Policing the Plains Part 11

But the end was not yet. John Cashel, a brother from Wyoming, had come up and was given permission to see Ernest in the cell. As he entered the chaplain was leaving and the guard being relieved. Taking advantage of the situation, John Cashel slipped his brother two loaded revolvers with which that evening Ernest held up the unarmed Constables and made his escape. It was a dark night, with heavy snow falling, and this clever and daring criminal well armed got clear away. Then the alarm was sent out, detachments were notified and Commissioner Perry, accompanied by Inspector Knight, went up to Calgary to take personal direction of the search. Evidently, as happens in such cases this outlaw had friends, who, supplied him with information, telling him what was being done and to add to the confusion, people all over the country became nervously excited and began "seeing things," so that several supposed Cashels were reported from a dozen directions. A drunken half-breed in Calgary caused excitement by telling that he had Cashel tied up in his camp, but the cool-headed Sanders saw through his yarn and locked up the half-breed for being drunk and disorderly. Superintendents Primrose and Begin, on the Commissioner's orders, sent patrols out through the ranches. Here they came across ranchers who had been held up for food and money by a man whose description tallied with that of Cashel. As the Police could not cover the whole country, some civilian volunteers were called for and these were placed along with police detachments. Finally Sanders mapped out the country, got detachments together to the number of five under Major Barwis, Inspector Knight, Inspector Duffus, Sergeant-Major Belcher and himself, and the order was to search every building, cellar, root house and haystack with instructions that if they found Cashel they were, if human life was to be saved thereby, to set fire to the building or stack where he was and smoke him out. The detachment under Inspector Duffus, consisting of Constables Rogers, Peters, Biggs, Stark and McConnell, while searching Pittman's ranch 6 miles from Calgary, came across Cashel in the cellar. He was found by Constable Biggs, who was fired at by Cashel out of the dark hole. Biggs returned the fire and backed up the steps to tell the rest. Constable Rogers then ordered the men to surround the house and sent word to Inspector Duffus, who came and called on Cashel to surrender. But he would not answer and the building, a mere shack, was set on fire. When the smoke started, Cashel agreed to come out and was arrested. This was the close of an arduous hunt, a great many of the Police having been almost continuously in the saddle day and night in cold weather for weeks. They were determined that no one should boast of eluding the Police by making a clear "get away."

This time there was no escape, and the daring murderer was hanged in Calgary, first confessing his crime to the Rev. Dr. Kirby, his spiritual adviser. Once more the unbreakable net of the famous riders of the plains had been thrown out to show that the whole country became a prison for anyone who offended against its laws.

It was perhaps the recurrence of cases of this kind where the Police were proving the enormous value of the Force to the country that caused Superintendent Primrose in 1903 to make a plea for some increased recognition of his men. In his report he says, "In nearly every walk of life in the past twenty years wages have gone on increasing, but, I regret to state, the same scale of wages still obtains in the Police Force. For instance, I am at present employing a constable on detective work whose pay is seventy-five cents a day for which we have to pay a Pinkerton man eight dollars a day." And it is no disparagement to the Pinkertons to say that the Police could give them some "pointers" when it came to work on the frontiers.

The question of pay for their men was a constant anxiety for the officers, who were themselves receiving a mere pittance in comparison with the salaries paid to men of equal education and experience in other departments of the civil service. So we find, in 1904, that fine officer, Superintendent Wood, in the Yukon making reference to the fact that though an increase of pay had been granted to others the pay of the Police had remained practically the same since their organization. Wood feels that it is humiliating for the men. "A constable's life," he writes, "is not altogether an enviable one. He is liable to be exposed to the inclemencies of the weather at all seasons of the year, and is at times called upon to risk his life in the performance of his duty. He is under much closer and severer restraint than private individuals." This is putting it all very mildly, as was the manner of the Police when they were speaking of themselves. Then Wood goes on to say, "It is of importance that a member of the Force should be made to feel that his position is an honourable one, and that he is ent.i.tled by virtue of his office or calling to the respect of the community at large. This state of things could be arrived at if he felt that his position was equal to those in other walks of life, and that his services were rated equally as high. But the mere fact of his receiving 50 cents to 75 cents a day with his food and clothes while carpenters, blacksmiths and labourers on the outside receive five times as much and in the Yukon ten times as much, is enough to instill a feeling of inferiority so far as his calling is concerned." This is an important view. And Wood in the same report emphasizes his argument, though he does not refer to it in that connection, that the Police are expected to do work as mail-carriers, postmasters and such like, outside proper police duty, because the country could not get civilians to do it at the remuneration offered.

