Dick Wootton blazed the great trails that opened the American West, hacking paths through the hostile wilderness. Trapper, trader, stage boss, government scout, express rider, buffalo hunter, his life was filled with adventure from the time he was a nineteen-year-old Kentucky tenderfoot with nothing in the world but a horse, a rifle and a passion for excitement.

At Independence, Missouri, the last outpost of civilization, he joined a wagon train. The journey was rough even for experienced men—fording swollen streams, clearing the trail of rattlesnakes, fighting off Comanche attacks. On the desolate plains Dick knew moments of terror and homesickness. But his courage won him the respect of his leader, and as the great-powered wagons reached Fort Bent on the Arkansas, he began to feel like a man—a mountain man.

Dick headed a wagon train into Sioux country to trade with the Indians. With his profits he bought trapping equipment and in two years covered five thousand miles through Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and California. Later he hunted buffalo; became a dispatch carrier and express rider. As army guide he acted as interpreter at the Navaho peace treaty. He drove a huge herd of sheep sixteen hundred miles to the meat-hungry gold miners of California, fighting Utes and the treachery of his own mutinous crew. Later he broke up gangs of cattle thieves, freighted for the government and set up Denver's first log and frame buildings.

But Dick Wootton's greatest achievement came late in life when he was nearing sixty. He realized that the Raton Pass was the natural gateway between Colorado and New Mexico, but in winter fifty miles of the trail was impassible. Despite incredible hardships he dug a wagon road through the Pass, set up a toll gate and a tavern to accommodate the ever increasing traffic of arrow-scarred wagon trains. Soon his route became a military road and travelers streamed through. Dick Wootton's road had opened the way westward, and he lived to hear the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad thunder along the path he had blasted from wilderness.

From the dust jacket