One Good Turn

Bill Goodrich is a hard-bitten woodsman whose instinctive kindness drags him into a nightmare of mistaken identity, flight, and frontier justice. After sheltering a stranger in the California pines, he wakes to find his gear mysteriously exchanged for a gray burro, a near-new rifle, a black Stetson, and tobacco—details that soon make him look like a wanted killer and land him in chains on the road to Salinas. Cleared at last, Goodrich leaves California for the forests of British Columbia, hoping fresh air will ease his failing lungs. But after another killing, he flees by canoe into the remote waterways of the Toba River country, hunted by armed men and driven deeper into the wilderness. Exhausted and desperate, he contemplates theft, only to meet a stranger willing to take a "sporting chance" and help him escape. The man directs him to a hidden cabin stocked for survival, where Goodrich finds temporary refuge and a chance to recover. When the stranger returns, he reveals that he understood Goodrich's plight from the start. In the end, this rugged tale of pursuit and survival turns on loyalty, rough honor, and the old frontier truth that one good turn deserves another. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.