30 years. A. Van Driver
and coming into H. Prairie
Chapter I.
The four men grouped about the mired down wagon with the broken tongue were engaged in a heated debate that threatened to become a fight. "Leave that damned broken wagon here" one man suggested, "bring your chickens and doubletrees and come to Grouard with us, you can come back for your wagon when the trail dries up."
"This muskeg won't be dry till freeze up and you knowit," Jack Napier retorted, and how much of my stuff would be left by then? "I worked a year for what's in that wagon and when I get to Grouard I'll have it with me."
"Suit yourself but I'm not staying in this muskeg the rest of my life to get your wagon out." You let them broncs break the pole, we told you before you bought that team to get gentle horses for this trip. "You couldn't drive a drunk Indian let along a team of broncs." Jack reddened at this reference to his horsemanship. "Well maybe I could teach you guys a little ju-jitsu while we're arguing here." he ground out menacingly. "No, no Jack this isn't a fighting matter. It's a - a business matter."
Two of the en backed away hurriedly from Jack's threating pose. They had seen what he could do in horseplay in the lumber camp where they had all worked together the winter before and had no desire to become his ju-jitsu pupils while he was in that frame of mind.
"It might be good business for you but, it don't appeal to me
We agreed before we started this trip to put all six horses on each wagon wherever the trail was bad if necessary. Now I've helped haul your wagons through this souphole and because it would take an hour to put a new pole in my wagon I'm supposed to leave the whole works and help haul your wagons to Grouard, almost two hundred miles yet. That way I'd have your company, which I don't want, and somebody else would have my stuff which I worked hard to get.
"No Sir when I get out of this bog hole that wagon comes with me."
The issue was eventualy settled without bloodshed. The four men camped together that night while their hobbled horses grazed in the surrounding swamp and the next morning the two lumbermen when on ahead to their own outfit which was four miles ahead leaving Jack and his Uncle John to get the broken and mired down wagon out as best they could. As soon as the wagon was fixed he shipped took small loads down to the river about which was 2 miles down to Jackknife Landing, a place where the steamers took on wood and had the things shipped to Grouard, just keeping bare necessities of life to keep us living till we got to Grouard where we picked up the rest of our things.
The four men were on their way to the Peace River Country in the first land rush in 1913. They had read the Government literature which told of the vegetables and other crops that Sheridan Lawrence was raising at Fort Vermilion. Their were stories of Peter Pond's garden on the Upper Peace in and earlier era and there were pictures of the vegetables being grown at Peace River Crossing. The entire Peace River Country was according to the pamphlets a sort of new found promised land.
The four men had formed a party to drive from the end of the railroad at Athabasca Landing to Grouard on Lesser Slave Lake. This parternship was dissolved however in the first bad mud hole they came to. Northern Alberta's mud and flies rivalled marriage as a wrecker of male parternships. Jack and John (insert Camelon) fitted a new pole into the wagon and John took his rifle and told Jack he'd go up the trail a piece and wait for him at the next camp.
This left Jack with a reconditioned wagon, an unimproved temper, and a wagon load of equipment to carry through the slough where hi'd have to load it again, working waist deep in mud and water he eventualy carried everything but the running gear of the wagon to the end of the slough. The wagon box had been built in pieces so it could be taken apart and carried man-back through places as this. The crate of chickens was the worst part of the load to move. It was just too big for a man to get a firm grip he needed to carry it.
The mosquitoes hadn't improved Jacks temper and he still had the running gear of the wagon to get out of the mud. The team floundering belly deep in the mud were only able to haul half of it at a time. Then came the tiresome job of reloading. He would repeat the procedure st started that morning with monotonous regularity in the next ten days. John always left camp as soon as the dishers were washed in the morning, and the hiked ahead to the next camping place where he waited for Jack. He flatly refused to lay a hand on the team or cut windfalls out of the trail or help get the wagon through the sloughs. He shot what game they needed for meat and did the camp cooking but wouldn't do any other work.
