Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1919 — North of Fifty-Three [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

North of Fifty-Three

By Bertrand W. Sinclair

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I—The story opens in the town of Granville. Ontario, where Miss Hasel Weir is employed as a stenographer in the office of Harrington and Bush. She is engaged to Jack Barrow. a young real estate agent, and the wedding day is set. While walking with him one Sunday they meet Mr. Bush, Hazel's employer, who for the first time seems to notice her attractiveness. Shortly afterward, at his request, she becomes his private stenographer. After three months Mr. Bush proposes marriage, which Hazel declines, and after a stormy scene in the office Hazel leaves her employment, Mr. Bush warning her he would make her sorry for refusing him. CHAPTER IT—Bush makes an effort, by a gift of flowers, to compromise Hazel in the minds of her friends. She returns them. The next day Bush is thrown from his horse and fatally hurt. He sends for Hazel, who refuses to see him before he dies. Three days afterward It is announced that he left a legacy of $5,000 to Hazel, “in reparation for any wrong I may have done her.” Hazel recognizes at once what construction will ba put upon the words. Bush had his revenge. CHAPTER ITT—Jack Barrow, tn. a fit of jealous rage, demands from Hazel an explanation of Bush’s action. Hazel’s pride Is hurt, and she refuses. The engagement Is broken and Hazel determines to leave Granville. She sees an advertisement for a school teacher at Cariboo Meadows, British Columbia, and secures the situation. Ing room Ifght-hearteilly, and when tha meal was finished came back anti fell to reading her papers. The first of the Western papersiavas a Vancouver World. In a real-estate man’s halfpage she found a sketch plan of the city on the shores of Burrard inlet, Canada’s principal outpost on the far Pacific. “It's quite a big place,” she murmured absently. “One would be far enough away there, goodness knows.” Then she turned to the “Help Wanted” advertisements. And down ne the bottom of the column she

happened on an inquiry for a schoolteacher, female preferred, in an out-of-the-way district in the Interior of the province. • “Now, that —” Hazel thought. She had a second-class certificate tucked away among her belongings. Originally it had been her intention to teach, and she had done so one term in a backwoods school when she wAs eighteen. With the ending of the term she had returned to Granville, studied

Hint wlntef, nnd got her second certificate; but at the an mo time she had taken a business-college course, nnd the following June found her clacking a typewriter nt nine dollars a week. And her teacher's diploma had remained in the bottom of her trunk ever since. Unaccountably, since Kitty Brooks’ visit, she found herself itching to turn her back on Granville nnd Its unpleasant associations. She did not attempt to analyze the feeling. Strange lands, and most of all, the West, held alluring pigpnise. One thing was certain: Granville, for all she had been born there, nnd grown to womanhood there, was now no place for her. The very people who knew her best would make her suffer most. She gpent that evening going thoroughly over the papers and writing letters to various school boards, taking a ehnnee at one or two*she found in >.n« Manitoba paper, but centering her hopes on the country west of the Rockies. Her savings in the bank amounted to three hundred odd dollars, and-- cash In hand brought the sum to a total of three hundred and slxty-flve. At any rate, she had sufficient to Insure her living for quite a long time. And she went to bed feeling better than she had felt for two weeks. Very shortly thereafter —almost, It seemed, by return mall —Hazel got replies to her letters of inquiry. The fact that each and every one seemed bent on securing her services astonished her. But the reply from Carlhoo Meadows, B. C„ the first place she had thought of. decided her. The member! of the school board who replied held forth tlfe natural beauty of the coun'try as much us Jhe did the advantages of the The thing that perhaps made tire strongest appeal to Hazel was a little kndak print Inclosed yi the letter, showing the schoolhouse. The building itself was primitive enough, of logs, with a pole-and-sod roof. But It was the ‘ huge background, the timbered mountains rising to snowclad heights against a cloudless sky, that attracted her. She sat for a long time looking at the picture, thinking. Here was the concrete, visible presentment of something that drew her strongly. She found an atlas, and looked up Cariboo Meadows on the map. It was not to be found, and Hazel judged It to be a purely local* name. But the letter told her that she would have to stage It a hundred and slxty-flve miles north from Ashcroft, B. C., where the writer would meet her and drive her to the Meadows. “Wtyat a country!” she whispered. “It’s wild; really, truly wild; and everything I’ve ever seen has been tamed and smoothed down, and made eminently respectable and conventional long ago. That’s the place. That’s where I'm going, and Fm going it blind. I’m not going to tell anyone—not even Kitty—until, like a bear, I’ve gone over the mountain to see what I can see.” Within an hour of that Miss Hasel Weir had written to accept the terms offered by the Cariboo Meadows school district, and was busily packing her trunk.

