The books in this section are usually hardcover and in decent shape, though we'll sometimes offer hard-to-find books in lesser condition at a reduced price. Though we often put images of the book with their original dust jackets, the copies here won't always (or even often) have them. If that is important to you, please call ahead or say so in the order comments!
Jim Bowie taught him to use a knife, and General Sam Houston repaired his rifle. But young Page Carter, from Virginia, didn't like to hunt or shoot. "You couldn't hit the side of a barn door!" they told him in Texas. But he could read and write and count, as some of his critics couldn't. So at fifteen, with a widowed mother to support, Page started trading his book learning for wild turkeys and venison and other necessities of life on the frontier.
At first Page saved every penny to go back to Virginia. But the new life in Texas had its own fun and fascination along with the dangers and deprivations. There was a new house to build as well as an Indian raid to withstand. There was a duel with the town bully that ended in a horse race, with a fleet Virginia mare running against a big Texas mustang.
Little by little the boy from the old South learned the ways of the new Southwest until suddenly he felt at home there-and when Sam Hous- ton called for volunteers, off he went to defend Texas, playing the only tune he knew on the fife that had been his father's. That was the tune men marched to in the battle of San Jacinto, which defeated the dictator Santa Anna and established the in- dependence of Texas.
Written with a real feeling for the period, conveying the excitement and wonder felt by a sensitive, intelligent boy in a wild new country, here is an authentic picture of pioneer life and a historically accurate account of a famous fight for freedom. Here are the people that made a new land along the bank of the Brazos. And with them is a young hero to win sympathy in his embarrassments and defeats as well as in the moment of triumph when General Houston says that books will soon be made more important than bowie knives, even in the West.
—from the dust jacket
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