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Show H Canada Pacific Nell By J. G. WEAVER H Back in the seventies there was born a first-class high rolling boom at Winnipeg, Manitoba, not the least off color in any particular. It was the first, and only real simon pure real estate boom our north-western north-western cousins ever got up. While it lasted it cast an almost total eclipse upon every other boom on the North American continent. The occasion was the coming of the Canadian Pacific railroad up tin Red River, and the start of construction work on the line west to the Pacific. Old Fort Garry had for years been the chief trading post of the Hudson Bay company, and the residence of the chief factor the more than Kaiser of the North. As the consequence of this, and also on account of its geographical position it became at once apparent that it would be the chief city of the northern provinces and tcrri- At the time the boom started the population of the embryo city, which had been named after the lake upon which it was situated, was composed of halfbrccds, French and English, with the halfbrccds far ahead in point of numbers. Now it chanced that a number of the halfbrccds held land right in the center of the city. This land was divided up into small farms which had been cultivated for many years Their owners had never even heard df a railroad, and even resented the coming of an im-provement im-provement which was destined to enrich them, and it was with dif-ficulty dif-ficulty that they could be persuaded to part with any portion of their holdings. It took some time and prices had to soar to very tempting figures before the English could get a foothold, and even then the "breeds" held a considerable portion of their homesteads. The coming of the road as I said, started a boom, and it was not long before these homesteads were bringing almost fabulous prices. Families which had never earned but the barest living by selling their produce to the big company became within a few months very wealthy, some of them reaching nearly the millionaire mark. Among those who held out until the boom was well under way was a lialfbrced by the name of Robcrtcllc who, together with his wife and two daughters, occupied a homestead right in the center of where Winnipeg now stands. When at last he consented to sell, he found himself to be nearly a millionaire, and the owner of one of the finest residences that the city then contained. To say that it turned the head of the "breed" and his family to be thus all in a moment transformed from a poor farmer to a position of almost boundless luxury would be to draw it mild. There was noth-ing noth-ing too good for them, and as their desires grew with arithmetical progression it was not long before they were painting the town with various hues of red. ending with the purest vermillion. Now the young lialfbrced girls are generally pretty, and Nellie, the eldest of the Robcrtcllc daughters, was no exception to the rule. She had been superficially educated at the Catholic convent at old Fort Garry, at which institution her younger sister was still a student. She played a little on the piano, could speak both French and English fluently, and was the best horsewoman in all Manitoba. At the time of the coming of the railroad she was a girl of seventeen with a very receptive mind, and the possessor of an idea that her father's fortune could never be exhausted. Her complexion was lighter than the most of her race, the Indian blood only showing in her straight black hair, while she possessed all the vivacity of her French forebears. She at once became the rage of the metropolis of the North. No social function was considered complete without her. She was among the first to affect Parisian styles and electrified her set by ordering her gowns directly from Worth, paying for them often as high as 5,000 francs each. There was no new fad started that she did not at once constitute herself its leader. Her jewels, her horses and car-riages, car-riages, and her entertainments for barbaric splendor were the talk of the town. Old man Robcrtcllc looked on at these expenditures with a species pij of indulgent wonder and footed the bills without a murmur. Like most people of French extraction, life is never considered complete until Paris has been visited. With the Robcrtclles, under JJJ the leadership of Nell, this became a passion, a dream, which now could be gratified. Arrived at the French capital, they were at once taken into the smart set, s t however, that while ostensibly of the upper ten, con- tamed ma: .10 were in reality allied to the underworld, in that they K maintained themselves from the proceeds of the fashionable gaming table. The Robcrtclles rented a salon on one of the fashionable streets, and drew thither all that portion of the society of the city which hung on the skirts of the aristocracy, while not being really of it. Among this set were many who like vampires preyed on their fellows. Games of chance were of constant recurrence at the home and the sums which changed hands daily at these games would have made a mining camp gambling house keeper turn green with envy. As had been the case in the Canadian city, Nell Robcrtcllc plunged I into this whirlpool life with all the enthusiasm of the parvenu. The I wild blood in her veins had at last found the stimulant it required. The hazard of the game stirred in her veins like wine. As has often been evidenced with people of mixed blood, she had a sort of scintillating scintillat-ing intellect, which grasped the intricacies of play with seeming in-tuitivencss. in-tuitivencss. The game became a passion with her, and it was not long before she was a dangerous opponent for even the most astute gamester of them all. Her winnings became proverbially heavy, it being be-ing stated that one evening she quit the table nearly a half million francs to the good. The girl's winnings, however great, could not keep pace with the losses of the father and the expenditures consequent upon the life . they were leading. One trip to Monte Carlo and a bad run of luck upon the part of Robcrtcllc proved to be the undoing of the family. They returned to Paris and by mortgaging their, home in Winnipeg Winni-peg managed to keep up their establishment a few months longer. During that time the younger sister, Luclla, who was the possessor pos-sessor of a beauty only second to the redoubtable Nell herself, made a clandestine match with a Neapolitan musician, and left for Rome. Nell had captured the heart of a young French engineer of considerable consider-able genius md their marriage took place just before the crash, which brought about the death of the head of the family by his own hand, and that of the mother who died of grief a few weeks later. Wishing to save the remnants of the fortune which had been squandered in so short a time, the young couple set sail for Canada. Arriving at Winnipeg, the home which had been the scene of the early triumphs of the family was sold, and a few thousand dollars was found to be all that was left of a fortune which in the North had been considered princely. Had the girl been built of other stuff, her share of the proceeds, added to that of her husband's, would have been enough to have maintained her in a style, which but a few years before, would have . been the height of affluence to