MY DEAR DONCOURT:

You ask me to tell you some of the circumstances underlying the Imbrie murder case of which you have read the account in the annual report of the R.N.W.M.P. just published. You are right in supposing that a strange and moving tale is hidden behind the cold and formal phraseology of the report.

The first Imbrie was the Reverend Ernest, who went as a missionary to the Sikannis Indians away back in ’79. Up to that time these Indians were absolutely uncivilized, and bore a reputation for savage cruelty. I suppose that was what stimulated the good man’s zeal. He left a saintly tradition behind him. The Sikannis live away up the corner of British Columbia, on the head-waters of the Stanley River, one of the main branches of the Spirit River. The Spirit River, as you may know, rises west of the Rocky Mountains and breaks through. There is not a more remote spot this side the Arctic Circle, nor one more difficult of access.

The missionary brought with him his son, John Imbrie, a boy just approaching manhood. Very likely the danger of bringing up a boy absolutely cut off from the women of his race never occurred to the father. The inevitable happened. The boy fell in love with a handsome half-breed girl, the daughter of a wandering prospector and a Sikanni squaw, and married her out of hand. The heartbroken father was himself compelled to perform the ceremony. This was in 1886.

The Imbries were so far cut off from their kind that in time they were forgotten. The missionary supported himself by farming in a small way and trading his surplus products with the Indians. John turned out to be a good farmer and they prospered. Their farm was the last outpost of agriculture in that direction. From the time he went in with his father John did not see the outside world again until 1889, when he took his wife and babies out, with a vain hope, I think, of trying to educate the woman. Most of these marriages have tragic results, and this was no exception. During all the years in her husband’s house this woman resisted every civilizing influence, except that she learned to deck herself out like a white woman.

She bore her husband twin sons, who were christened Ernest and William. They bore a strong resemblance to each other, but as they began to develop it appeared, as is so often the case in these mixed families, that Ernest had a white man’s nature, and William a red man’s. When the time came they were sent out to Winnipeg to school, but William, true to the savage nature, sickened in civilised surroundings, and had to be sent home. On the other hand, Ernest proved to be a sufficiently apt scholar, and went on through school and college. During the whole period between his thirteenth and his twenty-fourth year he was only home two or three times. William remained at home and grew up in ignorance. John Imbrie, the father, I gather, was a worthy man, but somewhat weak in his family relations.

Ernest went on to a medical college with the idea of practising among the Sikannis, who had no doctor. During his second year his father died, long before he could reach him, of course. He remained outside until he got his diploma. Meanwhile his mother and brother quickly relapsed into a state of savagery. They “pitched around” with the Indians, and the farm which had been so painstakingly hewn out of the wilderness by the two preceding generations grew up in weeds.

Ernest had a painful homecoming, I expect. However, he patiently set to work to restore his father’s work. He managed to persuade his mother and brother to return and live in white man’s fashion, but they made his life a hell for him, according to all accounts. They were insanely jealous of his superior attainments. Neither did the Sikannis welcome Doctor Ernest’s ministrations. Since the death of the missionary they had been gradually slipping back into their ignorant ways, and now they instinctively took the part of the mother against the educated son. One can imagine what a dreary life the young medico lived among these savages. He has been described to me as a charming fellow, modest, kindly and plucky. And, by the way, I have not mentioned that these young fellows were uncommonly good-looking. William, or, as the Indians say, Hooliam, was one of the handsomest natives I ever saw.

Meanwhile that remote country was being talked about outside on account of the gold deposits along the upper reaches of the Stanley largely mythically I believe. However that may be, prospectors began to straggle in, and in the summer of the year following Ernest’s return from college, the government sent in a surveyor, one Frank Starling, to survey the claims, and adjust disputes. Starling brought with him his daughter Clare, a young lady of adventurous disposition.

Both the Imbrie boys fell in love with her according to their natures, thus further complicating the situation. Hooliam, the ignorant savage, could not aspire to her hand, of course, but the young doctor courted her, and she looked kindly on him. I do not consider that she was ever in love with him, though apart from the dark strain he was worthy of it as men go, a manly fellow! but it was the hardness of his lot that touched her heart. Like many a good woman before her, she was carried away by compassion for the dogged youth struggling against such hopeless odds.

The father completed his work and took her out, and Ernest Imbrie followed them. They were married in the early spring at Fort Edward on the Campbell River, where the Starlings wintered. Ernest carried his bride back by canoe, hundreds of miles through the wilderness.

Their happiness, if indeed they were ever happy, was of brief duration. Whichever way you look at it, the situation was impossible. Ernest’s mother, the breed woman, acted like a fiend incarnate, I have been told, and I can quite believe it, having witnessed some of her subsequent performances. Then there was the brother-in-law always hanging around the house, nursing his evil passion for his brother’s wife. And in the background the ignorant, unfriendly Indians.

The catastrophe was precipitated by a gross insult offered to the girl by her husband’s brother. He broke into her room one night impudently assuming to masquerade as her husband. Her husband saved her from him, but in the shock to her nerves she experienced a revulsion against the lot of them and small wonder!

Her husband of his own free will took her back to her father. That’s one of the finest things in the story, for there’s no question but that he loved her desperately. The loss of her broke his spirit, which had endured so much. He never went back home. He felt, poor fellow, as if he were cast out alike by reds and whites, and his instinct was to find a place where he could bury himself far from all humankind.

