Hammond Innes · 1985 · survival

Hammond Innes's 1985 novel. A solicitor's client vanishes, leaving a gold mine in the Yukon and a stand of ancient red cedar in British Columbia that he had forbidden anyone to touch. Going out to find him, Philip Redfern discovers the timber is already being cut and shipped, and that the reason for the stand's protection is buried under it.

1. 1
   London

   A country solicitor's routine business turns strange when a client disappears, leaving behind a Yukon gold claim, a plantation of ancient cedar in British Columbia and instructions that not one tree of it is ever to be felled.

2. 2
   Vancouver

   Redfern flies over the pole to Vancouver and works through the lawyers, the timber company and the shipping agents - and finds that the high stand has already been logged and the timber is being towed down the coast.

3. 3
   The Cassiar

   North into the Cassiar country of British Columbia, to the stand itself: enormous old cedar standing on a bench above the river, worth a fortune and cut without the owner's consent by people who knew he could not object.

4. 4
   The Yukon

   On the Yukon claim, in country where a man can disappear and stay disappeared, Redfern finds what the missing client was really protecting - and why the trees mattered more to him than the gold.