 CHAPTER VI. 1888–89. LETHBRIDGE. The Commissioner had told me, before I left Regina, that he was trying to find some solution of the water problem at Lethbridge in order to obviate the expense of having a pair of horses and a man do nothing all the year round but fill and haul and empty the water tank, and to that end had made an arrangement with a local contractor to bore an artesian well at a spot within the barracks which he had designated. This spot was between my house and number one stable, and until I got to know the run of the prevailing winds I used with some apprehension to watch the sparks from the gentleman's engine. The contractor had not bored more than three hundred twenty-five feet when, his troubles with his tools and his tubing multiplied every day, he had at length to admit that he was beaten. He had not quite reached the level of the Belly River, and his tools were not good enough to carry him any further. Then of course he wanted to be compensated for his loss of time, labour and wages of his engine-driver, and that opened up a quarrel with Mr. Commissioner Hirschmer, with which I do not propose to worry my readers. In connection with the ineffectual boring of this well an interesting incident occurred some twelve years later. Mr. Charles A. McGrath, dominion topographical surveyor pointed out within a mile to the north and east of Spring Cooley a remarkable feature of the North American continent. This is a gentle swell on the prairie, accurately ascertained by survey to be only eighteen inches above the general surface level. Horses drawing a wagon over it would hardly feel any tightening of the traces, and it measured no more than two hundred ninety-nine feet across. Yet standing on the crest of the swell he said that it was certain that water falling to the northeast would drain eventually into a watershed falling into Hudson's Bay, into the southeast water would drain into the Missouri River, and finally reached the Gulf of Mexico. It was probably ignorance of these facts which accounted for the unsuccessful boring for an artesian well at the Lethbridge barracks. My division in 1888 consisted of a hundred men and about one hundred and ten horses and pack ponies. We had in addition a blood Indian interpreter and a couple of Indian scouts. The Milk River was about fifty-five miles to the south of us running eastward, and on its banks, when I took over the division, I found three camps of about five men each with a non-commissioned officer established. Midway between the barracks and the camp at Milk River Ridge there was another camp in a place called Kips Cooley. It was mainly there because our loaded teams hauling supplies to the Milk River required a half-way house of call. Four horses could not haul a heavy load fifty miles in one day, and Kips Cooley was the only spot where there was water. It was a pestilential spot, and no teamsters stayed there after three o'clock in the morning, for mosquitoes were a veritable pest. A Cooley, I should explain, is equivalent to what in Australia is called a gully, and Kips Cooley, so christened by an old-timer named Kip, who had camp there, was a waterway in the prehistoric times when Milk River was a very much bigger stream than it is today. In 1889 the Kips Cooley water was not fit to drink, and the camp was not sent thither. We found, as it happened, a very excellent spring at a hill which was about fifteen miles from the village, which we called the Fifteen Mile Butt. A Butt is the same thing as a South African Coupier. We boxed this spring and took great care of it, although we put a good substantial cover on it. Careless travellers did not always close it, and one day we found a dead fox in the water. We established a camp there instead of Kips Cooley, and then we found that the place abounded in skunks, so much so that we had to build a little latticework fence around each tent, for if one inmate thereof had inadvertently scared one of these brutes which had inquisitively gone in, he would have created a stent that would have saturated the tent and everything in it for months. These are the gentle creatures that supply ladies with the Alaska Sables, which are so becoming. They are good to wear and desirable in all ways, but one, don't get them wet, for if you do you will find that the scent of the roses will cling to it still. The first of my detachments to obtain winter quarters was that stationed at Milk River Ridge, and good accommodation for about eight men, with a noncommissioned officer and twelve horses, was built by a local contractor in the autumn of 1889. All the other detachments had to come into barracks for the winter. At a small butt, some nine miles to the north of the ridge detachment, a patrol had the good fortune to find another excellent spring, and this settled for us the difficulty of watering our work teams when hauling supplies for the detachments. A couple of mounted men were installed in camp here, and the senior constructed three capital reservoirs, with the help of stones and some lime that he asked for. The first was for drinking water for the men, the second for the horses, and the third for bathing purposes. Each reservoir overflowed into the next, and the conjunction of the whole was as clever a contrivance as ever I saw. This meant that a loaded team from the barracks would spend half a day