Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1919 — North of Fifty-Three [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

North of Fifty-Three

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

UTfU.DtiOWf

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I—The ■tory opens In the town of Granville, Ontario, where Miss Jlazel Weir Is employed ae a eteno<rapher in the of flee of Harrington and Bush. She fa enaaaed to Jack Harrow a young real •state agent, and the wadding day is set. While walkinc with him one Sunday they tneet Mr. Bush. Hazel's employer, who for the first time seems to notice her attractiveness. Shortly afterward, at hie request. she becomes his private stenographer. After three months Mr. Hush propose* marriage, which Hazel declines, and after a stormy acene tn ths office Haas! leaves her employment. Mr. Bush warning her he would make her sorry for refusttig him. CHAPTER 11-Bush makes an effort, by • gift of flowers, to compromise Hasel in ’the minds of her friends. She returns them. The next day Bush Is thrown from bls horse and fatally hurt. He sends for Hazel. who refuses to see him before he dies. Three days afterward It >" announced that he left a legacy of *6.000 to Hasel, "in reparation for any wrong I may have done her.** Hasel recognises at once what construction will be put upon the words. Bush had his revanae. CHAPTER lll—Jack Barrow, In a fit of Jealous rage, demands from Hasel an explanation of slush's action. Hasel s pride Is hurt, and she refuses. The engagement is broken and Hazel determines to leave Granville. She sees an *d™rtlsernent for a school teacher at Cariboo Meadows. British Columbia, and secures the situation. • CHAPTER TV—Cariboo Meadows la tn • wild part of British Columbia and Hasel. ehajtly * fter her ar v rivil ' ’3 s ** way while walking In the woods. She wanders until nlgbt. when, attracted by the light of a campfire, she turns to it hoping to find somebody who will guide her ftme. At the fire she character known to Cariboo Meadows as ••Roaring Bill Wagstaff." wh ° her at her boarding house J* e promisee to take her home In the morning, but she is compelled to spend the night in the woods. CHAPTER V—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 re soectful and considerate and Hazel, though protesting indignantly, is helpless and has to accompany him. | CHAPTER Vl—At the cabin Wagstaff provides Hazel with clothing which had Seen left by tourists. There they pass the winter. Wagstaff tells her he loves ter. but in her Indignation at her abduction” sWte refuses to listen to him. CHAPTER Vll—With the coming of spring Hazel insists that Wagstaff take fer out of the mountains. He endeavors to persuade her to marry him and stay, trot on her persistent refusal, he accompanies her to Bella Coola, from where She can proceed to Vancouver. ■CHAPTER VIII—On jrfvM Hasel a packare which she alacov era later contains 11.200 and a map which ■will enable her to ?nd her way to the cabin if she desires to go back. At van eonver Hazel plans to return to O»" ville, but on tne train realizes that sb loves Wagstaff, and decides to go to him. She leaves the train at the first stop. CHAPTER IX-Wlth the aid of Bill’" ■map she finds her way back, and the pair ‘travel to a Hudson Bay post and are ■married After some months they decide to go farther into the rn ,°y? ta ! n .’ 12. Wpot where Bill is confident there is gold. And In the cool of a midsummer morning, before Hazleton had rubbed the sleep out of Its collective eyes anfl taken up the day’s work of discussing its future greatness, Roaring Bill and his wife draped the mosquito nets over ithelr heads and turned their faces (north.

They bore out upon a wagon road. (For a brief distance only did this ensure, then dwindled to a path. A turn in this hid sight of the clustered log ihouses and tents, and the two steamers that lay up against the bank. The driver itself was soon Tost in the far (stretches of forest. Once more they rode alone in the wilderness. For the first time Hazel felt a quick shrinking from the North, an awe of its huge, silent spaces, which could so easily engulf thousands such as they and still remain a land untamed. On the second day they crossed the Skeena, a risky and tedious piece of business, for the river ran deep and strong. Presently the way grew rougher. If anything, Roaring Bill Increased his pace. He hftnself no longer rode. When the steepness of the hills and canyons made the going hard the packs were redivided, and henceforth Satin bore on his back a portion of the supplies. Bill led the way tirelessly. Through files, river crossings, camp labor, and all the petty irritations of the trail he kept an unruffled spirit, a fine, enduring patience that Hazel marveled at and admired. Many a time, wakening at some slight stir, she would find him cooking breakfast. In every way within his power he saved her. Many a strange shift were they put