He was next heard of at Miwasa landing a thousand miles away, across the mountains. Here he got employment with a york boat crew and travelled with them down-stream some hundreds of miles north to Great Buffalo Lake. Here he obtained a canoe from the Indians, and, with a small store of grub, set off on his own. He made his way up the Swan River, an unexplored stream emptying into Great Buffalo Lake, as far as the Great Falls, and there he built himself a shack.

He could hardly have found a spot better suited to his purpose. No white man so far as known had ever visited those falls, and even the Indians avoid the neighbourhood for superstitious reasons. But even here he could not quite cut himself off from his kind. An epidemic of measles broke out among the Kakisa Indians up the river from him, and out of pure humanity he went among them and cured them. These Indians were grateful, strange to say; they almost deified the white man who had appeared so strangely in their country.

Meanwhile the wrong she had done him began to prey on his wife’s mind. She could not rest under the thought that she had wrecked his usefulness. Ernest Imbrie had, with the idea of keeping his mind from rusting out in solitude, ordered certain papers and books sent to him at Fort Enterprise. His wife learned of this address through his medical college, and in the spring of the year following her marriage, that is to say the spring of the year just past, she set off in search of him without saying anything to anybody of her intention.

She and her father were still at Fort Edward have I said that the girl had no mother? and Hooliam Imbrie had been there, too, during the winter, not daring to approach the girl precisely, but just hanging around the neighbourhood. One can’t help feeling for the poor wretch, bad as he was, he was hard-hit, too. He bribed a native servant to show him the letter giving his brother’s address, and when the girl set off, he instantly guessed her errand, and determined to prevent their meeting.

Now it is only a short distance from Fort Edward over the height of land to the source of the main southerly branch of the Spirit, and Hooliam was therefore able to proceed direct to Fort Enterprise by canoe (a journey of more than a thousand miles), pausing only to go up the Stanley to pick up his mother, who was ripe for such an adventure. At Carcajou Point, when they had almost reached Enterprise, they heard the legend of the White Medicine Man off on the unknown Swan River, and they decided to avoid Enterprise and hit straight across the prairie.

Meanwhile the girl was obliged to make a long detour south to the railway, then across the mountains and north again by all sorts of conveyances, with many delays. So Hooliam and his mother arrived a few weeks before her, but they in turn were delayed at Swan Lake by the woman’s illness.

You have read a transcript of the statements of this precious pair at the hearing before me. Read it again, and observe the ingenious web of truth and falsehood. For instance, it was true the woman fell sick at Swan Lake, and Hooliam after waiting awhile for her, finally went down the river without her only a few days in advance of Sergeant Stonor and Ernest Imbrie’s wife. As soon as Hooliam reached Swan Lake he began to meet Indians who had seen his brother, and thereafter he was always hailed among them as the White Medicine Man. The Indians never troubled to explain to themselves how he had got to Swan Lake, because they ascribed magical powers to him anyway.

What happened between the brothers when they met will never be known for certain. Hooliam swears that he did not intend to kill Ernest, but that the deed was done in self-defence during a quarrel. However that may be, Ernest was shot through the heart with a bullet from Hooliam’s gun, and his body cast in the river.

You have read the rest of the story; how Stonor arrived with Ernest’s wife, and how, at the shock of beholding her husband’s body, the poor girl lost her memory. How Hooliam sought to escape up-stream, and Stonor’s confusion when he was told by an Indian that the White Medicine Man was still alive. How Hooliam kidnapped the girl from Stonor, and tried to win back to the mountains and his own country by way of the unexplored river.

We established the fact that Hooliam did not tell his mother what had happened at the Great Falls. She thought that Hooliam had found Ernest gone still further north. You can see at the hearing how when Stonor first told of the murder, in her horror at the discovery that one brother had killed the other the truth finally came out. Though she had always taken Hooliam’s part she could not altogether deny her feeling for the other son.

Well, that’s about all. I consider that they got off easily; Hooliam with twenty years, and the woman with half that sentence; but in the man’s case it was impossible to prove that the murder was a deliberate one, and though the woman certainly did her best to put Stonor out of the way, as it happened he escaped.

You ask about the Indian woman, Mary Moosa, who served Stonor and Mrs. Imbrie so faithfully. We overtook her at Swan Lake on the way out. So she did not starve to death on the river, but recovered from her wound.

When we got out as far as Caribou Lake we met Mrs. Imbrie’s distracted father coming in search of her. The meeting between them was very affecting. I am happy to say that the young lady has since recovered her memory entirely, and at the last account was very well.

You are curious to know what kind of fellow Stonor is. I can only answer, an ornament to the service. Simple, manly and dependable as a trooper ought to be. With a splendid strong body and a good wit. Out of such as he the glorious tradition of our force was built. They are becoming more difficult to get, I am sorry to say. I had long had my eye on him, and this affair settled it. I have recommended him for a commission. He is a man of good birth and education. Moreover I saw that if we didn’t commission him we’d lose him; for he wants to get married. As a result of the terrible trials they faced together he and Ernest Imbrie’s widow have conceived a deep affection for each other. Enlisted men are not allowed to marry. They make a fine pair, Doncourt. It makes an old fellow sort of happy and weepy to see them together.

Stonor is now at the Officers’ School at General Headquarters, and if he passes his examinations will be commissioned in the summer.

We’ll talk further about this interesting case when good fortune brings us together again. In the meantime, my dear Doncourt,

Yours faithfully,
FRANK EGERTON.