in travelling to the first stopping place, one long day in covering the thirty-nine miles to the nine mile butt, and from thence an easy half-day into Milk River Ridge. Everything had to be so hauled, rations, forage, coal, coal oil, and equipment of every sort. By the time I had my Milk River outposts built and supplied in 1889 for the coming winter it meant a round trip of two hundred and thirty miles to reach the furthest detachment. We had good horses, good transport, good harnesses, that much is due to Mr. Commissioner Hirschmer, and what was a still greater asset, good teamsters. We had four horse-teens, doing nothing but hauling supplies, and it required a capable man to put in nine or ten months of such work out of a year, driving and caring for four horses, picketing them at night, cooking for himself, etc., etc., delivering his load safely and keeping his horses fit. There was no division in the forest that had such long haulage work as we did. In 1889 I was empowered to spend the sum of eleven hundred dollars in constructing three sets of detachment buildings, two on the Milk River and one on the St. Mary's River. This provided for the roofing and, so far as the money would go, sheeting of the buildings. They themselves were composed of logs from twelve to eighteen inches thick, but these we had first to find inconvenient coulis and then cut and haul. All this work was done by the division, supervised by a sergeant Kenan, who was for the time being detached from elsewhere. The establishment of permanent outposts meant that hay had to be provided for winter use, and there was no one to cut it but ourselves. This necessitated a haying-party with mower, rake, rack, etc., and as the prairie dried up more and more, year by year, from 1888 onwards, it was a very difficult matter to find a sufficient supply. Mr. Hirchmer asked me once how many tons of hay we cut to the acre. I replied, You've got the boot on the wrong foot. You mean how many acres do we travel over to cut a ton of hay? One year the grass was so scanty that at writing on stone detachment, twenty-five miles east of Milk River Ridge, we were reduced to cutting and stacking some reeds which grew in a few small lakes some ten miles distant. From the year 1889 onwards our barracks supply of hay came from the Milk River Ridge and was hauled about forty-five miles before we got it. This was invariably done by local contractors at a price per ton stacked. The first year I went to Lethbridge I called for tenders for three hundred tons of hay. The only offers I received were from twenty-two to twenty-five dollars per ton. This price being exorbitant I purchased the amount at twenty-five dollars per ton at Pinchers Creek, sixty miles west of Lethbridge. The haulage by I. G. Baker and Company brought the price to twenty-two dollars per ton as a consequence no further cornering for hay was attempted at Lethbridge. Before I leave the subject of detachment, including one which I established at the junction of the Little Bow and Belly Rivers about twenty miles northeast of our barracks, I should not omit to mention an historic old place where I quartered a couple of mounted men and which has now passed into oblivion. It was known as Fort Woop Up, a characteristic name, and was the principal stronghold of the whiskey smugglers whom in eighteen seventy-four the mounted police were sent to suppress. With a strong palisade all around it and substantially built of stout logs, it was stood in the early days many an attack by Indians who had become maddened by fire-water. It may interest my readers to know that the price of the Winchester rifle in those days was determined by the length of the weapon. The butt was placed on the ground and became the property of the purchaser when he had piled up on the floor sufficient skins laid out flat to reach the height of the muzzle. In my day the fort had fallen into bad repair. A good deal of the material had been used for firewood and the property had passed into the hands of one Dave Acers, one of the old-time smugglers who made a precarious living by illicit means and by growing a little honest produce. His holding was situated in the river-bottom of the St. Mary's, where the soil was fairly good and moist, and he used to grow the best cabbages in those parts by utilising the numerous empty tin cans to be found in the neighbourhood. He would melt the bottom off these at his leisure in the wintertime, and when he set out his plants he would protect each by pressing a can rounded into the soil to the depths of something less than an inch. This would keep the winds and the cutworms away from his young cabbages, and when they wanted water he used to fill up the cans by hand. This ensured the water sinking down to the roots where it would do most good. I adopted this plan myself until I found that a paper cone round the stem answered the same purpose and did not look quite so unsightly. For a monthly consideration Dave Acers was able to give us accommodation for a couple of men and horses, and they remained with him until the old place caught fire from some unexplained reason, and the men were burnt out of their lodgings. We then bought twenty sound logs of what were left and used them for our buildings on the St. Mary's at a dollar apiece. They were not to bad buy, sixteen to eighteen feet long, and from