Between chopping windfalls and getting stuck in mudholes Jack was only able to average three miles a day. He lost one day hunting his horses that had strayed during the night. He found them miles down the trail heading for Athabasca Landing. After that he kept them tied up at night and tried to pull enough grass to feed them. Pulling enough grass in a fly infested swamp to feed a team for ten our twelve hours requires the patience of a saint and the determination of a world conqueror. It made hours of extra work every night at the end of each days heartbreaking toil on the trail. Men have been. tried by combat, fire and prison, but Jack was apparently being tried by Trail. Each day was a repitition of the on that had gone before it. Jack cut the windfalls that the team couldn't haul the wagon over. He got stuck in sloughs and unloaded the wagon and carried the stuff to drier ground and reloaded.
He cursed the trail with its oft repeated need to unload, he cursed his descison desision to homestead, and he cursed the chicken crate which was the awkwardest piece of baggage he had to carry, but his loudest and most lurid curses he reserved for his Uncle who was marching majesticaly ahead with his rifle over his shoulder and all his virtues showing though there was no one close enough to observe his virtues. By the time they arrived at Mirror Landing Jack had an almost uncontrollable desire to kill both his Uncle and his chickens. He forcibly restrained both of these impulses for he knew when his hens started to lay again that eggs would be a welcome change in a diet of wild meat and bannock and the doubted his ability to convince a jury that any one man could be as maddening as his Uncle John was.
At Mirror Landing Jack tried to buy feed for his team from the Northern Transport Company but they refused to sell any hay or oats and pointed out that their own horses were half starved. His former partners had taken a job freighting for the transport company and they gave him a bale of Company's hay and told him to keep his mouth shut about it.
Hay was not to be had at any price and there were no oats closer than the Railroad cache which is now called Smith. For once John made himself useful, he looked after the team while Jack fought his way in a borrowed boat along Swollen Slave and Athabasca Rivers to the Railroad Cache, where he bought four sacks of oats, than surprised the residents of Mirror Landing by returning with them alive.
He shipped most of the stuff he had no immediate need for from Mirror Lading to Grouard by boat and went on with a skeleton camping outfit and of course his crate of chickens.
With a lightened load and some grain for the team Jack was able to make better time from Mirror Landing on.Map of Athabasca area He made ten and sometimes fifteen miles in a day.
When they arrived in Sawridge, now called Slave Lake, Jack was told he'd have to shoe his horses to get any further. There was a piece of trail twelve miles long that would lame an unshod horse, so while the team enjoyed a two day rest and John enjoyed perfect fishing Jack discovered new and unsuspected depths of depravity in his Uncle. Jack didn't have a cent left by that time so he tried to borrow ten or twelve dollars from Uncle John who was carrying four thousand Dollars with him. Uncle John flatly refused to loan him a dime but offered to buy a half interest in his outfit. Jack was forced to accept this offer but remembered with regret the chances he'd missed to murder him back in the swamp.
After selling half the outfit he discovered that there were neither horse shoes or horse shoe nails to be had in Sawridge. There was nothing else for it but to drive the barefoot team over the rocky trail. At the end of the rocky stretch of trail they were very footsore but not permanently damaged.
Jack and Uncle John arrived in Grouard on the second of June 1913. Grouard at that time was one of the most important towns of the North situated on the North West point of Lesser Slave Lake. Its life depended on the freight to and from the North.
The cargoes of flour, traps, ammunition etc on which the North depended for its existence were unloaded from the Lake Steamers at Grouard during the summer shipping season, and stockpiled till winter made overland travel possible. Then they were hauled by team over the old Grouard trail to Peace River Crossing where they were again stockpiled till Summer when the River steamboats took them to the trading posts up and down the Peace River from Hudson Hope to Fort Vermillion.
The two frontier towns, both vital to Northern transportation were fresh water ports with an eighty mile stretch of muskeg between them that was all but impassible in the summer. So although the two types of transportations were tied up alternitively there was work the year round for the local residents.
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