THE WILDERNESS TRAIL (A Western Classic)

Donald MacTavish is the newly appointed head commissioner of the Hudson's Bay Company. This promotion infuriates MacTavish's rival Angus Fitzpatrick who had wanted the job. Fitzpatrick takes his anger and resentment out on MacTavish and then sets out to get MacTavish fired. On the other hand, Fitzpatrick accuses MacTavish of stealing furs that were actually stolen by a group of thieving traders led by Sergius. And to complicate matters, both MacTavish and Sergius are in love with Fitzpatrick's young daughter Jeanne! The book was also adapted into a 1919 Hollywood silent film whose prints are now lost. Excerpt: "Donald McTavish glared down into the heavy, ugly face of his superior—a face that concealed behind its mask of dignity emotions as potent and lasting as the northland that bred them. "I accuse you of nothing." Fitzpatrick pawed his white beard. "I only know that a great quantity of valuable furs, trapped in your district, have not been turned in to me here at the factory. It is to explain this discrepancy that I have called you down by dogs in the dead of winter..." Francis William Sullivan was an author of western fiction.