eighteen to twenty inches through. I had my own cows, generally two in milk, and chickens and the two messes had their cows, so that we had an abundance of milk and cream in the barracks. When the coal company built their narrow gauge railway into the thriving and picturesque town of Great Falls in Montana we were relieved of our long southward hall of supplies, but we still had to continue our annual making of hay for the outposts. In eighteen ninety-six the rainy seasons had begun again and business advanced by leaps and bounds. Travellers from the south wondered at the beautiful green grass on our prairie, and began to think of investing in so promising a country. To all those, not a few, with whom I came in contact, who asked my advice I made the one reply. If you are thinking of taking up a holding do not go far away from water. Stick either to the irrigation ditch or the rivers so far as your means will allow, but do not go blindly out onto the bald-headed prairie and accept to find water, because you must bear in mind the time-honored injunction. Blessed are they who expect nothing, for verily they shall get it. In course of time Lethbridge became incorporated and rejoiced in a mayor and councillors. We continued to police the place as of your from an office in town where one man was stationed, and he had a telephonic communication with the barracks, so that, as generally happened, a Hungarian or slave wedding was on the tapas, and the inevitable drunken row ensued. He could always get assistance at a few minutes' notice from the barracks. What was called the Red Light District used to cause a disturbance now and then, but as a rural one capable man could easily handle that and any other spasmodic trouble. It was in the year, 1891, that Mr. Commissioner Hirschmer communicated with this infant town and demanded that the municipality should pay the rent of fifteen dollars a month for the building occupied by the mounted police, and alternatively threatened to remove the man of his force from the town. It was pointed out to him that people from all parts of the district congregated there, that it was there so far as intoxicants were concerned that all dealings were carried on, and that it was there that the police were able to secure information and ascertain facts in regard to breaches of the law, either actual or contemplated, and that without the facility of an office in town the police would not be able to keep themselves informed of what was going on. The town intimated quite plainly that it was not their business to pay the rent of an office, and I reported that without such a facility I should be unable, efficiently, to police the district. This, of course, gave Hirschmer the chance he was waiting for, and he promptly sent orders for my transfer to Battleford, a point about two hundred miles north of the main line of the Canadian Pacific. The Lethbridge people, however, would not hear of it. They got up a numerously signed petition and sent it to the premier. I dutifully began to pack my goods and chattels, and wrote to my cousin, T. C. Patterson, who was postmaster at Toronto, telling him the circumstances. He wired to the premier. R. D. Transfer, Lethbridge to Battleford, Fox Populi, Supreme Lex. He did more. He took the next day's train to Ottawa, and saw Sir John Abbott, who promised that no change should be made until after the Hirschmer Commission had made its inquiries. So I unpacked my stuff again and sat tight. The name T. C. Patterson is barely known to the present generation, but it was a name to conjure with thirty-five years ago. He was the man who, when the Conservative Party was in its deepest depth, after the Pacific scandal, which hurled Sir John Macdonald's government from power, was entreated by the leading men of the Conservative Party to undertake the editing of the mail. The principal organ of the Party published in Toronto. Patterson was nothing, if not thorough, and with characteristic thoroughness, he devoted his whole energy to the task before him. An old Montreal millionaire, Henry Judah by name, with whom I stayed a few days in 1882, said of him, Thou, man, can write more and write better than any man in Canada, and I have always been opposed to his giving up the paper. I replied that Patterson's point of view was that after he had written the Conservative Party into power, as had been freely remarked to me by all sorts and conditions of men since my arrival in Canada, and had possibly shortened his life by the unstinted labour which he had given to the call of Judah, he was entitled to his rest and to his reward in the haven of the Toronto Post-Mastership. The old gentleman admitted all that, but thought it was a pity notwithstanding. Patterson's connection with me was this, his mother was my father's sister, and when I first went to Canada, which was at his own suggestion, when the Winnipeg boom was in full blast, he said, I will do all I can for you because I shall be so pleasing my dear dead mother. That was the sole bond of connection between us, and he lived up to his end of the bond. This was the only time in my career that I ever invoked his aid, but as he said, you know where to find me. I have often thought that while it was Sir John MacDonald's voice that spoke, it was TC Patterson's brain that conceived. His brother-in-law told me that Lord Duffern