The whole thing troubles Wood, who was of a sensitive temperament and very anxious to retain high-cla.s.s men in the Force. And so he refers to it again in the following year and says that a constable who was a skilled mechanic and was saving the country great expense by looking after the manufacture of stove pipes, tinware, etc., had been offered as much an hour by town merchants as he was getting in a day in the corps on the scale allowed by the Police Act. And Wood, who feels keenly for the men, says, "Our poor circ.u.mstances are so generally known that it has become usual to send members of the Force complimentary tickets for entertainments and reduce the fees in clubs and societies for them."

Probably what was in the minds of those who sent tickets and reduced fees was that it was an honour to have with them the men in scarlet and gold who made human life and property safe on the frontier and whose standards of manners and education made them most desirable company. But the comparative poverty was there amidst abounding chances to be rich in the gold country and elsewhere in a new land. Men who served through the dangerous formative periods of Western history died poor in worldly goods. It is a fine thing to know that all through the years these men out of the sheer love of adventure and their high ideals of devotion to duty did such service, but the facts should not be lost sight of when the pensions of the "old guard" survivors are being considered from time to time.

The quality of the non-commissioned officers and men is often brought out in their detachment reports. These reports reveal not only men of ability and insight, but throw light on the kind of people these Police in the north had to guide. Sergeant Frank Thorne, for instance, was in charge at a place called Tantalus. The man who gave that name to the elusive mining prospects of the region had a sense of humour and the fitness of things. Thorne says, "Hundreds of people landed at Tantalus en route to the new White Horse diggings. Most of these people had been misinformed as to the best place to start from. I informed some of them, but found that a person with gold fever is very unreasonable and stubborn. Those that returned this way wore a very dilapidated and sorry appearance." But the Police, I suppose, helped them out of their troubles, for these red-coated giants did not lose their humanitarian disposition even amidst the follies of the foolish. And the Police knew well the strain under which these deluded and disappointed people often found themselves, for Wood tells us of the Police at Dawson and White Horse having as many as forty lunatics committed to their care in a single year. This involved heavy and anxious work, and the Superintendent shows the spirit in which it was done when he laments the lack of suitable accommodation and fears lest some of these unfortunates may hurt themselves in the unsuitable quarters provided.

Speaking of the humanitarian disposition of the Police, one finds many incidents to show how they resented offences against the helpless, and how relentlessly they brought the perpetrators of such offences to book.

In the same year, 1904, of which we have been writing, Sergeant Field, of Fort Chippewyan, to whose rescue of a lunatic we have already referred, got word that an Indian had, at Black Lake, 250 miles away from the Fort, deserted two little children, two and three years of age and that these two children according to the testimony of other Indians had been devoured by wolves. Part of the clothing had been found and all around the blood-stained ground was trampled by wolves. The Indian was at Fond-du-Lac, but could not be advantageously arrested unless Field could get some evidence from others who were not there. So Field bided his time till all the Indians were at Fond-du-Lac in the summer. Some eight months had gone by, but Field did not forget. Fond-du-Lac was several hundred miles from Fort Chippewyan, but Field got there at the proper moment, arrested the Indian, took the witnesses along and started for Edmonton, where the Indian was tried and given a term in the penitentiary. It had cost Sergeant Field a strenuous trip by trail, river and train of nearly eighteen hundred miles, but he had by his action told the Indians of the whole region to deal properly with their children and their old people.

