The Danger Trail

In Short

Jack Howland, a young engineer driven by ambition, travels into the northern wilderness near Prince Albert and Wekusko, where he is ambushed and mistaken for another man. Haunted by a mysterious, refined girl named Meleese and tracked by the half-breed Jean Croisset, Howland survives dynamite blasts and dungeon imprisonment. Rather than retreating south, he confronts his pursuers, learns that Meleese is torn between family loyalty and love, and claims her. Curwood’s melodramatic frontier romance lasts through its fierce landscape atmosphere, moral suspense, and visceral clash of wilderness survival against obsessive devotion.

The Story

Jack Howland looks from a Prince Albert ridge into a thousand miles of Arctic gloom, hearing wolf cries and feeling the pull of the North. Inside a local spot, he encounters a refined woman with shining brown hair and gray lynx fur. Ambushed on the trail and left choking in the snow, he hears a woman cry out, "Mon Dieu, you are killing him--killing him!" Jean Croisset carries him to safety muttering about fools. Awakening bandaged, Howland finds he missed his morning train to Le Pas. Later at a Wekusko camp, Gregson describes a caribou-skin-clad northern girl, and Howland spots Croisset and that same white-faced girl speeding past in a six-dog sledge.

Jackpine drives Howland deep into the forest to an abandoned log cabin built by Gregson and Thorne. There, Howland meets hyperactive superintendent MacDonald and the nervous senior engineer Thorne. Out in the forest gloom, Howland catches Meleese, presses her to his breast, and confesses his love, refusing to return south.

Sent to witness a "south coyote" powder blast, Howland is trapped near massive powder and dynamite stores with a creeping fuse. Using his pocket revolver, he shoots out the spark twice, waits out his paralysis, and walks out at half-past ten as picks break the rock. Soon after, Croisset binds him on a sledge heading straight north into the Barren Lands, warning him that Meleese would torture him inch by inch.

At the massive timber building known as Maison de Mort Rouge, Howland overpowers Croisset, ties him with babeesh, and demands answers at gunpoint. Finding Meleese inside, he repeats his refusal to leave; she begs him to flee because her family thinks him drowned and warns him to speak with Jean. Recaptured and locked in a dungeon wall with breathing apertures, Howland faces execution by gunshot through the wall at six o'clock sharp. A frantic note arrives from Meleese: "If God fails to answer my prayers I will still do as I have promised--and follow you."

Jean returns, revealing that Pierre Thoreau and his three brothers are the enemies enforcing self-made northern law, and that Meleese was used to lure him before realizing they meant to kill him. Torn between her murderous flesh-and-blood brothers and Howland, she slips away in the gray morning. Howland breaks from the table, chases her past the threshold, and gathers her into his arms.

How It Unfolds

The northern awakening Howland stands on a high ridge outside Prince Albert, listening to the hissing aurora borealis and distant wolf cries. The polar vastness stirs a sudden, deep sense of personal destiny within him.

The lynx-furred vision Inside a local room, Howland locks eyes with a refined woman wearing a gray lynx turban, muff, and collarette. Her appearance completely shatters his dispassionate view of women.

The midnight ambush Struck down on the Great North Trail, Howland hears a woman shriek before blacking out in the snow. Jean Croisset hauls him out while questioning what sweet Meleese would say.

The Wekusko cabin arrival Jackpine drives Howland to an isolated, snow-drifted log cabin once built by Gregson and Thorne. Inside, a roaring box stove contrasts with creepy warnings of hidden fear.

The forest confession Howland corners Meleese in the dark timber, crushing her to his chest and declaring he will not go south. Her eyes plead terror while his resolve hardens into love.

The powder-coyote escape Trapped near 125 barrels of powder and four cases of dynamite, Howland snuffs a creeping fuse with two pistol shots. He emerges half an hour later after sensation returns to his limbs.

The northern abduction run Croisset binds Howland and races a six-dog team straight into the face of polar lights toward the Athabasca break. The half-breed grimly taunts the captive engineer about impending death.