often used to ask him to go to Rideau Hall, the vice regal residence in Ottawa, to discuss some naughty problem during the troublesome days. I am confirmed, in my belief, by an appreciation of TC Patterson, published in the news, Toronto, on September 21, 1907, just after he had passed away at the age of seventy-one. The writer says, enter Aliyah. One who looks back over the files of the mail, of thirty or thirty-five years ago, will find editorial writing of unusual power and of great felicity and dignity. We have had no better editorial writing in Canada, and Mr. Patterson had the genius to preserve the unity of the page, no matter by how many hands the work was done. We cannot penetrate the secrets of that time. We know, however, the italics are mine, that it was in the mail office that the movement for protection was organised, and if Mr. Patterson had ever told all he knew possibly some great figures would be diminished in stature, and some considerable adjustments affected. But he did not speak, and the story must wait. Many of the prominent Englishmen of the day were his contemporaries, either at Eaton or Oxford, and, to quote the aforesaid appreciation once more, he was in intimate touch with the Governor's General of Ottawa for a generation. Patterson it was, who, in 1882, at the behest of the Canadian Pacific Syndicate, wrote a pamphlet introducing the railway to the English public, and telling them that the presidency of the road was held by George Stephen, who, having begun his life as a journeyman carpenter, had worked himself up until he had become president of the Bank of Montreal. It was easy for a man like Patterson to get me enrolled as an extra clerk during the parliamentary session of 1883 in the office of the Marquis of Lorne, the Governor General, and thither I went at a dollar and a half a day for some months. In Ottawa, during that time, my late wife and I met a good many of the ministers and other prominent people in the social life of the capital. It was not easy, however, to get speech of Sir John Macdonald. Fred White, now Colonel, C. M. G., retired. Comptroller of the Mounted Police had been Sir John's secretary during the dark days of the party, and was still his chief political agent. I am very much beholden to him for his keen sympathy and assistance, and he said to me one day, I want to introduce you to Sir John. I got a hurry message from him one morning and went to his office. Sir John is, by the doctor's orders, confined to his house at Ernstcliff. You know it. Take this note for Pope, private secretary, and be as quick as you can. As luck would have it, I was the only visitor at the time. Mr. Pope read the note, ushered me into Sir John's study, announced, Captain Dean, and retired, shutting the door behind him. I was not exactly a stranger to Sir John, because my wife and I had been to a dance at Ernstcliff, and Lady Macdonald had very kindly made a point of introducing me to her husband. However I now had the opportunity of having a powwow with the old gentleman, and told him that I was seeking an inspectorship in the Mounted Police, and that my qualifications were so-and-so. His man was very nice and attentive, but he was entirely noncommittal, which was no more than I had expected. It seemed to me that there was something in the old man's mind to which he did not give expression, and I found out a day or two later what the hindrance was from, a note from Fred White, the gist of which was, Why did you leave the service? I had already explained that stagnation of promotion had driven me out of the service, but now I wrote a full explanation. In 1866 I joined the Royal Marines, a non-purchase corps, with the belief that if my life were spared and I was not invalidated or tried by court-martial, I was bound to become a general officer. In 1867 Mr. Childers, the First Lord of the Admiralty, reduced the strength of the corps by abolishing the Woolwich Division, from 3,500 officers and men, and as a result, with no adequate provision for supernumerary officers, for four years and ten months no single promotion took place from the lieutenants to the captain's list. I was a subaltern of fifteen years, and at the date of my promotion to captain I was nearly five years too old for my place in the seniority list. When I was retired from the Royal Marines in 1882 I was thirty-four years of age, and if I had continued to serve in the corps I was due to be compulsorily retired, if I was then still a captain, on attaining the age of forty-two on a pension of two hundred and twenty-five pounds a year. As this was not enough to provide for a family I cut the painter and went to Canada. I may add that from 1876 I was adjutant of the Chatham Division and retired with the rank of captain in 1882. That was as much as it concerned the Canadian Department to know, but I may here tell my readers how it was that I brought about an amelioration of the conditions prevailing in my old corps before I left. In the year 1881 the Lord's commissioners of the Admiralty inspected the Chatham Division of the Royal Marines, and of which corps I was the senior subaltern. I interviewed their Lordships and handed them a memorial which I had drawn up. Lord Northbrook, First Lord, Lord Brassy, and Sir Cooper Key, First Sea Lord, were the principal personages, and very attentive they were. I