Eight-year-old Zack Taylor sat straight up on his straw pallet. Down below in the darkness he heard his father go to the door of the log cabin. In a few hours it would be dawn.

"Indian trouble at the Chenoweths'!" he heard someone whisper to Colonel Dick Taylor.

Zack was dressed by the time his father had closed the door. Frontier boys who lived in Kentucky in 1792 didn't waste time when Indians were on the prowl.

Ten minutes later Zack and his brothers were hurrying after their parents down a rough narrow trail to a big stone house in the wilderness. This was the safest place for miles around. No Indians could burn it down!

Zack watched his father and the other men run toward the forest and the Chenoweth cabin. He wished he could help fight the Indians. Someday he was going to be a soldier just like his father. But Zack learned two important things that night. He learned what the word duty means. And he learned how even a little boy could live up to the Taylor family motto, "Ready and Faithful."

Indian attacks weren't the only exciting things that happened to Zack. He had many adventures in the Kentucky wilderness. It was Zack who solved the mystery of the trail of blood leading to the deserted cabin. And he proved how brave and resourceful he was the time he was lost in the cave—and the night of the flood on the Ohio River.

Zack was busy, also, trapping muskrats. When he had sold enough pelts, he would be able to buy his own bullets and powder horn. There were trips to the little town of Louisville, too. It was there that Zack gave the alarm that led to the capture of a river pirate.

All this time Zack was learning how to shoot a gun, how to fight and how to defend himself. And he was learning always to be ready and faithful and to do his duty. These boyhood experiences helped make Zack Taylor the great soldier he became—the hero of the Seminole and Mexican Wars. And when the people of the United States wanted a brave, honest, peace-loving American to be their President, they chose Zachary Taylor.

Zack Taylor: Young Rough and Ready, by Katharine E. Wilkie, is an exciting story about the boyhood of the twelfth President of our country. Mrs. Wilkie, who has lived all her life in Kentucky, is a teacher of Kentucky history in the Fayette County schools. She is particularly well suited to write this book for the Childhood of Famous Americans Series.

From the dust jacket