Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1919 — North of Fifty-Three [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

North of Fifty-Three

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

Copyist Zy UTm.MMfIC*

BYNOPBIB.

CHAPTER I—The story open* In th* town of Granville. Ontario, where Mlb« Hazel Weir la employed as a stenographer in the office of Harrlngrton and Bush. She I* 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 ths office Hazel leaves her employment, Mr. Bush warning her he would make her sorry for refusing him. CHAPTER H—Bush makes an effort, by a gift of Cowers, 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 $6,000 to Hazel, “In reparation for any wrong I may have done her." Hazel recognizes at 4»nce what construction will be put upon the words. Bush had his revenge. i CHAPTER lll—Jack Barrow, In 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. f CHAPTER IV—Cariboo Meadows Is in Tg wild part of British Columbia and Hazel, shortly after her arrival, loses her way while walking In the woods. She wanders until night, when, attracted by the light of a campfire, she turns to It, hoping to find somebody who will guide her home. At the fire she recognizes a character known to Cariboo Meadows as "Roaring Bill Wafstaff," who had seen ber at her boarding house there. He firomises to take her home In the momng. but she Is compelled to spend the night in the woods. (CHAPITER V-r-They start next day, 'Hazel supposes, for Cariboo Meadows, but Wagstaff finally admits he is taking her to his cabin in the mountains. He is respectful and considerate, and Hazel, though protesting indignantly, Is helpless and has to accompany him. ( CHAPTER Vl—At ths cabin "Wagstaff provides Hazel with clothing which had been left by tourists. There they pass the winter. Wagstaff tells her he loves her, but In her indignation at her "abduction” slffe refuses to listen to him.

CHAPTER VII. & * - —■» The Fires of Spring, There came a day when the metallic "brilliancy went ont of the sky, and It became softly, mistily blue. All that forenoon Hazel prowled restlessly out of doors without cap or coat. There was a new feel In the air. The deep winter snow had suddenly lost Its harshness. Toward evening a mild breeze freshened from the southwest. At ten o’clock a gale whooped riotously through the trees. And at midnight Hazel wakened to a sound that she had not heard In months. She rose and groped her way to the window. The encrusting frost had vanished from the panes. They were wet to the touch of her fingers. She unhooked the fastening, and swung the window out. A great gust of damp, warm wind blew strands of hair across her face. She leaned through the casement, add drops of cold water struck her bare neck. That which she had heard was the dripping eaves. The Chinook wind droned its spring song, and the bare boughs of the tree beside the cabin waved and creaked the time. - At dawn the eaves had ceased their drip, and the dirt roof lay bare to the cloud-banked sky. From the southwest the wind still blew strong and warm. The thick winter garment of the earth softened to slush, and vanished with amazing swiftness. Streams of water poured down every depression. Pools stood between the house and stable. * Spring had leaped strong-armed upon old Winter and vanquished him at the first onslaught. | All that day the Chinook blew, working Its magic upon the land. When day broke again with a clearing sky, and the sun peered between the cloud rifts, his beams fell upon vast areas of brown and green, where but forty-eight hours gone there was the cold revelry. of frost sprites upon far-flung fields' of snow. Patches of earth steamed wherever a hillside lay bare to the sun. From some mysterious distance a lone crow winged his way, and, perching on a nearby treetop, cawed raucous greet-: tag. Hazel cleared away the breakfast things, and stood looking out the kitchen window. Roaring Bill sat on a log, shirt-sleeved, smoking his pipe. Presently he went over to the stable, led out his horses, and gave them their liberty. For ■'twenty minutes or so he stood watching their mad capers as they ran and leaped and pranced back and forth over the clearing. Then he walked off Into the his rifle over his Shoulder. Hazel washed her dishes and went outside. Bhe did not know why, but all at once a terrible feeling of utter forlomness seized her. It was spring —and also It was spring in other lands. The wilderness suddenly took on the characteristics of a prison, In which She was sentenced to solitary confinement. She rebelled against It, rebelled against her surroundings, against the manner of her being there, against everything. She hated the North, she wished to be gone from it, and most of all she hated BUI Wagstaff for constraining her presence there. All the heaviness of heart, all the re* jentment she had felt In the first feflj days when she followed him perforce Sway from Cariboo Meadows, came a<!k to her with redoubled force that afternoon. She went back Into The house, now gloomy without a fire, dumped forlornly Into a chair, and Cried herself Into a condition approaching hysteria. And she was sitting there,

[her head bowed on her handq, When BUI returned from his hunting. The sun sent a ’shaft through the south window, a sha/t which rested on her drooping head. Roaring Bill walked slowly up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. I “What Is it, Uttle person?” he asked Bhe refused to answer. [, “Say,” he bent a little lower, “you know what the Tentmaker said: “Corns fill the cup, and In the fire of spring Tour winter garment of repentance fling; i The Bird of Time has but a Uttle way To flutter-and the Bird Is on the wing.” j "Life’s too short to waste any of It dn being uselessly miserable. Come on out and go for a ride on Silk. Pll take !you up a mountainside, and show you a waterfall that leaps three hundred feet In the clear. The woods are waking up and putting on their Blaster bonnets. There’s beauty everywhere. Come along I” .. But she wrenched herself away •Pom him. “I want to go home I” she wailedi “I hate you and the North, and every-

thing in It If you’ve got 'a spark of manhood left In you, you’ll take me out of here.” Roaring Bill backed away from her. “Do you mean, that? Honest Injun?” he asked Incredulously. “I do—l do!” she cried vehemently. “Haven’t I told you often enough? I didn’t come here willingly, and I won’t stay. I will not I I have a right to liva my life In my own way, and It’s not this way.” “So,” Roaring Bill began evenly, “springtime with you only means getting back to work. You want to get back Into the muddled rush of peopled places, do you? You want to be where you con associate with fluffy-ruffle, pompadoured girls, and be properly Introduced to equally proper young men. Lord, but I seem to have made a mistake! And, by the same token, Til probably pay for It —in a way you wouldn’t understand If you lived a thousand year*. Well, set your mind at rest. I’ll take you out. Ye gods and little fishes, but I have sure been a fool I”