expatiated on the points which I have previously summarized herein, and Lord Northbrook at length said, I think Mr. Dean, we shall all be agreed that you have a grievance. Have you any remedy to suggest? I have, your Lordships. I replied, and it is this. Give us the same opportunities of retirement while we are young that are open to the two big seniority corps of the army. The Royal Artillery and Engineers. Legislation to this effect was passed into law, and I was one of the first officers to take advantage of it and retire with one thousand six hundred pounds to the good. Having followed the drum for so long I hated to leave it, but what could I do? Warm and well-meaning friends tried to dissuade me for my purpose, but to each one I replied, this bed is for me and mine, shall I not have the making of it myself? My interview with Sir John MacDonald had no immediate result, and I left Ottawa at the close of the parliamentary session with the idea of going into a new railway proposition which had been suggested to me, for I could not afford to remain idle. I dropped into Paterson's office in Toronto to report progress, and he, without saying a word, wrote a short letter which he read to me and signed TCP. He added, as he stamped the envelope with the official stamp, I think you will hear something within a week. So I did. For within that time limit I received a letter from the Comptroller directing me to report myself at the headquarters of the Mounted Police at Regina, and enclosing with the necessary credentials a check for a hundred dollars to pay my expenses. So began my career in the Mounted Police, and now, after thirty-one years and nine months service in that force, I became a pensioner of Canada, from April 1st, 1915. Looking back it hardly seems possible that I can have served upwards of forty-seven years, as I may say, with the colours, that is, as a regimental officer. I am curious to know how many officers there were on the active list of the Royal Navy on March 31st, 1915, who can say that they learned the hand-spike gun-drill, which was in vogue at the time of Nelson, and how many army officers there are now on the active list who bid off the end of the cartridge before ramming the powder and bullet down the muzzle of a rifle. Both hand-spike and ram-rods were in the curriculum when I learned my drills. I trust my readers will pardon my being so extremely discursive, and that I may now be permitted to recur to the Premier of Canada, whom in 1891 T. C. Patterson interviewed on my behalf. Sir John Abbott had been formerly the legal adviser of the Canadian Pacific, and had been called upon to take the helm-up government after the tragic death at Windsor Castle of Sir John Thompson, of whom the late Nicholas Flood-David, the silver-tongued orator of the Western prairie, wrote that the man who, at birth, was laid in a three-and-six penny cradle, and his requiem boomed by the canon of an empire. Sir John Abbott had promised that the question of my transfer should remain in abeyance until after the Hirchmer Commission. The government had, very reluctantly and after long deliberation, consented to appoint a judge of the Supreme Court to act as a commission of inquiry into the many complaints against this officer which had been made in the press and otherwise. Mr. Justice Wetmore held sessions at Regina and McLeod, and I was called upon to attend at both places. I said what I had to say, without fear or favour, and as a result my commissioner treated me thereafter with respect, although we had no greater affection for each other than before. One fact became apparent, and that was, that sundry officers who had instigated newspaper men to publish attacks against the police commissioner lacked the moral courage to go into the witness-box and under oath to substantiate their former statements. It was a pitiable expose, but it had the effect of clearing the air. My transfer to Battleford was no longer a moot point, and the rent of the office in Lethbridge continued to be paid from police funds. No history of the great, lone land in these latter days would be complete without some mention of the late Lieutenant Colonel James Farkison McLeod, CMG. He first went west with the Woolsey expedition of 1870, and subsequently succeeded Sir George French as Commissioner of the Mounted Police. Later, when Lieutenant Colonel A. G. Irvine was appointed, Commissioner Colonel McLeod became Stippendairy Magistrate for the Northwest Territories. His headquarters, at first, were at Pinscher Creek, where he had a nice place, of which he was very proud. He was also very proud of his charming wife and family, most of it daughters, who I believe are all well and happily married. After this Stippendairy Magistrate blossomed into the Supreme Court dignitary, Colonel McLeod went to live in McLeod. From there he would come down upon us when Lethbridge wanted a jail delivery, or when there was anything special to try, and on such occasions he would cover the thirty-two miles of road, either by means of a convenient police team, or he would mount the box of the tri-weekly stagecoach, take the reins from Polly, the stage-driver, his name being Pallinger, an old-timer, and drive the four horses himself. We used to have to hold court in any convenient place in those days. Sometimes, for the convenience, possibly of witnesses, etc., it