Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1919 — North of Fifty-Three [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

North of Fifty-Three

By Bertrand W. Sinclair

(Uci>jrl«Ul bj UlUe. Mrvwn * CoJ SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I—Th» ■torr opens tn the town of Granville, Ontario, where MJae Hazel Weir la employed as a ztenograpnar in the office of Harrington and Bush. She ta en*a*ed to Jack Barrow. a young real •state a<ent, and the wedding day "While walking with him one Bunday they kneit Mr. Busti. Hazel's employer, who for the first time seems to notice her attractiveness. Shortly afterward, at his request. she becomes bls private stenographer. After three months Mr. Bush proposes marriage, which Hasel declines, and after a stormy scene in the office Hazel leaves her employment. Mr. Bush warning her be would make her sorry for refusing him. I CHAPTER H—Bush makes an effort, by a gift of flowers, to compromise Hasel tn “the minds of her frlenaa She returns 'them. The next day Bush is thrown from fils horse and fatally hurt He sends for Tlazel, who refuses to see him before he dies. Three days afterward it Is announced that he loft a legacy of 16.000 to Hazel, “fin reparation for any wrong I ■may have done her. Hasel recognises at tones what construction will be put upon 'the words. Bush had bls revanse. CHAPTER 111-Jack Barrow, in a fit •of jealous rage, demands from Hasel an ‘explanation of Flush's action. Hate! s pride Is hurt, and she refusea The ongage’ment is broken and Hazel determines to leave Granville. She sees an advertise‘tnent for a school teacher at Cariboo ‘Meadows, British Columbia, and secures the situation. • CHAPTER IV—Cariboo Meadows is in to wild part of British Columbia and Hasel, 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 Ker home. At the fire she recognizes a ’character known to Cariboo Meadows as •'Roaring Bill Wagstaff.” who had iwn ■tier at her boarding house there. He promises to take her home In the mortiIng, but she Is compelled to spend the night In the wooda • CHAPTER V-r-They start next day. Hazel supposes, for Cariboo Meadows, but WtoStSflKlnally admits he Is taking her to his cabin In the mountains. J 1 ®JAJIT •gpectful and considerate and Hazel, though protesting Indignantly, is helpless h&s to accompany him. I CHAPTER Vl—At the cabin Wagstaff torovldes Hazel with clothing which had Fkan left by tourists. There they pass thS Winter Wagstaff tells her he loves fcJr, but In her Indignation at her “abduosift refuses to listen to him. CHAPTER VTI-With the coming of Spring Hazel Insists that Wagstaff take Mer out of the mountains. He endeavors to persuade her to marry him and stay, tut on her persistent refusal he *ccomztanles her to Bella Coola, from where she can proceed to Vancouver. I CHAPTER VTH-On vivas Hasel a pack are which she discov Sers later contains 11.200 and a map which twill enable her to ? n< * h !*r way to the Babin if she desires to go back. At van teouver Hazel plans to return to Grantville. but on tne train realizes that she Jove, Wagstaff, and decides to go to him. BheleavsiSe train at the first stop. i CHAPTER IX—With the aid of Bill’s Ilnap l lnap she finds her way backhand the pair (travel to a Hudson Bay post and are 'married After some months they d «clde to go farther Into the mo y"*“* n ? ‘° l(J spot where Bill Is confident there is goM- ’ CHAPTER X—After an arduous trip, (which severely tries Hazel s Bt rengthe they arrive at their destination and settle (down for the long winter. CHAPTER XI— Wagstaff builds a cabin anTa stable for the h° r "®" ■tarkfi mifficlent hav to last until BprinKFood there Is In plenty. Hazel, the danger, allows sparks from the chlm to set fire to the stable, which is •consumed?with all the stored hay. To keep the animals from death3£, tlon Bill la compelled to shoot them. CHAPTER Xll—With the first spring days they start prospecting for gold and luckv With the gold, and packs of furs the prod net of Bill’s trapping during the winter, they start back to the cabin 'they call home. • rw APTER xm—without the horses and find they have "Abhorstauer a German from Milwaukee wnn his wife and children. i CHAPTER XIV—To please Hasel, tired b°irithe a rtlflclaHty [the cWms"on which. hs and Hazel had (found gold. tSrSHigEsK fists. P Hazel 1? Indignant on account of 'the scandal. fests' sue leaving her at Granville. 1 CHAPTER XVll—Bill writes to Hazeh Informing her Msoclates. and too at once to her husband.