A very remarkable case in 1904 was that in which after an extraordinary display of mastery over difficulties, the Police under Staff-Sergeant K. F. Anderson (now Inspector) brought one Charles King to justice for the murder of his partner Edward Hayward, near Lesser Slave Lake in Northern Alberta. The case was not only a portrayal of the persistent methods of the Police, but it threw a fine sidelight on the way in which the Police had won the friends.h.i.+p of the Indians through guarding the Indians against exploitation by white men. It moreover gave a good exposition of the Indians' unique powers of observation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORONATION CONTINGENT. LONDON. 1911.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORONATION CONTINGENT. LONDON. 1911.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIANS RECEIVING TREATY PAYMENT ON PRAIRIE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORT FITZGERALD, ATHABASCA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ICE-BOUND GOVERNMENT SCHOONER.]

In October, Moos Toos, the headman of the Indian Reserve at Sucker Creek, came to Sergeant Anderson and told him that white men were cutting rails on his Reserve. Anderson immediately went over with the Chief and found men employed by a very prominent firm of contractors cutting rails. The Sergeant stopped them at once and made them pay the Indian for what they had already cut. This, of course, was pleasing to Moos Toos, who, on returning home with Anderson told the Sergeant that some days before, two white men with four pack-horses had come from Edmonton and camped on the Reserve near a slough. They had stayed there some three days or so and then one of them left, but there was no sign of the other. An Indian boy had noticed that the dog that had come with the white men would not follow the one that left. This was observation number one. Then some Indian women, as their custom is, went over to the place where the men had camped to see if anything was left that might be of service. One Indian woman noticed that the camp fire-place was much larger than required for ordinary use. Another Indian woman stood at the edge of the fire-place and looking up noticed, on the underside of the leaves of a poplar tree, globules of fat where the thick smoke had struck the cool leaves and the evaporating fat had condensed. She said, "He was burning flesh in this fire." These two things, added to the fact that a shot had been heard by other Indians in the direction of the white men's camp, made them suspicious. They told Moos Toos, their headman, and he, in recognition of the goodness of the Police to him, told Anderson about it, and added that he thought something was wrong.

Anderson thought so too, and with Constable Lowe went down to the place.

They raked in the ashes and found fragments of bone and other substances which they carefully sealed up and kept for a.n.a.lysis. Moos Toos, who was on hand with some of his Indians to help, found a large needle with the eye broken, then by going barefooted into the slough where the water was four feet deep, discovered a camp-kettle which some of the Indians had seen with the white men. Later on Moos Toos and Lowe found in the slough a pair of boots in one of which was stuffed a rag with various articles, including the other part of the broken needle. In the meantime, Anderson had got into touch with the surviving white man at the home of a trader some distance away and asked for his story. This man, who gave his name as King, said that his companion was a man he had overtaken on the trail over the Swan Hills. His name, he said, was Lyman, and he had been on the way on foot. King said Lyman had left the camp on foot for Sturgeon Lake and that he supposed he was on the way there. Anderson sent out in that direction, but there was no trace of such a man at any point, and a Hudson's Bay employee who had just come from Sturgeon Lake met no one on foot and there was no trace on the trail of anyone so travelling.

