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MURDE At 153 Mile House

* By

INSPECTOR GEORGE HA. CLARK, M.C.

*

Or sunny day last August I

drove up the Cariboo Road

from Cache Creek to Quesnel. It was some years since I had last traveled it and it was difficult to reconcile the broad paved highway with the winding gravel road that it had been when I first knew it in the early twenties. Many of the old ranch houses that were the stopping places in the stage coach days still stood, some deserted and all looking more weather beaten than ever. Nearly all of them brought back memories of incidents of my police days in the Cariboo.

As we passed the tottering old barns at the 11] Mile my mind went back to

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*

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that early morning in 1923 when— well, here is how it was.

June the first of that year was like any other day in Quesnel. I was in the police office typing some monthly re- ports when the phone rang. Senior Constable Gallagher at Williams Lake wanted to speak to Chief Constable George Greenwood. When he hung up he turned to me, “Get the car gassed up, there’s been a murder at the ’53. Let’s get going.”

A short time later we were on our way in the model “T” Ford, headed South up Red Bluff Hill. As we rolled along the chief told me of the situation. At the 153 Mile there was a ranch known as the Donnelly Ranch, run by a Mrs. Clarke who had for- merly heen Mrs. Donnelly. On _ his death she had married Clarke, who had also died, and she was running the ranch herself with the help of a hired man named Happy Hawkins.

This Hawkins had appeared about a year before and had been engaged as a ranch hand by Mrs. Clarke. His antecedents were unknown and when- ever questioned as to them gave eva- sive answers. He lived in the house and did his work satisfactorily, and eventually any curiosity regarding him died down.

At a neighboring ranch was a young man named Bernard Duggan, who had returned from the first war to assist his mother, and to look after the stock. Young Duggan was a fre- quent visitor at the Donnelly ranch house, and Hawkins began to dislike him.

On the morning in question, Hawkins left the house early, as was his habit, to do the early chores with the stock in the corrals. He did not

Inspector George Clark, formerly with R.C.M.P. and B.C. Provincial Police Force, and now magistrate at Edmonton.

return, when looked for later could not be found on the premises.

One of the neighbors noticed that a wire fence adjacent to a corral had been cut, and further examination showed that something had _ been dragged along the ground through the opening.

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