CHAPTER XVIII. Home Again. If Twelve months works many a hange on a changing frontier. Hazel bund this so. When she came to plan ler route she found the G. T. P. bridging the last gap la a transcontinental lystem, its trains westbound already vlthln striking distance of Fort beorge. She could board a sleeping par at Granville and detrain within a hundred miles of the ancient trading Kost—with a fast river boat to carry Ker the remaning distance. Fort George loomed up a jumbled area of houses Qnd tents, log buildings, frame structures yellow in their newness, strangers to paint as yet. On every hand others stood in varying Stages of erection. Folks hurried ftbout the sturdy beginning of a future greatness, And as she left .the

boat and followed a new-laid walk <>f plunks toward a hotel, Jake Lauer <.lepp«Nl out of a store, squarely into her pnth. His round face lit up with a smile of recognition. And Hazel, fresh from

the long und lonesome journey, was equally glad to set eyea on a familiar, a genuinely friendly face. “I am pleased to welcome you back to Gott’s country, Mrs. Vagstaff.” he said. “Und let me carry dot suld case alretty.” They walked two blocks to the King’s hotel, where Lauer’s family was housed. He was In for supplies, he told her, and, of course, his wife and children accompanied him. “Not dat Gredda iss afraid. She iss so goot,a man as I on der ranch ven I am gone,” he explained. “But for dem It iss n change. Und I bring by der town a vaigonloat off bobadoes. By cosh, dem bobadoes iss sell high.” It flashed into Hazel’s mind that here was a heaven-sent opportunity to reach the cabin without facing that hundred miles in the company of chance-hired But she Tlld not broach the subject at once. Instead she asked eagerly of Bill. Lauer told her that Bill had tarried a few days nt the cabin, and then struck outalone for the mines. And he had not said when he would be back. Mrs. Lauer, unchanged from a year curlier, welcomed her with pleased friendliness. And Jake left the two of them and the chubby kiddies In the King’s office while he betook himself about his business. Hazel haled his wife and the children to her room as soon as one was assigned to her. And there, almost before she knew It, she was murmuring brokenly her story into aa ear that listened with sympathy and understanding. Only -a woman can grasp some of a woman's needs. Gretta Lauer patted Hazel's shoulder with a motherly hand, and bade her cheer up. - “Home’s the place for you, dear, she said, smilingly. “Yun just come right along with us. Your man will come quick enough when he gets word. And we’ll take good care of you in the meantime. La, I’m all excited over it It’s the finest thing could happen for you both. Take it from me, dearie, I know. We’ve had our troubles, Jake and L And, seeing I’m only six months short of being a graduate nurse, you needn’t fear. Well, well I” “I’ll need to have food hauled In,” Hazel reflected. “And some things I brought with me. I wish Bill were here. I’m afraid I’ll be a lot of bother. Won’t you be heavily loaded, as It Is?” She recalled swiftly the odd, makeshift team that Lauer depended on—the mule, lop-eared and solemn, “und Gretchen, der cow.” She had cash and drafts for over three thousand dollars on her person. She wondered if it would offend the sturdy Independence of these simple, kindly neighbors, if she offered to supply a four-horse team and wagon for their mutual usd? But she had been forestalled there, she learned In the next breath. “Oh, bother nothing,” Mrs. Lauer declared. “Why, we’d" be ashamed If we couldn’t help a little. And far’s the load goes, you ought to see the four beautiful horses your husband let Jake have. You don’t know how much Jake appreciates It, nor what a fine man he thinks your husband It We needed horses so bad, and didn’t have the money to buy. So Mr. Wagstaff didn’t say a thing but got the team for us, and Jake’s paying for them In

Clearing and plowing and making improvements on your land. Honest, they could pull twice the load we'll have. There’s a good wagon road most of the way now. Quite a lot of settlers, too, as much as fifty or sixty miles out And we’ve got the finest garden you ever safc. Vegetables enough to feed four families all winter. Oh, your old cities 1 I never want to live In one again. Never a day have the kiddles been sick. Suppose it Is a bit out of the world? You’re all the more pleased when somebody does happen along. Folks Is so different In a new country like this. There's plenty for everybody —and everybody helps, like neighbors ought to." Lauer came up after n time, and Hazel found herself unequivocally In their hands. With the matter of-trans-porting herself and sfipplles thus solved, she set out to find Felix Courvoiseur—who would know how to get word to Bill. He might come back to the cabin in a month or so; he might not come back at all unless he heard from her. She was smitten with a great fear that he might gtve her up as lost to him, and plunge deeper into the wilderness in some mood of recklessness. And she Wanted him, longed for him, if only so that she could make amends. She easily found Courvoiseur, a tall spare Frenchman, past middle age. Yes, he could deliver'a message to Bill Wagstaff; that Is, he could send a man. Bill Wagstaff was tn the Klappan range. "But if he should have left there?” Hazel suggested uneasily. “ 'E weel leave weeth W’ltey Lewees word of Were 'e go,” Courvoiseur reassured her. “An’ my man, w’lch ees my bruzzer-law, w’ich I can mos' fully trus', 'e weel follow ’eem. So Beel’e ees arrange. ’E ees say mos”parteecular if madame ees come or weesh for forward nfessage, geet heem to me queeck. Oul. Long tam Beel ees know me. I am for depend always.” Courvoiseur kept a trader’s stock of goods in a weather-beaten old log house which sprawled a hundred feet back from the street Thirty years, he told her. he bad kept that store in Fort George.. She guessed that Bill had selected him because he was a fixture.