Anderson and Lowe then arrested King on suspicion and held him while they pursued further investigations. Anderson was convinced that the bed of that slough, if uncovered, could unfold a tale. And so he hired the Indians to divert it by digging a ditch that would drain it into Sucker Creek a half-mile away. It was quite an undertaking, but the Indians, who have lots of time on their hands in the summer and fall, offered to do the work for a hundred dollars. The work was well done and Anderson's expectations were not disappointed. He found amongst some minor articles a sovereign-case which was fairly conclusive evidence that the man who had vanished from the earth was probably an Englishman. The sovereign-case was traced back to the manufacturer in England and to the man who had sold that number to a certain Mr. Hayward, a man up in years, then deceased. The clue was followed up and a son of Mr. Hayward was found who recalled that his father had presented a sovereign-case to another son when that son left for Canada. The son who had gone to Canada was known to be in the Edmonton and Northern country, but the people at home had not heard from him for some time. Regardless of expense and without delay, the Police brought Hayward all the way from England to Edmonton for the trial. He identified the sovereign-case as the one given by his father to the missing man Edward Hayward. A specialist in a.n.a.lysing had been brought from Eastern Canada who p.r.o.nounced the blood, brains and bones found in the ashes of the camp fire to be human elements. There were some twenty witnesses in the case, those outside the Police being Messrs. J. K. Cornwall, George Moran and the rest half-breeds and Indians. Once more the police had the chain of circ.u.mstantial evidence welded solidly link by link. King was declared guilty, but on a legal technicality a new trial was ordered. By this time the witnesses were all back home. But they were brought back, including the brother of the missing man from England. The verdict again was guilty and King paid on the scaffold the penalty for his mean and cold-blooded murder of a travelling companion. A very curious thing in this trial was the sworn statement of Hayward, the witness from England, that his sister had told him there, the morning after the shot was heard by the Indians near the Lesser Slave Lake, that she had dreamed that their brother Edward had died by violence in Canada. This was not offered or accepted as evidence, but was mentioned incidentally as at least an extraordinary coincidence.

The Mounted Police were evidently determined not to allow crime to make any headway because if the impression ever got abroad that men could play fast and loose with law and go unrebuked, there would be no end to it. So we find Superintendent Sanders saying again that the Force should have more men to cope with the demands of the immigration movement. "It is only natural," he says, "to expect that a percentage of criminals should accompany a large migration into a new country. A malefactor who finds it necessary to lose his ident.i.ty for a while cannot choose a more convenient location than a country just filling with new settlers and where one stranger more or less is not likely to be noticed." This is sound reasoning, and Sanders is looking into the future when he is asking for men enough to deal with the new order of things so as to prevent trouble in the future. "Once," says he, "get the new-comers within our gates imbued with the proper respect for British law and British justice, and prevent the criminal element getting a foothold, and a work will be accomplished of inestimable value hereafter."

And up in the Yukon, a.s.sistant-Commissioner Wood, out of wide experience, says, "It is a well-known saying that prevention is better than cure, and any innovation in our system tending to the prevention of crime in Canada, and more particularly in the North-West and the Yukon Territories, is to be welcomed." And then Wood goes on to advocate the adoption of certain methods for the detection of criminals which for that period showed that these men were keeping a little more than abreast of their times though they were on duty in the wilderness places of the earth. He advises the establishment of a Criminal Identification Bureau at Ottawa with branches in all the cities and at the headquarters of each division of the Mounted Police Force. He goes on to define methods by photographs of every one arrested, measurements under the Bertillon system and the use of the finger-print method, which he quite properly declares, as we now know, to be the most infallible means of identification. That Wood had made a special study of the subject is evidenced by the fact that he backs his argument by appeal to history.

He says the finger-print system had been in use in Korea for 1,200 years as a means of identifying slaves and was adopted in India in 1897 as a way of preventing impersonation amongst the natives. The Scotland Yard authorities accepted the system in 1898, which was the year of the Yukon Gold Rush, and it is very interesting to find the Officer-Commanding on that frontier being so forehanded as to be amongst the first in Canada to advocate the use of methods now generally adopted. These men of the Mounted Police were wide awake and were determined, we repeat, to prevent the criminal cla.s.s from getting a foothold in this country.

