything. Quick wit and endurance counted for a lot in the wilderness. Slowly his self-reliance grew and, with it, his skill in the woods, and when hostile Indians attacked the group of settlers with whom they were then traveling, Flan was able to give warning and carry out the Long Hunter's instructions. By the time Flan reached a French Salt Lick, he'd learned that it didn't matter so much whether a boy grew up to be a lawyer or a Long Hunter; what did matter was knowing you could make a few mistakes and still win out if you did your best. Like Mr. Steele's earlier book, The Buffalo Knife, this is an authentic, exciting, and well-told story of frontier life in 1782, which will hold young readers' interest to the end.