How Kootenay Emerged from its Wild State. 243 



solitude of the forest, Sprowle's aim would probably not have failed 

 him a second time. But another crisis was approaching. Sprowle 

 had for some time past worked up the feelings of the Sandpointers 

 against me by telling everybody that I refused to pay him his wages 

 for his last summer's work. It was a clever trick, for, of course, I 

 owed him not a cent. By my undertaking to find the money for 

 the defence of his suits I should, if I had won them, have become 

 entitled to a share in the mines, the risk of losing the lawsuits 

 being my business. Sprowle's charge at once enlisted the fullest 

 sympathy of all the gamblers and bad characters of the place. To 

 play the fool with a " bloated capitalist," and that one a Britisher, 

 was a chance too good to let pass. 



There were only three men in Sandpoint I could trust. One 

 was Weeks, the postmaster, who had charge of the ready money 

 I needed, and who was the owner of the only store, on the 

 counter of which I was in the habit of sleeping when in Sandpoint, 

 for the only " hotel " had been burnt down some weeks before ; 

 then an English civil engineer in my employ, who had just returned 

 from the Kootenay country, where he had looked into my scheme ; 



and lastly F , a young Englishman who had strayed West after a 



two years' " undoing " in Manitoba what English parents and 

 Marlborough had drilled into him. Fortunately, one British quality 

 it had not undone, and during the somewhat anxious hours of that 

 night he stood by me with rare pluck. The first inkling of what was 

 brewing was Weeks's suggestion that as he had heard there might 

 be some trouble he would prefer my seeking other quarters for the 

 night. His whole capital was in the store, and in the back room 

 slept his wife and child, so his request was but a prudent 

 precaution, and, as he pressed upon me two new -45 Colts out of his 

 stock, and offered me an empty shack, standing a little distance off 

 as quarters, I knew he was doing the best he could for me. The 

 engineer, also a married man, insisted, as his errand was completed, 

 and the coming storm was none of his funeral, on taking the 

 afternoon Eastbound train, strongly urging me to leave the place at 

 once with him. In his palace sleeping car he no doubt passed a 



R 2 



