Followers of the Trail
Zoe Meyer’s northern wilderness begins at an old snake fence, where a log cabin marks the edge of the spruce and hemlock country along the Little Vermilion. Inside lives the Hermit, a botanist who left the city and his broken health behind to gather roots and bark for medicine, and who studies the animals with a camera instead of a gun. A stray black and white dog named Pal turns up one evening and stays. The fourteen stories that follow move out from that clearing to Kagh the porcupine, a bull moose hunters covet for his antlers, beavers building inside their lodge, Silver Spot the fox cub, Ringtail the raccoon, twin bear cubs, and a great white wolf. Little, Brown published it in 1926, illustrated by William F. Stecher. The animals stay animals here, never costumed people.
