only be marooned there till horses brought the passengers out. But one or two who'd heard the distant and as yet faint rumblings of Europe wondered if there wasn’t more behind this expedition than met the eye,

and whispered that Bedaux was in the pay

of some foreign government.

From out of the ragged timber-strewn country to the northward news of this modern Hannibal filtered through to Fort St. John and Hudson Hope by despatch riders sent to keep the waiting world in touch with the progress of the expedition into the “unexplored” land wherein Hud- son’s Bay factors had traded with the red men for a century and a quarter. Each brought some hair-raising story of tribula- tion, disaster and high adventure that shrieked to high heaven of bad judgment and worse management somewhere. For trappers, traders and Indians thought no more of penetrating into this region with a cayuse, a few traps and a rifle than does the city dweller of going to the corner store for groceries.

From somewhere near the Sifton Pass mud-bespattered riders on jaded ponies brought to Fort St. John another message. Wireless equipment had been jettisoned. Caterpillar tractors, though serviced by a crew of experts brought especially from France, were continually breaking down; a search party was looking for Jim Blakeman, cowboy packer, who had mysteriously disap- peared. Then came another message. Blake- man had turned up! He'd gone back to recover a load bucked from a refractory

Community Stores

Jack Patterson Gus Patterson

Groceries Everything in Men’s Wear and Footwear — Catering

to the Particular Dresser e

DAWSON CREEK - -

B.C.

cayuse. Heavy rains had wiped out the trail. A nomad Indian with a perverted sense of humour had misdirected him and he had all but succumbed to exposure, hunger and mosquito bites.

The tractors had been beaten by the weather, streams ordinarily fordable had been converted into raging torrents by heavy rains. The Halfway River above Graham was found a raging fury. Attempting to avoid a crossing by skirting the mountain- side, the rain-soaked gumbo gave way, plunging two of the unwieldly vehicles three hundred feet down a precipice to be smashed to atoms on the rock-strewn riverbed below.

‘Barely in time to save their necks, Madame

Bedaux and the fair Josephine had leapt to safety. “Fortunately,” reported the ever- movie-conscious Bedaux, “we anticipated trouble, and four of our motion picture machines were trained on the cars at the time!” The raging Halfway claimed another tractor. On a raft of 30-foot logs decorated with bloated rubber pontoons, the expedi- tion was being ferried across. Caught in the fierce current the raft careened with race- horse speed downstream towards the boiling rapids below. Plunging into the icy cur- rent the cowboy sailors swam to safety,

while the “unsinkable” raft with its load and tractor disappeared into the white spume of the rapids, caromed against the canyon wall and disappeared forever around the bend, headed on its long unauthorised journey towards the Peace and the Poiar Sea.

Moccasined Indians brought word that many horses had been drowned, or lost through injury, and valuable food supplies ruined whilst swimming them across streams.

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JOE D. DILL, Owner C3)

“The Little Chapel on the Corner”

DAWSON CREEK, B.C.

Fort St. John, starting point for the mysterious Bedaux expedition

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‘)

DAWSON CREEK BRITISH COLUMBIA

TWELFTH EDITION

Page Fifty-five