might be held in a room at the hotel, but generally in the barracks. After a time, the coal company built a very prestigious building, the lower part of which was designed as a theatre, with stage, proscenium, drop curtain, etc., while the second story was divided up into rooms, which could be, and sometimes were, rented. The lower story came inconveniently too for concerts, dances, and political meetings. I opened this theatre, by the same token, with a play which I got up for the purpose. When court was to be held, I always used to call at the hotel with my carriage for the judge. When I first congratulated him on being able to sign himself J.S.C., Judge Supreme Court, he said, for God's sake, Dean, don't call me judge. Oh, right, Colonel, I replied, and so it was ever after. I used to call for the Colonel at the hotel, and drive him to the courtroom. I always carried with me a little pigskin bag which he christened, amicus curie, which contained a small glass, a corkscrew, a bottle of soda water, and little weed drop of the cratcher, a pouch of tobacco, my own pipe, and some matches. We knew that the place to which we are going was desolate, and that we must provide our own creature comforts. The judge sat on the stage, the barrister's table was just across the footlights in the pit. The dock and the escort were a little beyond, and the court had a comprehensive view of all that went on within the limits of its vision. I used to do all the J.P. work of the place, and I remember being told of a remark made by one woman whose evidence was necessary in a certain case if she would consent to it. There was the rub. A summons would have been no use. She would, in the witness-box, have been more dumb than the traditional oyster. So it was delicately intimated to her that Captain Dean would be very sorry if she would not help him to get at the bottom of the business. She retorted, I've never been in a police court in my life, but I would have Leif go up to the embarracks in front of Captain Dean and tell him what I know as I'd go to me church. So that difficulty was overcome. Colonel McLeod always insisted on my sitting beside him. Don't you hate a conscientious witness, he whispered to me one day after we had been bored to death, for the best part of the morning by an eminently respectable citizen who would go into minute particulars and would prayerfully submit to correction at the hands of cross-examining counsel. How would a smoke go? Just the thing we want to sustain us both, Colonel, I replied, and this was his dictum. Gentlemen, the court adjourns for ten minutes, and we slid off behind the wings to try and forget our boredom. It was my good fortune, once, to uphold my conviction in the Court of Appeal, a case dealing in illicit whiskey. After hearing the arguments pro and con, the judge decided not to quash my conviction, and in furtherance of his decision rose from his seat and beckoned me towards the wings. What shall we give this fellow? he said. I replied, Well, Colonel, as you have upheld my conviction, I have not much more interest in the matter. If you think proper to let him go on a suspended sentence, you'll not hear a whimper from me. All right, said the judge, we'll settle it that way, and then we'll have a smoke, eh? The appellant in this case, Pete S., never appeared before me again. He went to the Yukon at the outbreak of the Gold Rush, and was killed in a brawl there. Colonel MacLeod had grown up with the country, did substantial justice in his decisions, and was an exceptionally good man for the job. If he had had a crooked streak in him he could have made lots of money, but he had neither a crooked nor a mean streak, and that was why he was generally held in favour. He had the most extraordinary capacity for whisky, and was never known to show any effects of it. An amusing story is told about his going on, on one occasion, to Fort Assiniboine on some business or another. This was an American military post in Montana a few miles across the international boundary line, where there were usually stationed a squadron or so of cavalry and some companies of infantry. The American officers had heard of the Colonel's reputation and of his capacity and determined to make a comprehensive test of the latter. It was even said that they had one or two relays of officers who were to keep their cast company until he was finally disposed of. As the evening wore on and the bottle circulated freely, man after man disappeared, either under the table or into an armchair or some other seclusion, and when Colonel MacLeod assisted the one solitary survivor up the stairs to his bed, the latter stopped short on the first landing and said, By God! Colonel, where did you put it? We had a little piece of excitement now and again. One was when it was reported that coal oil had been found in the Kutenei country, and a miniature boom started. It was kept as much a secret as possible, but there were comparatively few people in the country then, and it was a long way to go. I had a capacious four-horse wagon which would comfortably hold half a dozen men and their equipment and a party of us which included a surveyor, drove for two long days, seventy-five or eighty miles, to the scene of the action. We duly located our respective claims, paid the Dominion Land's office, the fees due thereupon, and engaged