Hugh Pendexter (1875–1940)

I found a strange book on the bookshelf by my bed. It turned out to be by one Hugh Pendexter and I'd snagged it from the Traveler Restaurant in Connecticut, on my way either to or from Baltimore. I'd never read it. So, I looked the guy up. The book on the shelf wasn't available on Gutenberg, but this one was. I decided to read it, because I hardly ever read a book in dead tree form these days.

Anyway, I thought this was one of those backwoods adventure kinds of things, set shortly after the American Revolution. But it turns out to have been a sort of work of historical fiction, a haggiography perhaps, regarding the doings of one John Sevier, often known in old days as Chucky Jack.

It seems that North Carolina gave up half their territory, the part that is now Tennessee, to the federal government to help pay their share of the war debt. The Spanish, who were in control of the Mississippi River at the time, wanted to take over that part of the country for themselves, and were engaging the aid of various Native American tribes to help in that endeavor. Chucky Jack and his minions foiled the Spanish plot. Something like that.

It was a fairly fun adventure story. I'm not convinced how much of it is actually true.
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