McGraw©Hill/Focus/Pliny's Bargain p. 304////R7N18 ***** It took Anatole Blanchette two days to tramp forty miles

from Moose Meadows to Lake of the Wolves. Anatole was only

fourteen years old, but tough, like his father and, like his

father, wise in the ways of the woods. This silent forest of

spruce and birch was his element. If his father, Jules, had come

this way, he, Anatole, would find him. Jules had been mysteriously missing for three weeks.

Mounted police were searching eastward along Cold River Portage.

Jules, promising to be home in a week, had said he would scout

fur in that region in order to make plans for next winter's

trapping. But he might, Anatole reasoned. have changed his mind

and gone north. So the boy, with a light pack on his back and a

light carbine in his small sure hands, had trekked north©ward

alone toward Lake of the Wolves. Like his father, Anatole was small boned and slight of

figure. His step was soft, quick, and his moccasins made no

sound on the trail. His sharp eyes, at every step, looked for

footprints of Jules Blanchette. He would know them at once,

because anyone else but Jules in this balmy summer season would

be wearing moccasins. As a rule Jules did so himself, but on

this excursion he had left home wearing a pair of knee©high elkªhide boots. It was just after sunset on his second day out that Anatole

saw the cabin. It stood in an open glade of the forest,

encircled at a distance on all sides by velvety blue conifers.