In 1826 an undersized sixteen-year-old apprentice ran away from a saddle maker in Franklin, Missouri, to join one of the first wagon trains crossing the prairie on the Santa Fe Trail. Kit Carson (1809–68) wanted to be a mountain man, and he spent his next sixteen years learning the paths of the West, the ways of its Native inhabitants, and the habits of the beaver, becoming the most successful and respected fur trapper of his time.
Ralph Moody’s biography of Kit Carson, appropriate for readers young and old, is a testament to the judgment and loyalty of the man who had perhaps more influence than any other on the history and development of the American West.