CHAPTER IV. _ I Cariboo Meadow*. A tall man, sunburned, alow-spook-ing, met Hazel at Soda Creek, the end of her stage Journey, introducing himself as Jim Briggs. “Pretty tiresome trip, ain’t it?” ha observed. “Ton’ll have a chance to rest decent tonight, and I got a team uh bays that’ll yank yuh to the Meadows in four hours ’n’ a half. My wife'll be plumb tickled to have yuh. They ain’t much more’n half a dozen white women in ten miles uh the Meadows. We keep a boardin’ house. Hope you’ll like the Country." That was a lengthy speech for Jim Briggs, as Hazel discovered when she rolled,out of Soda Creek behind the “team uh bays.” His conversation was decidedly monosyllabic. But he could drive, if he was no talker, and his team could travel. By eleven o’clock Hazel found herself at Cariboo Meadows. “Schoolhouse’s over yonder.” Briggs pointed out the place —an unnecessary guidance, for Hazel had already | marked the building set off bv

and fortified with a tall flagpole. “And here’s where we live. Kinda out uh the world, but blame good place to live." Hazel did like the place. Her first impression was thankfulness that her lot had been cast In such a spot. But it was largely because of the surroundings, essentially primitive, the clean air, guiltless of smoke taint, the aromatic odors from the forest that ranged for unending miles on every hand. So with the charm of the wild land frosh upon her, she took kindly tn Cariboo Meadows. Her first afternoon she spent loafing on the porch of the Briggs domicile. within which Mrs. Briggs, a fat, good-natured person of forty, toiled at her cooking for the “boarders,” and" kept a brood of five tumultuous youngsters In order—the combined tasks leaving her scant time to entertain her newly’arrived guest. Cariboo Meadows, as a town, was simply a double row of buildings facing each other across a wagon road. Two stores, a blacksmith shop, a feed stable, certain other nondescript buildings, and a few dwellings, mostly of logs, was all. Probably not more than a total of fifty souls made permanent residence there. Directly opposite Briggs’ boarding house stood a building labeled “Regent Hotel.” Hazel could envisage it all with a half turn of her head. From this hotel there presently issued a young man dressed In the ordinary costume of the country—wide hat, flannel shirt, overalls, boots. He sat down on a box close by the hotel entrance. In a few minutes another came forth. He walked past the first a few steps, stopped, and said something. Hazel could not hear the words. The first man wns filling bls nipe. Apparently he made no reply; nt least, he did not trouble to look up. But ‘she saw his shoulders lift in a shrug. Then ho who had passed turned square about and spoke again, this time lifting his voice a trifle. The young fellow sitting on the box instantly became galvanized Into action. He flung out an onth that carried across the street and made Hazel’s ears burn. At the same time he leaped from his seat straight at the other man.

• Hazel saw It quite distinctly, saw him who jumped dodge a vicious blow and close with the other; and saw, moreover, something which amazed her. For the young fellow swayed, with his adversary a second or t'Wo, then lifted him bodily off his feet almost to the level of his head, and slammed him against the hotel wall with a sudden twist. She heard the thump of the body on the logs. For an instant she thought him about to jump with his booted feet on the prostrate form, and Involuntarily she held her breath. But he stepped back, and when the other scrambled up, he sidestepped the first rush, and knocked the man down again with a blow of hie fist. This time he stayed down. Then other men —three or four of them—came out of the hotel, stood uncertainly a few seconds, and Hazel heard the young fellow say: "Better take that fool In and bring him to. If he’s still hungry for trouble. I’ll be right handy. I wonder how many more of you fellers I’ll have to lick before you’ll get wise enough not to start things you can’t stop?” (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Then She Turned to the “Help Wanted" Advertisements.