her. She could not be curbed, however. how-ever. The longing for excitement was ever upon her. The high, fast life of the French capital had gotten into her blood. Once more she became the talk of the town. In more humble quarters she instituted an imitation of the life of the French smart set and the gaming table became an institution in the home. The lialfbrced families who had been enriched by the boom in the Winnipeg bubble, which by this time had vanished, naturally looked up to Nejl as a leader. The young Madam Bouchcnier had as deep a hold upon them as Nell Robcrtcllc possessed in the old days, and they gladly accepted invitations to her somewhat humble quarters. She initiated them into the mysteries of Parisian life, and at the gambling tabic they paid dearly for their education. The young matron fleeced them out of thousands of dollars. This money she spent with a lavish hand, and in the course i a few months had removed to one of the most pretentious mansion in the city. Again the old life of splendor was instituted but under very much changed conditions. The set she had formerly moved with drew away from her. Only the halfbrccds remained true to her leadership, for in reality she was conducting a high class private gambling house. Then came a day when even the halfbrccds grew weary of being , fleeced for her benefit, and one by one they dropped away. Then came the second crash. Meantime the Canada Pacific Railroad was pushing its way to the West. A change of administration had taken place at Ottawa. Sir John A. MacDonald, who had put the whole force of his character into its construction, had been succeeded as prime minister by Alexander Alex-ander Mackenzie, who long had been the leader of the opposition in the Canadian Parliament. The cry had gone forth for economy, and the vast but far-sighted expenditures of his great rival had received a rebuff at the hands of the Canadian electorate. The entire plans of constructing the road were changed. Advantage was now to be taken of certain water stretches and the line was to be constructed between them, the idea being to keep the line just ahead of colonization.. The services of engineers of ability were needed and when the crash came at Winnipeg M. Bouchcnier applied for a position and his application was accepted. Beaten at every point, with her old leadership forever gone, and almost wholly without means, Nell determined to follow her husband out on the road. Reverses-, however, could never change the nature of the girl. Establishing herself at the terminal of the line, and constantly changing chang-ing farther west as the road was pushed on to the mountains, she instituted on a lower plane the life she had led in Paris and at Winnipeg. Winni-peg. Foremen of construction, contractors, engineers and a whole army of small officials, were soon found as guests at the Bouchenier home. The gaming table was not forgotten, and the nights following the monthly pay-day often compared with many of the nights of her Winnipeg career. She became again the center of the social life of the terminal points, and though her winnings were not great as in the old days, her profits, as compared with her expenditures, were very much greater. Learning wisdom from past experiences the young engineer began saving money for a rainy day, and had his life been spared, hy the time the road had reached the ocean they would have been in comparatively com-paratively easy circumstances. During the five years of the Mackenzie Macken-zie administration he had saved in the neighborhood of $30,000 from his salary and the winnings of his wife at the gaming table. Just before be-fore the return of Sir John MacDonald to power at Ottawa, he was killed in an accident out on the line and his young wife was left alone. When his affairs were settled up and to the amount of his savings his life insurance was added, Madam Bouchcnicr found herself again the mistress of a snug little fortune of $40,000. And now began the career which was to dub her "Canada Pacific Nell." Knowing that her old power had departed forever in Winnipeg, she still kept up her life on the frontier, moving constantly westward as the line was rushed over the prairies by the company which had been formed under the policy of the Canadian premier. Her nature however seemed changed. She made no further effort at ostentatious display. Her temporary homes were open to all, and all were fleeced alike. She had in reality degenerated to be the keeper of a private gambling house, screened from the law hy a semblance of social entertainment. enter-tainment. Only during the Reil rebellion did she cease her activities, spending the time until the capture of the great halfbrecd leader at Patosh closed hostilities, at Medicine Hat in comparative seclusion. All the time Paris seemed to be calling her to again enter the life she had led, and the glory of the old days in the gay capital was her constant con-stant dream. At last the road was completed and the possessor of a fortune of 500,000 francs she bid goodbye to Canada. A longing had come over her to visit her sister and she took passage directly to Rome. She found her sister the mother of an interesting little family living quietly in the Eternal City. A relative of her sister's husband soon offered himself to her, but she would have none of him and after spending a short time at Rome she took up her journey to her beloved Paris. Alas, however, for her dreams! She was called upon to pay the penalty of her race. Though women of mixed blood often possess great beaut' in their younger years, they arc doomed to fade early. Madam Bouchenier was no exception to the rule. A few months in the gay French city convinced her that she was of a day which had departed. She was an old woman, or which amounted to the same thing, she bore the appearance of one, and the smart set would have none of her. She returned to Rome and accepted the suitor she had so lately frowned upon, and very shortly after became his wife. At last accounts she was living still in the "Eternal City." BELL COMPANY TO RECEIVE TO-DAY. Public Invited to Inspect New Telephone Building and Plant. Invitations have been issued to patrons of the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company and to the public generally to inspect the company's fine new building and plant on State street between 1 o'clock and 11 o'clock p. m. to-day. The company's new building is strictly fire-proof and is one of the best business structures in the inter-mountain country, with many distinctive features. It contains all the latest and best equipment known to the telephone business. The average telephone user has only a vague idea of the intricate apparatus necessary to give him communication with his friends, and a visit to the plant will prove of great interest. Experts of the company's staff will be present in all departments to explain the operation of the apparatus. Every part of the plant will be open to inspection between the hours named. All residents of the city and neighborhood arc cordially invited to be present. Two more Buicks were shipped by the Consolidated Wagon and Machine Company, agents, to Logan during the past week. The Buicks have been given a thorough trial and workout in Cache county and have been found to give every satisfaction, fulfilling every exacting exact-ing requirement. |