MAPLE LEAF HOTEL LICENSED PREMISES (BENNY ABBOTT) In the Heart of the Cariboo “THE MAPLE LEAF” offers every modern convenience to the traveller, the overnight HUNTING PARTIES ARRANGED FOR guest or the long-term patron GUARANTEED RELIABLE GUIDES WRITE, WIRE OR PHONE 25, WILLIAMS LAKE, BRITISH COLUMBIA otatoes I had slept with were frying, slices from a green-mottled chunk rk. Soggy beans and musty bannock led out a swell meal. Rabchak ate y, slopping and gulping, soaking the ck in his black tea. Dust covered thing. When Rabchak rinsed a pot he ‘the water on a pile of warm ashes e stove. The resulting steam puffed a of fine ash high and wide. The cob- festooning the pole rafters which up the dirt roof, were thickened by to thrice their size, like telephone after a silver thaw. behak seldom spoke. He squatted, of the time, on that block of firewood the stove, and stared at the floor. so many peasant immigrants from ern Europe, he was reticent, suspi- ._ I wondered what he thought about ng his bed with a policeman. This my first visit to his cabin, but my visit recently into the settlement, a ring of forlorn homesteads in n prairie of northern Saskatchewan. bchak knew, of course, that I was ng into the killing of Mike Snoski. ips he was implicated. Anybody be implicated in the infernal jigsaw | grew more confusing at every turn. 0 easy for foreign immigrants to fool ceman. They can take refuge in, “No Engleesh”, they can hint at neigh- as suspect, then claim misunder- ing, or, they can resort to that most ual of barriers, a sullen silence. And = time you sense that they are afraid aid of unknown laws in a new ry, afraid of the foreign-tongued ers, afraid of the vengeance of their people should they happen to speak ie truth, spite the brilliance of clue-finders 1¢ logic of the master-sleuths, crimes ually solved because someone talks. ly, the best policemen are those who ake somebody talk. In a land which knew the knout or the thumbscrew, hich has not yet introduced the re- cnt of the “third degree’, making ody talk can develop into a delight- Intricate problem. len Mike Snoski, sallow-faced, y-moustached little immigrant, (TEENTH EDITION walked away from the Saturday night dance in the little whitewashed school- house, he only got halfway to his own mud-walled little cabin. His venture into the wide, new West ended abruptly where the trail dipped through a brake of slender young poplars. Quick and neat was the stab which slit his jugular. So quick, that little Mike died with a hand in his pocket clutching a half-opened knife. You start from there—and where do you get? After five weeks of riding and guessing and questioning, you get exactly nowhere. Of Mike Snoski’s background, his friends or enemies, you learn almost nothing. Nobody knows anything. But you cannot quit. There are no pigeon holes for unsolved murders, they are, forever, “open cases’. If you persist, something will turn up—maybe. I rode away, leaving Rabchak still sit- ting by the fire, still staring at the floor, twisting aimlessly between his toil-thick- ened fingers the paper money I had given him for bed and board. Fear was riding Rabchak. Fear of retribution, perhaps, or that fear which brings that far-away stare into the eyes of so many who live alone on the prairie. It is a familiar hall- mark, that “homesteader’s stare’, born perhaps of watching white-grey horizons through the endless months when the wind wails unceasingly down the stove- pipes, and the snow lies deep. Unable to read, lacking hobbies and diversions, they sit through the dull winter days, brooding, staring. The bitter cold holds them by the fire. The ever-deepening snow is an excuse to shun neighbours. Craving, yet avoiding human intercourse, their thoughts find voice until they argue and shout and whisper at the vast, muted land- scape. Soon, washing and shaving are forgotten, the dirt piles ever higher in unswept shacks. Through the short, lonely days they await with dread the long, lonely nights. Then the tension cracks and they go crazy, and we take them away—or they kill themselves, and we bury them. I rode over to the Melinchuks. It was a long ten miles to their squat narrow cabin, but yet another vague rumour needed probing. Rastus was still tired, DOG CREEK STAGE C. R. PLACE, Proprietor General Freight Hauling—Williams Lake to Dog Creek ° Williams Lake, B.C. | Williams Lake Dry Cleaners LADIES’ AND MEN’S SUITS TO MEASURE CLEANING, PRESSING AND REPAIRING AGENTS FOR TIP TOP TAILORS WILLIAMS LAKE - - - - B.C. WILLIAMS LAKE MEAT MARKET Choice Quality Meats WILLIAMS LAKE, B.C. SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOULDER STRAP FRED B. BASS Box 793 INSURANCE - INVESTMENTS REAL ESTATE * WILLIAMS LAKE B.C. LAKE HARDWARE & FURNITURE George and Boyd Halfnights, Proprietors The Store Where Quality Rules GENERAL HARDWARE WILLIAMS LAKE British Columbia Page One Hundred and Fifty-one