a man who had the tools to go out and drill holes. He had everything comfortably settled, Derek erected and ready for operation, when the structure took fire, and as he had no means of coping with a violent blaze, bang went our scheme, and we were out the fees that we had paid. It was in this neighbourhood that there dwelled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains an old fellow who chose to live the life of a hermit. He had cattle on the range and was well enough to do. He used to employ an ex-mounted policeman to gather his cattle and to attend the spring roundup for him, so that the calves might be branded, etc., and in the autumn the hired man would cut out any beef cattle that might be fit for the market, but otherwise the old chap lived alone. Somebody put it to him one day. I don't see what you do and how you put in the time during the long winter months, when there is no occupation for you out of doors. What do you do? Oh, well, said the hermit, sometimes I set some things and sometimes I just sets. A mining craze struck southern Alberta not long after. Pioneers in a new country must have faith or they are no good. We had faith and we backed our faith with good dollar bills, which we had far better work have kept in our pockets. A banker calculated that a sum of at least one hundred thousand dollars had been withdrawn from circulation in MacLeod and Lethbridge. Superintendent Sam Steele, who was then in command of the Mounted Police at MacLeod, was the mainspring of the movement, and that was a guarantee that the conduct of the business was at least honest. My friend Dr. Muburn and I, and a mutual friend, invested a thousand dollars between us in this venture, but with no result. The next speculation I went into was the Dundee mine at Ymer in British Columbia. This was a gold mine and, unless the reports were all falsified, a good investment. I bought one hundred shares of one dollar par value at thirty cents per share, and never had any sort of run for my money. I was by no means the only investor in Lethbridge, many of whose prominent citizens put their money into it. The local manager of the Bank of Montreal was one, the manager of the coal company was another, and so on. The bank manager said to me one day, by such a date I expect to see those shares selling in the market for fifty cents. The shares did not advance in value, but the directorate at last wondered why no profits were accruing and called in an expert. He pointed out a large stump which had been dug out of the bowels of the earth and said, Gentlemen, your profits are there, the wind is blowing them away. Think of it, the management knew no more about managing a gold mine than they knew about making boots, and even that was not the worst of it. The directors quarreled amongst themselves, and matters went from bad to worse. Finally, without the knowledge or consent of the shareholders, they borrowed twenty thousand dollars from some British Columbia bank. God knows what became of the money, and when the money was not repaid the bank took the mine. Readers who have had the patience to follow me through these details will admit that my experience in oil wells and mines had been unfortunate, and will wonder that when an oil boom broke out in the Calgary neighborhood in the year 1913 I resolutely refused to have anything to do with it. There was in 1913 and 1914 a wild craze amongst all classes for speculating in oil. I do know this, though, that in spite of all my preaching the devil twispered to me that, if there were anything worth buying in the entire outfit, it was the dome company's shares. The heart of man, besides being desperately wicked, dearly loves a gamble, and I reasoned with myself that a hundred dollars would neither make nor break me, and for the sake of a flutter I bought one hundred shares at ninety cents apiece. They were of the par value of a dollar. They went gradually down until about a fortnight after I had bought them I found them quoted at fifteen, sixteen and seventeen cents. I had had, by that time, so much domestic affliction that I was glad to find something that amused me, and I stood opposite a bulletin board and laughed until the passers-by came to see what I was laughing at. From that moment I forgot all about the dome oil company until after I had arrived in England, when a marked Calgary paper reached me giving an account of a judicial proceeding from which it appeared that the dome oil company had been sued in the Supreme Court for breach of contract and had been ordered to pay two hundred and fifty dollars and costs, a fool and his money, etc. Early in January, eighteen ninety-eight, Superintendent Steel was sent to the Yukon from MacLeod, and I was ordered to take over his command and run it in conjunction with my own. This meant that I had a lateral front of about six hundred miles to police. The Canadian Pacific were then building a line through the crow's nest pass into British Columbia, and the mounted police had been placed in police charge of the line under construction, from the eastern boundary of the province of British Columbia as far as Qutane landing. This was four hundred miles. In order to familiarize myself with the British Columbia locale, etc., it was obviously necessary that I should go and see for myself. I therefore drove along what was called the Tote