It is interesting to find in the same period that the Police never seemed to forget. As related above, Fournier and LaBelle had been executed in January, 1903, for the murder of Beaudien and Bouthilette. A third man of the same party had vanished at the same time, but no body had been found. Two years afterwards a body was found in the river, taken to Dawson, the clothes removed and washed by Sergeant Smith and the body identified by these clothes and a paper dried out, as the body of the third man, Alphonse Constantin. Thus was the fact of his death established in the interests of relatives and estate--a matter of vital importance for the satisfaction of all concerned. And thus did the curtain fall on the final act in a dark tragedy of the North.

But all these incidents were making for the future peace of the country.

It was the establishment of the "Pax Britannica," as Commissioner Perry said with justifiable pride in the record the Police had made throughout the years. He quotes the words of a famous Indian Chief to which we have already called attention in the chapter on Indian treaties when that Chief, referring to the Police, said, "Before you came the Indian crept along. Now he is not afraid to walk erect." "For thirty-one years," said Perry in 1905, "neither white man nor Indian has been afraid to walk erect, whether in the great plains, the far North or the distant Yukon."

And even at the time he was writing those words Corporal Mapley was on patrol over an unknown route from Dawson to the Peel River, Inspector Genereux of Prince Albert was away on a 1,750-mile trip North, of 132 days by canoe and dog-train to investigate a case of alleged murder, Sergeant Fitzgerald was on patrol to the mouth of the Mackenzie River and Inspector Moodie was establis.h.i.+ng new posts around the Hudson Bay--all having a rea.s.suring and stabilizing effect on the vast uncivilized North land.

And again turning to another side of their work there were many cases that were charged full of a Victoria Cross type of valour which went unnoticed except as things done in the ordinary course of duty unless some tragic element intervened to call special attention to it.

Constable Pedley, of Fort Chippewyan, for instance, a noted trailmaker, had made many a trip (as others did) fraught with tremendous hards.h.i.+p.

But it was not till one day when he broke for a while under the tremendous strain that his extraordinary efforts got into the light of public notice. Here is part of his modest report when he was detailed to escort a lunatic from Fort Chippewyan to Fort Saskatchewan: "I left Chippewyan in charge of the lunatic on December 17, 1904, with the interpreter and two dog-trains. After travelling for five days through slush and water up to our knees, we arrived at Fort McKay on December 22. Owing to the extreme cold, the prisoner's feet were frost-bitten. I did all I could to relieve him, and purchased some large moccasins to allow more wrappings for his feet. I travelled without accident until the 27th, reaching Weechume Lake. Here I had to lay off a day to procure a guide as there was no trail." This is put with great suppression of anything like telling what a difficult time he was having, but again we read between the lines. The trip is "without accident" but there was "extreme cold." Pedley was nurse and doctor as well as guard over the unfortunate madman who raved as they travelled along almost impossible roads. Then Pedley goes on: "I arrived at Lake La b.i.+.c.he on the 31st, and secured a team of horses to carry me to Fort Saskatchewan. I arrived on January 7, 1905, and handed over my prisoner." Pedley had spent his Christmas and New Year not in a happy social circle, but in the company of the unhappy victim of insanity. And he ends his report by saying, "During the earlier part of the trip the prisoner was very weak and refused to eat, but during the latter part of the trip he developed a good appet.i.te and got stronger." Pedley's care was improving the madman's condition, but it was taking it out of himself. The unfortunate was transferred to Calgary guardroom, and that Pedley's nursing had worked a change is evident because a.s.sistant-Surgeon Rouleau reports that it was "a remarkable case." He was taken to hospital and discharged in February. Says Rouleau, "His mind and speech were as good as ever.