She sat down at his counter and wrote her message. Just a few terse lines. And when she bad delivered it to Courvoiseur she went back to the hotel. There was nothing now to do but wait And with the message under way she found herself impatient to reach the cabin, to spend the waiting days where she had first found happiness. She could set her house in order against her man’s coming. And if the days dragged, and the great, lone land seemed to close in and press Inexorably upon her, Rhe wohld have to be patient, very patient. Jake was held up, waiting for sup. piles. Fort George suffered a sugar famine. Two days later the belated freight arrived. He loaded his wagon, a ton of goods for himself, a like weight of Hazel’s supplies and belongings. A goodly load, but he drove out of Fort George with four strapping bays arching their powerful necks, and champing on the bit. “Four days ve vill make it by der ranch,” Jake chuckled. “Mit der mule und Gretchen, der cow, von veek it take me, mit half der loaf.” Four altogether pleasant and satisfying days they were to Hazel. The worst of the fly pests were vanished for the season. A crisp toudl of frost sharpened the night winds. Indian summer hung its mellow haze over the land. The clean, pungent air that sifted through the forests seemed doubly sweet after the vitiated atmosphere of town. Fresh from a gridiron of dusty streets and stone pavements, and but stepped, as one might say, from days of imprisonment in the narrow confines of a railway coach, she drank the wlney air In hungry gulps, and joyed in the soft yielding of the turf beneath her feet, the fern and peavine carpet of the forest floor. It was her pleasure at night to sleep as she and Bill had slept, with her face bared to the stars. She would draw her bed a little aside from the campfire and from the low seclusion of a thicket He watching the nimble flames at their merry dance, smiling lazily at the grotesque shadows cast by Jake and his frau as they moved about the blaze./And she would wake in the morning clear-headed, alert, grateful for the pleasant woodland smells arising wholesomely from the fecund bosom of the earth. Lauer pulled up before his own cabin at mid-afternoon of the fourth day, unloaded his own stuff, and drove to his neighbor’s with the rest “I’ll walk back after a little,” Hazel told him, when he had piled her goods in one corner of the kitchen. The rattle of the wagon died away. She was alone —at home. Her eyes filled as she roved restlessly from kitchen to living-room and on into the bedroom at the end. Bill had unpacked. The rugs were down, the books stowed in familiar disarray upon their shelves, the bedding spread in seml-dlsorder where he had last slept and gone away without troubling to smooth it out in housewifely fashion. She came back to the living-room and seated herself in the big chair. She had expected to be lonely, very lonely. But she was not. Perhaps that would come later. For the present it seemed as if she had reached the end of something, as if she were very tired, and had gratefully come to a welcome resting place. She turned her gaze out the open door where the forest fell away in vast undulations to a range of snoU-capped mountains purple in the autumn haze, and a verse that Bill had once quoted came bach to her:

Oh, to fool th* wind grow strong Where the trail leaps down. I could never learn the way And wisdom ot the town. She blinked. The town —It seemed to have frown remote, a fantasy Id which she had played a puppet part. But she was home again. If only the gladness of It endured strong enough to carry her through whatever black days might come to her there alone. She would gladly have cooked her supper in the kitchen fireplace, and Inld down to Bleep under her own roof. It seemed the natural thing to do. But she had not expected to find the cabin llvably arranged, and she had promised the Lauers to spend the night

with them. So presently she closed the door and walked through the woods. • •••••• September and October trooped past, and as they marched the willow thickets and poplar groves grew yellow and brown, and carpeted the floor of the woods with fallen leaves. Shrub and tree bared gaunt limbs to every autumn wind. Only the spruce and pine stood forth la their year-round habiliments of green. The days shortened steadily. The nights grew long, and bitter with frost. Snow fell, blanketing softly the dead leaves. Old Winter cracked his whip masterfully over all the North. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

His Round Face Lit Up With a Smile of Recognition.

Walked Away Through the Woods.