Chancy and the grand rascal

I first read Chancy and the Grand Rascal when it was published in 1966, and it knocked my socks off. I read it once and then I read it again, and then I went to the library to check out everything Mr. Sid Fleischman had written.

Chancy is the story of a boy who heads down the Mississippi to look for his little sisters and brother. He's saved for four years so he has enough money to buy a steamboat ticket. And then he runs into Colonel Plugg, a scoundrel who takes all his money and leaves him with a batch of stale eggs. Chancy is determined to find Plugg and get his money back, so off he goes, on foot, trying to sell wood to steamboats. And then he meets the grand rascal...

Everything kids could want in a story, including fast-talking con artists and cowboys and tall-tale-tellers and rafting over a waterfall and...well, just trust me, it's a fun story from start to finish. There are a group of wild Indians, but perhaps, like most of the characters in this book, they aren't what they seem either.