The Wilderness Trail

published by Grosset and Dunlap
New York, 1913
Copyright 1913
by W.J. Watt & Company
Published June
“And you accuse me of that?”
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. Where are those furs?” He looked up out of the great chair in which he was sitting, and regarded his inferior with cold insolence. For half an hour now, the interview had been in progress, half an hour of shame and dismay for McTavish, and the same amount of satisfaction for the factor.
“I tell you I have no idea where they are,” returned the post captain. “So far as I know, the usual number of pelts have been traded for at the fort. If any have disappeared, it is a matter of the white trappers and the Indians, not my affair.”
“Yes,” agreed the other suavely; “but who is in charge of Fort Dickey?”
“I am.”
“Then, how can you say it is not your affair when the Company is losing twenty thousand pounds a year from your district?”