V SCOUT KENTON HAS A HARD TIME (1778-1779) How He Paid for his Horse-Stealing VI THE SCRAPE OF LEWIS AND JACOB WETZEL (1778) And the Nerve of Two Boy Scouts VII CAPTAIN SAMUEL BRADY SWEARS VENGEANCE (1780-1781) And Broad-Jumps Like a Wild Turkey VIII THE FLIGHT OF THREE SOLDIERS (1782) On the Trail with the Crawford Men IX THE BRAVE WOMEN OF BRYANT'S STATION (1782) And the Defeat of the Villain Girty X BETTY ZANE'S "POWDER EXPLOIT" (1782) How a Girl Saved the Day XI THE FIVE BOY CAPTIVES (1785) Adventures of "Little Fat Bear" and All XII ODDS AGAINST HIGGINS THE RANGER (1814) And his Rescue by Heroine Pursley XIII JOHN COLTER'S RACE FOR LIFE (1808) The Trapper and the Blackfeet XIV HUGH GLASS AND THE GRIZZLY BEAR (1823) "As Slick as a Peeled Onion" XV A FRACAS ON THE SANTA FE TRAIL (1829) And the Building of Bent's Fort XVI A SEARCH FOR A SILVER MINE (1831) And the "Bowie Indian Fight" XVII THROUGH THE ENEMY'S LINES (1846) The Three Kit Carson Couriers XVIII THE HOTTEST CHASE ON RECORD (1864) Two in an Army Wagon XIX RELIEF FOR BEECHER'S ISLAND (1868) And a Rattle-Snake in the Way XX THE DEFENSE OF THE BUFFALO-HUNTERS (1874) When the Comanche Medicine Failed XXI WHITE MEN AT BAY AGAIN (1874) The "Fight of the Privates" XXII BUFFALO BILL AND YELLOW HAND (1876) A Plains-Day Duel XXIII THE "SIBLEY SCOUT" (1876) A Famous Army Tale LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Custer's Last Stand . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ The Great Leap of Major McColloch At the Siege of Boonesborough Simon Kenton in Trouble Lewis Wetzel Leads on the Run Captain Brady of Pennsylvania The "Fight of the Privates" Buffalo Bill, Chief of Scouts BOYS' BOOK OF FRONTIER FIGHTERS CHAPTER I THE CAPTURE OF OLD CHIEF ANNAWAN (1676) BOLD CAPTAIN CHURCH IN THE LION's DEN Captain Benjamin Church, born in Plymouth Colony of old Massachusetts, was a rousing Indian fighter. He earned his title when in 1675 the Pokanoket League of nine Indian tribes, under King Phillip the Wampanoag, took up the hatchet against the whites. Then he was called from his farm in Rhode Island Colony, to lead a company into the field. So he bade his family good-by, and set forth. He was at this time aged thirty-six, and built like a bear--short in the legs, broad in the body, and very active. He knew all the Indian ways, and had ridden back and forth through the Pokanoket country, between his Aquidneck home on Rhode Island, and Plymouth and Boston on the Massachusetts coast. In his Indian fighting he never turned his face from a trail. The famous Kit Carson of the West was no bolder. King Phillip's War lasted a year and two months, from June of 1675, into August of 1676.[1] Captain Church soon became the Indians' most hardy foeman.