His life was saved." But the sequel is told in Commissioner Perry's report, "Constable Pedley began his return trip to Fort Chippewyan. When he left Fort Saskatchewan he was apparently in good health, but at Lake La b.i.+.c.he he went violently insane as a result of the hards.h.i.+ps of his trip and _his anxiety_ for the safety of his charge. He was brought back to Fort Saskatchewan and then transferred to Brandon Asylum." But we rejoice that this is not the end. Perry goes on, "I am glad to say that after spending six months there he recovered his mind and returned to headquarters. He was granted three months' leave and is now at duty as well as ever." And that this gallant man who was not conquered by cold and danger was not going to be conquered by the recollection of the breaking of a cord that had been subjected to too great a tension is attested by Perry's closing reference: "In spite of all, he has recently engaged for a further term of service." Comment on this is unnecessary.

It is like a flash which dispels the night in a prairie thunderstorm.

CHAPTER XIV

ON LAND AND SEA

Reference has been made several times to the studied and determined reticence of Mounted Policemen concerning their own achievements. That characteristic is stamped on all their reports and probably accounts for the fact that no member of the corps would ever attempt writing a full record of its work as a nation-builder. And any outsider who knows the country's history, the manner of life on the frontier and who has also been in contact with these scarlet-coated riders, not only finds it necessary to read between the lines for the facts but will enjoy the ingenious efforts of these men to avoid anything savouring of egoism.

Without being so intended some of these reports are positively humorous on account of this determination to keep "display" in the background.

Here is a gem of that type. It is a report written by Corporal C. Hogg, who was stationed at North Portal on the Soo Line near the international boundary. Such localities are often a sort of "No Man's Land" where would-be desperadoes think they can set law to defiance. Corporal Hogg's report of an evening's proceeding in that region, with a foot-note by his superior officer who had received it, makes interesting reading. We quote them in regular order as follows:

"On the 17th instant I, Corporal Hogg, was called to the hotel to quiet a disturbance." Hogg put the state of disorder mildly. He proceeds: "I found the room full of cowboys and one, Monaghan or 'Cowboy Jack,' was carrying a gun and pointed it at me, against sections 105 and 109 of the Criminal Code." It was taking long chances, but the Mounted Police generally waited for the other man to start things. In this case they were started right there and then. For the Corporal goes on to say, "We struggled." This is terse, but it involved much more than was said, as will later appear. "Finally," proceeds the Corporal, "I got him handcuffed behind and put him inside. His head being in bad shape I had to engage the services of a doctor who dressed his wound and p.r.o.nounced it as nothing serious. To the doctor Monaghan said that if I hadn't grabbed his gun there would have been another death in Canadian history. All of which I have the honour to report.

"(S.) C. HOGG, Corporal."

The Officer who received this report puts on the finis.h.i.+ng touch by a memorandum upon it to this effect: "During the arrest of Monaghan the following property was damaged: Door broken, screen smashed up, chair broken, field jacket belonging to Corporal Hogg damaged, wall bespattered." It looks as if Monaghan's ancestors may have hailed from Donnybrook, and it must be admitted that he lived up to the traditions of Fair day in that region. But he had never met a North-West Mounted Policeman before and would probably be wiser in the future in regard to raising a "disturbance" when one of them was at hand.

Another evening a "bad man" from Idaho "blew in" to Weyburn. He was a sort of travelling a.r.s.enal and got very bold when he got into an unarmed Canadian town. He began shooting holes in verandahs, and if any one went to look out of a window the Idaho desperado threatened to "make him into a sieve." A prominent citizen was made to hold out his hat as a target for this pistol artist. This citizen remonstrated and warned the Idaho man that there was a Mounted Policeman not many miles away who would probably hear of the situation and come over. This enraged the "gun-man," who offered to bet that no Mounted Policeman could arrest him, adding, "if he comes to b.u.t.t in to my game I will eat his liver cold." A telephone message was sent to Corporal Lett. It took some time to ride in, but Lett located the Idaho citizen terrorizing a bar-room.

