Hotel Reopel

JOHNSON HOLDINGS, Proprietors
‘ im
Air Conditioned
All Modern Conveniences
e
Dining Room, Coffee Shop and Cabins

PREMISES LICENSED
Phone 40
“The Home of the Cantaloupe”
OLIVER B.C.

Heated Cars... . . . Safety First
WHEN IN A HURRY TO GO PLACES
Phone: 70-F OLIVER, B.C.

S. O. TAXI

24-Hour Service - Office and Waiting Room
in Becker Block, Main St.

You Ride Fully Insured
RUDY BECKER JOHNNY DINSMORE

SOUTHERN
CO-OPERATIVE
EXCHANGE

Growers, Packers and Shippers of

Southern Okanagan Fruit
and Vegetables

e
OLIVER, B.C.

P.O. BOX 58
“INSIST ON THE BEST’

Get it From

CARTER’S BAKERY

Bread - Cakes - Pastries

PHONE 73

JOHNNIE'S CAFE

WE SERVE FULL COURSE MEALS
“We Serve Only the Best”
*
ICE CREAM AND FOUNTAIN SERVICE

CIGARS CIGARETTES
TOBACCOS and
SOFT DRINKS

OLIVER

Page Ninety-six

be a good idea, Pete,” he suggested, “‘to
check up on his friendships with the local
ladies. Jealousy may be the key to the
whole affair.”

Constable Schepers thought so, too.
Sensitive to impressions, he was also
convinced that, despite the apparent desire
of those he questioned to co-operate, they
were holding something back. While to
all outward appearances his questions
were answered unhesitatingly, some
psychic sense told him the residents of
St. Laurent weren't telling all they knew.

Was it the inherent suspicious reticence
of the insular French-Canadian back-
woodsman? Or, his brows knitted, was
it possible they suspected the identity of
the killer and their tongues were tied by
fear? Determined to break down the
seemingly impenetrable wall of mystery,
Schepers first proceeded to narrow down
the time of the murder.

According to Ambroise’s sister, Marie
Flemmand, her brother had dropped in
on the night of December 15th, promising
to cut wood for her on the 19th, but
hadn’t turned up. Worried when Decem-
ber passed into January, 1928, without a
sign of him, Marie had gone to his home
on the morning of the 6th and, finding
the door unlocked, but resisting her
attempts to open it, had sped in alarm to
her uncle. Hurrying to the cabin with
Paul Richards, old Pierre Chaboyer had
found the windows white-frosted, as
though the place had been long deserted
and, forcing his way in, he had been
horrified to stumble across the frozen
and mutilated body of his nephew.

A check-up of the log-walled homes
within a half-mile radius of the murder
spot disclosed that Ambroise had fre-
quently been seen with three young men
of around his own age: Armand Le-
Roux, Joseph Ducharme and St. Pierre
Lavalle. But the questioning of these
men proved barren of result. Not only
were their memories for dates vague and
uncertain, but they would tell one story
today and an entirely different one to-
morrow. Despite the most skilful ques-
tioning, Schepers found himself again
confronted by the same wall of obduracy
and restraint that had thwarted him from
the beginning.

From ADVENTURE TO PoveRTyY

One of the oldest settlements in the
West, St. Laurent had been founded by
the dark-skinned sons of those rollicking,
hard-drinking, hard-fighting French-Can-
adian coureurs de bois who had left the
homes they had wrested from the savage
Iroquois on the rock-walled St. Lawrence,
manned the birchbark flotillas of the
Northwest Fur Company, married into
the tribes and reared this community of
whitewashed cabins in the heart of the
buffalo plains—only to be reduced to ruin
and poverty as the railroad bit through
the forest, muskeg and prairie to bring
civilization’s blighting hand to the finest
hunting grounds in the West.

Turning trappers, fishermen and lym.
berjacks to wrest a pittance from the
game-depleted forests, they deserted thei,
wilderness camps for the roaring my
fireplaces of friends and families ea¢,
Christmas in an attempt to recapture .
shadow of their former freedom ang
glory in a round of conviviality ang
merrymaking. And no French-Canadian
celebration, Pete knew, was complete
without its whisky blanc—which could
only be obtained by express from the
Liquor Commission in Winnipeg.

Proceeding with Valder to the depot,
Schepers called for the express book and
followed the dates with his finger from
December 15th, when Marie had last seen
her brother. Suddenly his eyes lighted,
Under date of December 24th was the
bold signature of Ambroise Chaboyer,
showing that he had taken delivery of a
parcel of liquor. A wire to the Liquor

OLIVER DAIRY

The Only Government Inspected Dairy in

the District

OLIVER BRITISH COLUMBIA

LAKESIDE AUTO CAMP
A. MACPHEE, Proprietor

Tourist Cabins, Summer Cottages
Bathing Beach

*
OLIVER, B.C.

Oliver Sawmills Ltd.
Manufacturers of
Western Pine Box Shooks
P.O. Box 98 Phone 78 |

Oliver, B.C.

JONNIE’S TAXI
Phone 69

24 Hours a Day at Your Service

Courteous Drivers - Insured Cars

OLIVER, B.C.

Telephone 15
HOTEL OLIVER

| On the Main Cariboo Highway and in the
Heart of the Okanagan

Good Beds
OLIVER, B.C.

Fully Licensed