A TAVERN BRAWL.

Erk's Work, 1 February 1941, Page 7

A TAVERN BRAWL.

Coming in out of the piercing cold of a Canadian winter, the atmosphere in the low-ceilinged, underground bar of the Ignace Hotel seemed almost stifling. The bar was packed with a motley crowd of lumberjacks and railroaders, and most of them being Swedes, Russians and the like, it would not be described as a rose garden. What with the doubletracking of the C.P.R., the lumber and tie camps and the rock-cuts on the G.T.P. twenty-five miles north, there was a constant stream of men coming and going, and trade in the hotel was brisk. We four—out of a tie-camp for Christmas —were the only English-speaking patrons of the bar, and, following the precepts of the woods, we promptly proceeded to “liquor up.” After dinner, Billy Welch, an American, getting tired of just drinking, started two of the foreigners matching coins for drinks, and soon had them all doing it.

Rowley Green, a big Yorkshireman, and I, watched the fun with languid interest, between drinks. The fourth member of our party was an Irishman, named Pat Maguire, and true to his salt, had to go stirring up trouble. Mixing with the crowd, he eventually tapped a dish-faced Swede on the arm.

“The son uv a gun’s chaytin’ ye, bhoy,” he declared, jerking a thumb at a huge, black-bearded Russian who was “matching” with the Swede. (He wasn’t, but that didn’t matter to Pat). Oley promptly hit the Russian on the nose and grabbed a handful of the other’s face-fungus. Ivan retaliated with a bear-like hug and tried to swing Oley off his feet.

Meanwhile, Bill and Pat had started several more fights, and by the time they had wound their way through the crowd, to where Rowley and I were standing at the end of the bar, a general melee was taking place. Although Ignace is a divisional point on the main line of the C.P.R., it is only a tiny hamlet, and there are no police nearer than Fort William or Kenora, a hundred and fifty miles away in either direction. In those days—that was the winter of 1906-07, and Christmas Eve—Western Canada was not quite as law-abiding as it is now, although there was little real crime. In complete defiance of the law, everyone carried a weapon of some sort, either on his belt or in his hip-pocket. Needless to say, we four all had guns. I could see things, were likely to become serious, so immediately made plans for our safety.

“Look here, Rowley,” I shouted above the uproar, “at the first shot, you take the light at this end. Pat’ll take the middle one, and I’ll get the one at the far end. Bill can look after the lamp behind the bar.” All agreed, and we surreptitiously drew our guns. Presently, at the far end of the room, where a bunch of Russians were mounting as many Swedes and other Bohunks, a knife flashed, and a shot sounded almost at once.

“Let her go, boys!” I yelled, and took a quick snap at the far lamp. Three shots rang out as one, almost in my ears, nearly deafening me, and, instantly the room was plunged into Stygian darkness. A door slammed behind the bar as the bar-tender fled for his life.

Deeming discretion to be the better part of valour, I ducked under the bar-flap, which, fortunately happened to be at my end, taking with me a nearly full bottle of rye. Between drinks, I smote lustily at any figure that attempted to invade my lair, with either bottle or gun —the latter for preference. Where the other three were I didn’t know —it was a case of every man for himself.

The noise was deafening, and th room reeked with the smell of spirit liquor and powder smoke. Shouts of anger in half-a-dozen different languages, yells of pain, the stamp and scuffle of heavy feet, a thud as somebody hit wall or floor, mingled with the crack of revolvers and the tinkle of broken glass !

Although it seemed like an hour to me, scarcely ten minutes could have elapsed before I caught a gleam of light appearing behind the bar. The narrow door was flung back, and framed in its opening, stood the hotelkeeper, a .45 Colt in each fist. Behind him, on a step higher, the bartender gave autumn-leaf imitations with a couple of candles.

That was our cue !

It took but a moment for us four to emerge from our hiding-places and get busy, separating the madly-fighting foreigners.

“I’m much obliged to your guys,” the hotelkeeper said to us, when peace was restored, and the last battered combatant had been thrown out into the snow. “I guess we’ll liquor up —but not here; there don’t seem to be any left!”

He was right; there wasn’t!

The bar-tender fetched some more lamps, and by their light, we surveyed the damage. There were bullet-holes everywhere! The long bar was grooved and splintered as if struck by shrapnel; every mirror was starred or cracked. Blood, glass, and plaster from the walls and ceiling was everywhere, and, in a corner, amid broken bottles, pools of

blood and spilt liquor, lay the still body of the black-bearded Russian.

“Where’s he hit?” inquired the hotelkeeper, and I turned him over, exposing a round blue hole in the middle of his forehead.

“Hmph! He’ll be easy, then,” was the nonchalant but enigmatical comment, and he led the way upstairs. After supper, at his request, we picked up the dead Russian and carried him out by the back way. Plodding with our burden through the deep snow, the hotelkeeper led us to a clump of pine, close to the railroad tracks, a good halfmile away, where the line took a sharp curve. “We always put ’em here, if we can he said, after directing us to lay the body between the rail, with the head on the steel. He explained that the train would come round the curve too quickly for the engineer to pull up in time, and when he did stop, all evidence as to how the man actually died, would be destroyed. “It saves trouble, you see —and there’s lots more Bohunks where he came from,” he concluded with a careless shrug. “The verdict’ll be another drunk got caught by the train.”

And so it was !