to. Once Bill bad to ten a great spruce across a twenty-foot crevice. It took him two days to hew it flat ao that his horses could be led over. The depth was bottomless to the eye, but from far below rose the cavernous growl of rushing water, and Hazel held her breath ns each animal stepped gingerly over the narrow bridge. One misstep— Once they climbed three weary days up a prtk’ipitous mountain range, and, turned back in sight of the crest by an impassable cliff, were forced to back track and swing a flfty-mile detour. September was upon them. The days dwindled in length, and the nights grew to have a frosty nip. Early and late he pushed on. Two camp necessities were fortunately abundant, grass and water. Even so, the stress of the trail told on the horses. They lost flesh. The extreme steepness of succeeding hills bred galls under the heavy packs. They grew leg weary, no longer following each other with sprightly step and heads high. Hazel pitied them, for she herself was trail weary beyond words. The vagabond instinct had fallen asleep. The fine aura of romance no longer hovered over the venture. Sometimes when dusk ended the day’s journey and she swung her stiffened limbs out of the saddle, she would cheerfully have foregone an the gold in the North to be at her ease before the fireplace in their distant cabin, with her man's head nesting in her lap, and no toll of weary miles looming sternly on the morrow's horizon. It was all work, trying work, the more trying because she sensed a latent uneasiness on her husband’s part, an uneasiness she could never Induce him to embody in words. Nevertheless, it existed, and she resented its existence —a trouble she could not share. But she could not put her finger on the cause, for Bill merely smiled a denial when she mentioned it. Nor did she fathom the cause until upon a certain day which fell upon the end of a week’s wearisome traverse of the hardest country yet encountered. They broke out of a canyon up which they had struggled all day onto a level plot where the pine stood in somber ranks. A spring creek split the flat in two. Beside this tiny stream Bill unlashed his packs. It still lacked two hours of dark. But be made no comment, and Hazel forbore to trouble him with questions. Once the packs were off and the horses at liberty. Bill caught up his rifle. "Come on. Hazel,” he said. "Let’s take a little hike.” The flat was small, and once clear of it the pines thinned out on a steep, rocky slope so that westward they could overlook a vast network of canyons and mountain spurs. But ahead of them the mountain rose to an upstanding backbone of jumbled granite, and on this backbone Bill Wagstaff bent an anxious eye. Presently they sat down on a bowlder to take a breathing spell after a stiff stretch of climbing. Hazel slipped her hand in his and whispered: “What Is it, Billy-boy?”

“I’m afraid we can’t get over here with the horses,’’ he answered slowly. “And if we can’t find a pass of some ■ kind —well, come on! It isn’t more than a quarter of a mile to the top.” Just short of the top Bill halted, and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. And as he stood his gaze suddenly became fixed, a concentrated stare at a point northward. He raised his glasses. “By thunder!” he exclaimed. “I believe —it’s me for the top.” He went up the few remaining yard? with a haste that left Hazel panting behind. Above her he stood balanced on a bowlder, cut sharp against the sky, and she reached him just as he lowered the field glasses with a sigh of relief. His eyes shone with exultation. “Come on up on the perch,” he invited, and reached forth a long, muscular arm, drawing her up close beside him on the rock. “Behold the Promised Land,” he breathed, "and the gateway thereof, lying a couple of miles to the north.” They were, it seemed to Hazel, roosting precariously on the very summit of the world. On both sides the mountain pitched away sharply in rugged folds. Behind them, between them and the far Pacific, rolled a sea of mountains, snow-capped, glacier-torn, gi“Down there,”’Roaring Bill waved his hand, “there’s a little meadow, and turf to walk on. Lord, I’ll be glad to get out of these rocks! You’ll never catch me coming in this way again. It’s sure tough going. And Tve beep scared to death for a week, thinking we couldn’t get through.” “But we can?”

“Yes, easy,” he assured. “Take the glasses and look. That flat we left our outfit in runs pretty well to the top, about two miles along. Then there’s a notch in the ridge that you can’t get with the naked eye, and a wider canyon running down into the basin. It’s the only decent break in the divide for fifty miles so far as I can see. We’re luc£y to hit this pass.” f'Supposewe couldn’t get over here?” Hazel asked. “What if there hadn’t been a pass?” “That was beginning to keep me awake nights,” he confessed. “Do you realize that it’s getting late in the

,-rtif? Winter may come —blng!—lnside of ten days. And me caught In a rock pile, with no cabin to shelter my beat girl, and no hay up to feed my horses! You bet it bothered me." She hugged him sympathetically, and Bill smiled down at her. “But it’s plnln Milling now,” he continued. “I know-that basin and all the country beyond It. It’s n pretty decent camping place, and there’s a fairly easy way out.” He bestowed a reassuring kiss upon her. They sat on the boulder for a few minutes, then scrambled downhill to the jack-pine flat, and built their evening Are. And for the first time tn many days Roaring Bill whistled and lightly burst into snatches of song in the deep, bellowing voice thnt had given him his name back in the Carlnod' coOntry. His hilmor was infectious. Hazel felt the gods of high adventure smiling broadly upon them once more. At noon, two days later, they stopped out of a heavy stand of spruce into a sun-wnrmed meadow, where ripe yellow grasses waved to their horses’ knees. Hazel came afoot, a freshkilled deer lashed across Silk's back. Bill hesitated, as if taking his bearings, then led to where a rocky spur of a hill jutted into the meadow's edge. A spring bubbled out of a pebbly basin, and he poked about in the grass beside it with his foot, presently stooping to pick up something which proved to be a short bit of charred stick. “The remains of my last campfire,” be smiled reminiscently. "Packs off, old pal. We’re through with the trail for a while.” (TO BE CONTINUED.)