vulsively then a torrent of Slavey came tumbling from his lips. A Quarrel On the day they were leaving for the trapline there had been a quarrel in the trading post. His wife was buying some expensive velvet. When asked why she wanted such costly goods she’d tauntingly replied she was going to use it for a cradle for the child she was expecting. It was no affair of his, she told him. It was a white man’s child! Night after night, while storms raged without, he gazed into the flickering lodge fire, pondering over the wrong done him by the paleface. He had spoken to his squaw and she had replied with jibes and angry words. Then, one night while the trees burst asunder with the biting cold, and the Northern Lights per- formed the Dance of the Dead in the sky, the child was born. A white man’s child! For days he nursed his anger. It was bad enough to have these paleface trappers overrunning the ancient hunting grounds of the Slaveys, pois- oning their dogs, and shouldering them from their traplines, but it was far worse for a woman of the red race to desert her own for these trap- pers. Now he was saddled with this badge of shame, which he would be expected to support. “Shimaganishuk” Would Be Angry There had been another quarrel. He had struck his wife with a stick of firewood, picked up the white man’s child and tossed it from the wigwam. Realizing, when his senses returned, that he had done a terrible thing, and that the Shimaganishuk would be angry, he made it appear as though his squaw had killed herself. But he had made the fatal mistake of not firing the bullet through the blanket! A verdict of guilty was returned. Fumbling, the judge placed the black cap upon his head. Never before had he sentenced a man to death. Quickly, almost unintelligibly Judge Dubuc, a NEW OMINECA CAFE “A Good Place to Eat’ * BURNS LAKE B.C. BURNS LAKE CASH AND DELIVERY Groceries and Meats * MRS. A. A. TURNER, Proprietor BURNS LAKE B.C. Page Fourteen The Roman Catholic Mission at Fort Providence. Here Lebeaux worked happily for the mission till word of big fur catches sent him to the forest. The trial was held in the large building, where Lebeaux was first arrested. kindly man, mumbled the words that condemned Albert to the gallows. Then, covering his face with his hands, he rushed headlong from the courtroom. So quickly had things happened, so dramatic had been the judge’s break- down, that the interpreter forgot to interpret the sentence to the prisoner, so Albert was led away, in ignorance of his fate—and his Mounted Police guards had not the heart to tell him. Soon he was aboard the police schooner, in the best of humor, crest- ing the rollers of Great Slave Lake on his way back to join his friends, “Slim” and “Rags,” at Fort Fitzgerald. By the time they reached Fort Fitz- gerald Albert was feeling ill. Two days later he was raving in delirium. Smallpox, which was ravaging the Indians, was upon him, too. Soon it was rumored that Albert was going to die. It was then that the corporal’s wife came to the rescue of the forlorn man. Night and day she nursed him. For a week it seemed that Lebeaux must surely follow the Long Trail to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Sympa- thetic oldtimers hoped that he would die. But gradually his spirit drifted back from the shadowy world in which it had been hovering until he gazed, like a grateful dog, into the eyes of the strange white woman who had snatched him from the jaws of death. But Time was speeding by. Subject to confirmation by the Minister of Justice, Albert’s execution was set for November 1, at Fort Smith, just across the portage, and it was already late in August. It had come out since the trial that, due to some old head injury, Albert was given to uncontrollable THE NEW TWEEDSMUIR HOTEL (Completed in 1950) “The Finest Hotel Accommodation in Central British Columbia’ BURNS LAKE B.C. outbursts of rage. Daily word from Ottawa was expected, commuting his sentence to imprisonment. But, to the Canadian Government, there was more in this than just the killing of a squaw by a jealous Indian. Turbulence Among Mackenzie River Tribes The government was getting wor- ried over the growing turbulence of the Dog-Ribs, Slavies and other Mac- kenzie River tribes over the invasion of their tribal hunting grounds by hordes of white trappers who were overrunning the Indian country, shouldering the Indians roughly aside; interfering with their women, poisoning their dogs, and antagoniz- ing them in a dozen different ways. Driven to desperation, angry Slavies had burned paleface cabins; fired the forests to drive them out, and were showing a growing disposition to settle the matter in traditional redskin style with scalping knife and toma- hawk. Further north, the Eskimos had taken the law into their own hands and killed half-a-dozen whites, in- cluding a Mounted Policeman. It was time an example was being made. And, it was Albert’s misfortune that he should run afoul of the law at this particular time. When I boarded the Muskeg Lim- ited in September to catch the last north-bound scow before freeze-up there were a couple of young Mounties in the old-fashioned coach and a cadaverous, bleary-eyed man in nondescript uniform and_ battered Stetson. With a nasal twang he told me he was a “Mounted Police audi- tor,” bound for Fort Fitzgerald to in- spect the barracks. But his two day’s Central B.C. Lumbermen’s Co-operative Association Affiliated: British Columbia Co-operative Union * BURNS LAKE B.C. | THE SHOULDER STRAP