The Maison de Mort Rouge clash Howland tackles Croisset inside the grim timber fortress, ties him with babeesh thongs, and holds him at gunpoint for answers. Croisset refuses to yield details about the waiting clan.

The final death sentence Locked in a dark dungeon with rotting walls, Howland watches his watch tick toward six o'clock as execution looms. Meleese slips a desperate note under the door vowing to follow him in death.

The morning reunion Jean confesses the Thoreau brothers' plot and Meleese's agonizing double loyalty. Howland spots the slipping figure of Meleese at dawn, darts past the threshold, and claims her.

The People

• Jack Howland: An ambitious, analytical civil engineer. Wanting career control, he finds his life hijacked by mistaken identity. Obstacles include dynamite traps, armed clan executions, and Croisset's thongs. He ends up transformed, abandoning southern return for aggressive romantic possession.
• Meleese: A refined northern woman caught in a psychological abyss. Wanting to protect her visiting stranger while honoring her brothers, she faces clan blood law. She ends up prayerful, desperate, and finally bolted to Howland's side.
• Jean Croisset: A hard-eyed half-breed bound by a debt to Meleese and Mary-Jane's promise. Wanting strict northern justice executed, he faces Howland's tactical counter-attacks. He ends up respecting Howland's grit while yielding final tactical truths.
• MacDonald: A freckled, hyperactive Scottish superintendent double-charged like a live wire. Wanting railroad progress and explosive displays, he faces no personal resistance. He remains the cheerful pulse of the camp.
• Thorne and Gregson: Senior engineers. Thorne wants safe transit south despite hidden nervous dread; Gregson wants frontier curiosities. They end up sidelined or haunting the background of Wekusko cabins.
• Pierre Thoreau and Brothers: Insular clan rulers of the northern outpost. Wanting lethal vengeance under self-made law, they face Howland's revolver and unexpected survival. They end up frustrated executioners whose victim claims their sister.

In Its Own Voice

Howland contemplates the arctic frontier from a ridge near Prince Albert.

A billion stars glowed like yellow, passionless eyes in the polar cold of the skies.

Croisset reflects on human folly while carrying the wounded engineer across the river ice.

Ce monde est plein de fous!

Jean delivers the grim execution verdict inside the dungeon of Maison de Mort Rouge.

This morning, exactly as the minute hand of your watch counts off the hour of six, you will be shot to death through one of these holes in the dungeon walls.

What It's Really About

Themes pit industrial civil engineering against insular, blood-bound frontier jurisdiction. The book argues that professional ambition and civic logic dissolve when exposed to high-latitude isolation and fatalistic devotion. Questions underneath the plot interrogate whether a modern man can claim a woman belonging to a sovereign clan that executes outsiders by calendar watch. Love here functions not as domestic sentiment, but as a north-bound magnetic compulsion. Survival requires mastering dynamite and babeesh thongs just as surely as moral surrender requires choosing a woman over self-preservation. Curwood maps an interior shift where a calculating builder trades civic safety for the terrifying, open-ended gravity of another human soul in the Barren Lands.

Why Read It Today

Readers who love high-latitude pulp momentum, crisp snow-and-timber atmosphere, and unyielding Victorian-to-frontier melodrama will adore this. It feels like standing in star-flamed silence while a dog-whip cracks and a powder fuse creeps across a board floor.

Honest difficulties exist: archaic racial and cultural markers—such as Jean’s French-accented interjections, Cree helper pidgin ("Gregson um Thorne"), and rigid half-breed tropes—date the prose heavily. Melodramatic dialogue ("By the god of love!") and repetitive hostage-escape cycles can strain modern patience.

Yet what stays with you is tactile and acoustic: the soft hissing of the aurora borealis like pale arrows, the dead-heavy ticking of a pocket watch counting down to six o'clock, and the fierce psychological vertigo of loving someone whose family is sworn to kill you. It remains a stark reminder of when adventure fiction treated the frontier as an ethical crucible rather than a backdrop.