Ned in the Block-House: A Tale of Early Days in the West

The Kentucky wilderness, 1788. Fourteen-year-old Ned Preston and his friend Wildblossom Brown are tracking a deer through the autumn forest when an arrow meant for their quarry nearly finds one of them instead. Someone is watching from the trees. What begins as a boy's hunt becomes a desperate flight through territory where every shadow might hide a warrior, every rustle of leaves might signal the difference between life and death. With danger Doggedly pursuing and the distant promise of Fort Bridgman ahead, the boys make an unlikely ally: Deerfoot, a young Shawanoe whose loyalties are not what they initially seem. Together, they must navigate a world where the line between friend and foe shifts with each mile, where the frontier is as merciless as it is vast. Edward Sylvester Ellis, writing in the late 19th century, captures the raw adrenaline of frontier survival and the unexpected friendships that emerge when boys are forced to become men faster than childhood should allow. This is adventure fiction that pulls no punches, and it remains a gripping read for anyone who loves historical action and tales of young people tested by the wilderness.