He sat down on the edge of the table, and Hazel blinked at him, half scared, and full of wonder. She had grown so used to seeing him calm, imperturbable, smiling cheerfully no matter what she said or did, that his passionate outbreak amazed her. She could only flit and look at him. He got out his cigarette materials. But his fingers trembled, spilling the tobacco. And when he tore the paper In his efforts to roll it, he dashed paper and all into the fireplace with something that sounded like an oath, and walked out of the house. Nor did he return till the sun was well down, toward the tree-rimmed horizon. When he came back he brought In an armful of wood and kindling, and began to build a fire. Hazel came out of her room. Bill greeted her serenely. “Well, little person,” he said, “I hope you’ll perk up now.” “I’ll try,” she returned. “Are you really going to take me out?” BUI paused with a match blazing In his fingers. *Tm not In the habit of saying things I don’t mean,” he answered dryly. “We’ll start In the morning.” The dark closed in on them, and they cooked and ate supper in silence. Bill remained thoughtful and abstracted. Then from some place among his books he unearthed a map, and, spreading it on the table, studied It a while. After that he dragged In his kyaks from outside, and busied himself packing them with supplies for a journeytea and coffee and flour and such things done up in small canvas sacks. And when these preparations were complete-he got a sheet of paper and a pencil, and fell to copying something from the map. He was still at that, sketching and marking, when Hazel went to bed. By all the signs and. tokens, Roaring Bill Wagstaff slept none that night. Hazel herself tossed wakefully, and during her wakeful moments she could near him stir In the outer room. And a fuU hour before daylight he called her to breakfast.

-This time last spring," Bill said to K, "I was piking away north of those an tains, bound for the head of the iNaaa to prospect for gold."They were camped In a notch on the tiptop of * long divide, a Umnnanri feet above the general level. A wide valley rolled below, and from the height they overlooked two great, sinuous lakes and a multitude of smaller ones. *Tve been wondering,” Hazel said. “This country somehow seems different. You’re not going back to Cariboo Meadows, are yon?” Bill bestowed a look of surprise on her. “I should say not!” he drawled. “Not that it would make any difference to me. But I’m very sure you don’t want to turn up there in my company." “That’s true,” she observed. “But all the clothes and all the money I have In the world are there.” “Don’t let money worry you,” he said briefly. “I have got plenty to see you through. And you can easily buy clothes.”

They were now ten days on the road. Steadily they climbed, reaching up through gloomy canyons where foaming cataracts spilled themselves over sheer walls of granite, where the dim and narrow pack trail was crossed and recrossed with the footprints of bear apd deer and the snowy-coated mountain goat. Roaring Bill lighted his evening fire at last at the apex of the pass. He had traveled long after sundown, seeking a camp ground where his horses could graze. The fire lit up huge firs, and high above the fir tops the sky was studded with stars, brilliant In the thin atmosphere. They ate, and, being weary, lay down to sleep. At sunrlseHazel sat up and looked about her In silent, wondering appreciation. All the world spread east and west below. She adjusted the binoculars and peered westward from the great height where the' camp sat. Distantly, and far below, the green of the forest broke down to a hazy line of steel-blue that ran In turn to a huge fog bank, snowwhite in the rising sun. “There’s a lake,” she said. “No. Salt water —a long arm of the Pacific,” he replied. “That’s where you and I part company—to your very great relief, I dare say. But look off In the other direction. Lord, you can see two hundred miles! If It weren’t for the Bablne range sticking up you could look clear to where my cabin stands. What an outlook I “I told you, I think, about prospecting on the head of the Naas last spring. I fell In with another fellow up there, and we worked together, and early In the season made a nice little cleanup on a gravel bar. I have another place spotted, by the way, that would work out a fortune If a fellow wanted to spend a couple of thousand putting In some machinery. However, when the June rise drove us off our bar, I pulled clear out of the country. Just took a notion to see the bright lights again. And I didn’t stop short of New York. Do you know, I lasted there Just one week by the calendar. It seems funny, when you think of It, that a man with three thousand dollars to spend should get lonesome In a place like New York. But I did. And at the end of a week I . flew. I had all that money burning my pockets—and, all told, I didn’t spend five-hundred. Fancy a man jumping over four thousand miles to have a good time, and then running away from it. It was very foolish of me, I think now. Well, the longer we live the more we learn. Day after tomorrow you’ll be in Bella Coola. The cannery steamships carry passengers on a fairly regular schedule to Vancouver. How does that suit you?”

“Very well,” she answered shortly. “And you haven’t the least twinge of regret at leaving all this?’ “I don’t happen to have your peculiar point of view,” she returned. circumstances connected with my coming Into this country and with my staying here are such as to majje me anxious to get away." “Same old story,” Bill muttered under his breath. “What Is It?” she asked sharply. “Oh, nothing,” he said carelessly, and went on with his breakfast preparations. The evening of the third day from there Bill traveled till dusk. When camp was made and the fire started, he called Hazel to one side, up on a little rocky knoll, and pointed out a half dozen pin points of yellow glimmering distantly in the dark. “That’s Bella Coola,” he told her. “And unless they’ve made a radical

change in their sailing schedules there should be a boat clear tomorrow at noon." (Tf> Be continued.!

“I Hate You and the North and Everything In It.”

“That's Bella Coola Over There," He Sald.