Lett walked in and the Idaho man had his gun up in a second. No one knew just how it happened, but Lett sprang at the desperado. There was a grapple and a fall, but when they got up Lett had the Idaho "gun" in his hand. The rest was simple. The gun-man had to hold out his hands for the "bracelets." Whether he paid the bet or not no one has recorded, but Lett got an extra stripe for his daring.

This recalls another real incident which my friend, Robert Stead, the well-known writer, has put into verse under the t.i.tle, "A Squad of One,"

though he gives fict.i.tious names. A certain Sergeant Blue of the Mounted Police who was alone at a prairie post got a letter from a United States Marshal asking him to find and arrest two men who had committed murder and escaped to our side of the line. There was always cordial reciprocity between the police officials along the boundary, and so the Marshal warns the Sergeant to send out his strongest squad of men to make the arrest of these fellows, for he said:

"They's as full of sin as a barrel of booze and as quick as a cat, with a gun, So if you happen to hit their trail be sure to start the fun."

The Sergeant was alone, but started out next morning clad as a farm labourer, called at the farm suspected, found the men with shooting-irons, but got them talking and then got them separated and bagged them both at "the nose of a forty-four." And when he got back to his lonely post he wrote and mailed the following note:

"To U.S. Marshal of County Blank, Greetings I give to you: My squad has just brought in your men and the squad was, Sergeant Blue."

Of a different variety but with the same brand of cool courage is an old friend Donald McRae, still speaking with the Gaelic accent and now living in Vancouver, who when I saw him first wore the scarlet and gold in Steele's command. We were in action and McRae was shot rather severely in the advanced skirmish line. The ambulance men were on hand in a few minutes, but McRae refused to leave his position. He said he had half his cartridges left and would not budge till he used them. He stayed there till he used them, and years afterwards our gallant old Commander, General Strange, grizzled soldier of the Mutiny, met McRae on the coast and said jocularly to some in the company, that he had seen lots of service but that this Mounted Policeman was "the stubbornest man he had ever met." General Strange had Scottish ancestors and while quite stern about it at the time of the incident probably rejoiced in secret at McRae's tenacity.

These stories have been thrown in to indicate that all over the country the Police in their determination not to allow lawlessness of any kind to get a hold on the country, were doing remarkable exploits without advertising. But we exhume them from old doc.u.ments to show how these things were done. And so as we resume our story we find Superintendent Wood in 1905 up in Dawson busy with the finger-print system in which he, as before mentioned, was a pioneer believer. Thus when a cabin had been robbed of a gold watch and other valuables, Wood was satisfied, without any other clue to the thief, when he found a finger-print on a lamp-chimney which the man had to light in order to see what he could annex. Then Wood proceeded to hunt for a criminal of the thief cla.s.s, for he says, "It is well known that the criminal cla.s.s at large are segregated into groups according to the line to which their abilities are applied." By following this idea he settled on a group of five who would likely do that sort of thing. Four of them did not answer to the finger-print test, but the fifth showed a facsimile of the print on the lamp-chimney. He was the man. So the Police were making it daily more impossible for criminals to ply their trade even in the remotest points.

In those days in quite another direction and with the purpose of inquiring into the possibilities of the Hudson Bay and Arctic regions, Inspector J. D. Moodie was engaging in his explorations, and his reports, with those of Starnes, Beyts, Pelletier, Howard, French, Sellers, Rowley and others, are being consulted anew in view of the project of railways to the great bays of the North. Some of these famous patrols we shall discuss later.

But speaking of railways it is interesting to find statements from that observant officer, Superintendent Constantine, who despite the fact that his health had been undermined by the hards.h.i.+ps of the Yukon was still on duty in the Peace and Athabasca regions. In 1907 he discusses the development of the Peace River country from an agricultural standpoint.

