TRAVELERS’ HOTEL

| THOMAS RICKSON, Proprietor

Licensed Premises

WESTVIEW, B.C.

found that the dead man had apparently
materialized into flesh and bone. And
he rode the same identical wall-eyed
pinto. A second glance showed how
easily he had been misled. The rider
before him might have been the twin
brother of the murdered man, yet—his
name was Aldridge!

“Damn it!’ Hetherington turned in
exasperation to Firth. “We're right back
where we started. I’ve still an all-fired
hunch that this murder’s the work of a
stranger. Yet, these sod-busters will pick
out a stranger any time and recall him
for months afterwards, but no one re-
members seeing one around. Of course,”
he admitted, “the body could have been
packed here from a distance . . . but why
take the chance of discovery by burying
it right at a person’s back door when
the murderer had the whole wide-open
prairie to choose from?”

“Maybe,” suggested Firth thoughtful-
ly, “it’s someone with a grudge against
Phillipps who wanted to throw suspicion
on him. Maybe one of his neighbours
for all we know. The way the cap and
hooks were left lying around looks mighty
fishy to me.”

“Well,” Hetherington put the spurs to
his roan, “we'll comb the whole confound-
ed countryside again and see if we've
passed up anything. I’d write the Kala-
mazoo police to check up from their end
only ... the man we're after—if he’s
around there—might get wise and high-
tail it.”

Again they combed the countryside
with their gruesome exhibit. Had any
stranger been seen around late in the
winter or in the early spring? Was he
heity, with a reddish tinge to his hair,
and between twenty-five and thirty? Did
he wear a coat like this? Or a cap like

this? Again and again they'd display
the grease-stained cap, the coat and tat-
tered Leisure Hour Library, to be re-
warded with vacant faces, or to be sent
on useless trails by yokels giving false
information merely to please or be polite.
At last their trail crossed that of the mail
driver.

“Come to think of it,” Bill Haydon
expectorated neatly on a crawling fly,
“T drove a couple of guys last April.
They wus talkin’ of Wyoming.”

“Wyoming!”  Hetherington’s heart
skipped a beat. “What did they have to
say?”

“Said they wus from down that way
and were looking for a quarter section.”

“Yes...yes...” the Constable urged.
“Did they mention anyone around here 2?”

“They asked if the Bullocks lived at
Asker. The big guy, the six-footer in
the black sombrero, asked the question,
and his pardner turns to me an’ says:
“He’s one o’ the Bullocks—Bud Bullock’.”

Whipping out his notebook the Con-
stable wrote down the descriptions. Bud
Bullock, twenty-five, six-feet tall, wear-
ing a black sombrero. The Kid, as the
stage-driver called his companion, of
husky build; wore a cap, and must also
have been around twenty-five.

“How tall was the one you call “The
Kid’?” With difficulty the Constable
cloaked his excitement.

“He was a short guy,’ the words
spelled the death-knell of his hopes. “He
didn’t hardly reach the other’s shoulders.”

Hetherington was puzzled. Despite all
questioning the driver was adamant in
his insistence that The Kid was short
yet the dead man he was trying to trace,
while resembling in many particulars the
so-called Kid, measured five-feet-ten.
That would make him only two inches

|
D. K. Macken, H. L. Davies, C. J. Davies |
TELEPHONES: |

Powell River—210

Westview—3811 |

CITY MOTORS

LIMITED

Phone 4331 Phone 4331

“SHELLUBRICATION” A SPECIALTY
Shell Products

PARKER & ECKSTRAND

Cranberry Motors—Len’s Service Garage
Wildwcod Heights

DODGE, DE SOTO CARS
DODGE TRUCKS |

CRANBERRY LAKE B.C.

uirs Hardware

Robert Muir, Proprietor

RADIOS FISHING TACKLE
CHINA AND GLASSWARE KELVINATOR
HEATERS AND RANGES REFRIGERATION
GENERAL HARDWARE C.C.M. BICYCLES
OF EVERY DESCRIPTION AND PARTS

MALL CHAIN SAWS

PHONE 4291 WESTVIEW. B. C.

“WE SERVE TO PLEASE”

WESTVIEW COFFEE BAR

F. Downey, Proprietress

Beach Lunches, Hamburgers, Hot Dogs
Ice Cream, Cigarettes, Tobaccos

WE SERVE HOT MEALS

WESTVIEW B.C.

THE POWELL STORES LTD.

COMPLETE DEPARTMENT
STORE

POWELL RIVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA

With Compliments to the B. C. Police

*

E. DINI

Hotel Rodmay Building

Automobile Parts and Accessories

Ford and Monarch Sales and Service

P.O. Box 580

Powell River
POWELL RIVER, B.C.

P. O. Box 850

British Columbia

Page Forty-seven