Cover

For more than forty years,
Yearling has been the leading name
in classic and award-winning literature
for young readers.

Yearling books feature children’s
favorite authors and characters,
providing dynamic stories of adventure,
humor, history, mystery, and fantasy.

Trust Yearling paperbacks to entertain,
inspire, and promote the love of reading
in all children.

Title Page

Copyright

Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York

Copyright © 1994 by Gary Paulsen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press.

Yearling and the jumping horse design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers

eISBN: 978-0-307-80416-7

Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

v3.1

Dedication

To Angenette

Map

———— Chapter One ————

FRANCIS ALPHONSE TUCKET came back to life slowly. He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to open his eyes until he remembered everything that had happened.

Yesterday had been Francis’s fourteenth birthday, and he had celebrated it quietly. Usually his mother and father—and even his nine-year-old sister Rebecca—made a big thing of birthdays. They had friends in, and a giant cake cooked to perfection on his mother’s huge wood-burning stove, and by four in the afternoon everybody was so full of homemade ice cream and cake they couldn’t move.

But that was how it had been on the farm in Missouri, where they had had the big house and barn. Yesterday they had celebrated Francis’s birthday on the tailgate of a Conestoga wagon at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was June 13, 1847—a warm summer Tuesday in a new country and they were with a wagon train on its way to Oregon. Francis, on awakening that morning, thought that even without any sort of birthday party, it would be his best birthday yet. How many boys of fourteen had ever seen drawings of the Rockies, let alone the real thing? That was an adventure in itself, not to mention crossing the great Kansas plains and watching the train scout, Mr. Ballard, hunt buffalo for the wagon train.