He covers very carefully the great areas that include the Grande Prairie, Spirit River, Fort Vermilion and the rest and makes careful a.n.a.lysis of their agricultural capabilities. He sees great possibilities, but places forcibly in his report the absolute need of railway communication with the eastern centres before much can be expected. His forecast has proven correct in every particular. These regions now have railway and river transportation and are prospering accordingly. One wonders now why extracts from the reports of these men on the ground were not put before the people in general instead of being allowed to suffer from being buried alive in the departments of Government. All through these official reports from the Mounted Police officers and men, we find statements and suggestions that might have influenced the progress of the country greatly had they been given wider publicity throughout the years.

The Yukon country was undergoing a good many changes. The mad rush of miners into the Mining areas had dwindled away and big companies with new hydraulic processes were crowding out the individual miners and causing them to seek new fields for exploitation. But the vultures and vampires of human society were slow in letting go their victims, and the Mounted Police had to be constantly on the watch to prevent the unwary and the foolish from being caught in their dens. That reliable officer, Inspector Wroughton, who was in command at Dawson City in 1907, says, "Dance-halls and their accompanying evils have been more or less accountable for a good deal of the existing crime. But for these inst.i.tutions the wanton and the sneak-thief and the confidence man and woman would find their opportunities seriously curtailed. During the last session of the Yukon Council, I am glad to state, the ordinance licensing these places was repealed after a hard and bitter struggle.

This does not mean that the evils are entirely eradicated. Our great difficulty is to get evidence. It is, however, more difficult now to carry on evil businesses." The law in the Yukon as elsewhere was fulfilling the function a.s.signed to it in the famous words of Gladstone, "A good law is intended to make it easier for people to do right and harder for them to do wrong."

That great mining frontier, with its money-mad and heterogeneous population (albeit there were many splendid people there), was at the same time the problem and the glory of the men in scarlet and gold. It was their problem because the criminal cla.s.s which always makes a dead set on a frontier was determined from the outset to make the Klondike country a sort of h.e.l.l on earth, and it was their glory because they prevented the thug and the outlaw from getting a foothold where the old flag flew. There also the lawless individual sought to get away to some other clime, for he said there as he said in the mountains, "These blamed Mounted Police won't give a man a chance." That was one of the biggest testimonials ever given to guardians of the law in any country.

It is not at all generally known that a real "red" revolution that aimed at seizing the banks and mines with the hope of dividing the spoil amongst the "revolutionists" was planned in the Yukon a decade or more before the Bolshevistic terror was let loose in Europe. "Soapy Smith"

the unsavoury but reckless gunman of Skagway, had developed a school of imitators. There were probably a couple of thousand or so of these tough characters scattered all through the north country camps, and the idea was to rally them to a centre, overpower the few policemen, establish a sort of "liberty" government, seize the money and anything else that could be carried, divide it up and then scatter to the outside before any reinforcements could come to the aid of the Mounted Police from the East. It was an ambitious programme and the "revolutionists" had gone some distance in their preparations. They had arms stored in certain localities, they had a seal for the temporary government (which seal I have personally seen), they had maps prepared indicating the centres to be attacked as well as a record of the Mounted Police posts with the number of men in each.

But these same Mounted Police were not asleep. They never hunted after publicity for themselves. They never thought of the grandstand. It would have been often more spectacular to have allowed things to come out into the open and then fight them in a dramatic way. But the preventive power was what they preferred to exercise. It brought them less advertis.e.m.e.nt and public notice, but it was best for the country and that was the main thing with the scarlet and gold men.

So Superintendent A. E. Snyder, who was in command at White Horse, where the princ.i.p.al leaders of the plot had, unfortunately for themselves, located, discovered the half-hatched conspiracy. A knock-about kind of fellow who had a wholesome fear of the police gave Snyder a hint about some meetings in a stable loft. Snyder got his men to search the stables and they discovered some incriminating literature as well as the White Horse seal of the "republic," which latter Snyder still has in his possession. Then he wired to Superintendent Primrose at Dawson and to Comptroller Fred Whyte in Ottawa, at the same time dispatching Inspector Horrigan to Skagway to put the matter before the American officials.