When in Victoria a Welcome Awaits You at ‘SIX MILE HOUSE Most Modern Licensed Hotel on the Island Courteous Service Genial Company Licensed Premises Phone Belmont 76 Bill Buxton (formerly of Calgary and Van- couver) and his staff are always at your service. Isl. Highway, Victoria, B.C. Despite dark forecasts of disaster, my anvas and lumber “palace” proved a great uccess, to the disappointment of Mr. Beat- on and his cronies. In fifty below weather xeorge drove from within, the reins passing hrough a leather-covered flap, guiding his eam through a small window. At night it aved us the trouble of building an outside rush camp in the biting cold and cutting uge piles of firewood, permitting an extra our and a half of travel. Hacking through natted spruce, doubling up on frozen hills nd ravines, our cavalcade bulldozed its way hrough primeval forest and blizzard-swept nuskeg, past Indian camps and trappers’ abins where my cash was rapidly converted nto bales of choicest marten, lynx and fox kins. The great rendezvous for the Indians and rappers who hunted in the -vast pine forests o the northward was at the forks of the dard and Nelson, fifty miles north of Fort Nelson. Instinct told me that the opposition raders figured on making this the key point or their spring offensive with a view to leaning up on the huge catch of beaver, tter, mink and magnificent black marten hat would be brought in by birch bark anoes at open water from the surrounding wilderness. “They'll be figuring that you’re the man to watch,” I told Charlie Aden, whom I’d put in charge of Fontas. “Keep them think- ing that. Start building a scow when the ice melts. Take lots of time, and while you're holding their attention I'll sneak off a trad- ing expedition secretly from Fort Nelson for the Forks the moment the ice goes out. Meanwhile, without arousing suspicion, Ill move the goods we need for the expedition from Fort St. John to here by horse sleighs and you can send them on down to Fort Nelson by dog team.” Everything went like clockwork. While the free traders were keeping an eagle eye on Aden’s slow and labourious progress with his scow, Jack Milne, with an Indian crew, slipped out of Fort Nelson at dead of night with pancake ice still floating around h’s scow and headed for the trappers’ rendez- vous at the Forks. When, a week later, the free traders pulled exultantly into the Forks, their boats loaded to the gunwales, leaving Aden and his men still sawing and hammering at his uncompleted scow, they got the jolt of their lives. Moored beneath the log walls of a rapidly rising trading post, over which flut- tered the red banner of the H. B. C., was Milne’s scow. The new company post of Nelson Forks was rapidly nearing comple- tion, surrounded by the white tents of in- coming trappers and the smoke- stained tepees of Indian hunters. From every trap- per, camp trader and coppery hunter came the same story. They'd sold their furs al- ready. They'd sold them to the Company’s men. Then, and not till then, did the free traders realize that the scow whose progress LANGFORD GARAGE CoO. Le QUESNE BROS, Proprietors Island Highway at Sooke Road Phone BELMONT 47-R Wrecking Truck R.R. No. 1, VICTORIA, B.C. Fully Equipped Garage Godsell’s Palace. SUMMER EDITION they'd watched with such a vigilant eye at Fontas was merely a hoax and a decoy. Now mechanical “cats” and tractor trains with their cookhouse cabooses are growling over the trail I blazed a decade and a half ago, hauling gear and equipment for the new line of bomber airports linking the new HALFWAY HOUSE A. M. GORE, Manager Licensed Premises 856 Esquimalt Road ESQUIMALT, B.C. THE TUDOR HOUSE WILF GOUGE, Manager e Licensed Premises © Corner Admirals and Esquimalt Roads ESQUIMALT, B.C. COLWOOD STORE GENERAL GROCERIES IMPERIAL GAS and OIL * Phone 23 Colwood, B.C. SOOKE HARBOUR HOTEL Licensed Parlour Where Personal Service Makes Your Stay Enjoyable r SOOKE, B.C. P. W. CASE General Merchant e SOOKE, B.C. Page Fifteen ia aaa EPS ee URS et ERAT