Road for about two hundred miles in March, eighteen ninety-eight, and as construction had not then begun beyond Cranbrook, it seemed to me that I had better get home and attend to business. Mr. Assistant Commissioner McHillary had been sent to MacLeod to take my place while I was away. It was quite a change from our windswept prairies to drive into the British Columbian forest. The Tote Road was just a passage cleared of trees, etc., to admit of the passage of wagons, etc., hauling supplies for the various contractor's camps, and was pretty rough going. Amidst all the wealth of trees there was not a single Twitter of a bird. The only live creatures to interest one were innumerable little black squirrels. We had outposts of mounted police dotted at convenient intervals along the line of construction, and I had fortunately a capable officer to supervise them. He went to South Africa with a mounted police contingent at the time of the Boer War, and returned as Lieutenant Colonel G. E. Sanders, D. S. O. He is now police magistrate at Calgary under the provincial government having retired on pension from the Dominion Force. Our red coats carried as much weight in British Columbia as they had done since the opening up of the Western prairies, and our troubles were only of an ephemeral nature. I used to spend four days out of each week at MacLeod, and three at my house at Lethbridge. I had at my disposal a four-horse team at each place which were not diverted from my personal purposes, and as a rule at nine o'clock on Tuesday morning I stepped into my wagon at Lethbridge and the team started. The routine was the same, winter or summer, except that in winter when a sufficient snow was on the ground the vehicle was a sleigh. The distance to MacLeod was thirty-two miles, and at about the thirteenth milestone the old man's river crossed the road. There on the far side was a small police reserve, with appropriate buildings wherein a small detachment of two or three men and horses were accommodated. This was an appendage of the MacLeod district, and it frequently happened that it meant a saving of horse-flush to have a MacLeod team there waiting for me. There were times and seasons when it was not possible for a team to ford the river, and occasionally when the stream was in flood, or when slush ice was running down, I had to cross to the opposite bank by means of a flat-bottom boat. When the river was frozen over the crossing was of course easy, and then one was often glad of a twenty-minute interlude at Kipp to thaw out and warm up with a cup of hot tea. My pet team belonged to Lethbridge, and consisted of four good trotting horses that were a delight to the eye. Two of them had been sired by a well-known trotting horse named Combination, and they had all been bought from what was known as the Frank Strong Ranch, situated near Kipp. They were driven by a half-breed named Harry Taylor, whose father was an old-time white man who owned the MacLeod hotel, and his mother was an Indian woman. Old Taylor had done his duty by his son, for he had sent him to an excellent school at Port Hope in Ontario, and young Harry had had a capital education. He was employed by us as an interpreter, but as the services in that respect were not very much in demand, he was given charge of the team I speak of. I first found what his capabilities were in that line when he drove me along the Tote Road in British Columbia. One instance will suffice to exemplify his capacity as a whip. In 1898 Sir Roderick Cameron, a wealthy New Yorker, who had some years previously bought and fenced a township of land thirty-six square miles on the Bow River within the confines of the Lethbridge District, asked me if I could give him a passage to MacLeod. I was only too glad to have his company, and I had arranged to take my team right through from Lethbridge. The team was not in its normal self on that day, for the off-wheeler had been found to be a little off-color, and Harry Taylor, in conjunction with the Sergeant Major, had chosen another horse to take its place. This substitute was a bright chestnut, a good, capable horse, well able to hold its own, but hot-headed, like a good many of his color. He had, too, a habit of swishing his tail about, which was rather annoying. However, we had got to within about a mile of kip, and made good time so far, when this brood of a horse swished his tail over the rain, and would not part with it. Our wagons, I should explain, were not built like English vehicles, from the box seat of which the driver looks down upon his horses. Harry Taylor's seat was very little above the level of the horse's backs, and in such a case the driver was at a very considerable disadvantage. The fact that the horse was able to gather the rain under his tail shows this. Taylor made several attempts to free the rain without success, and the chestnut began at last to plunge and kick. This very unusual disturbance communicated itself to the other horses, who had not been accustomed to this kind of thing, and they started off on the dead run. They swept off the beaten trail, and, being beyond Taylor's control, headed for a point about a quarter of a mile distant, where the current of the old man had washed out, what is known as a cut bank, an almost perpendicular precipice cut out of the bank by the stream. Sir Roderick Cameron was a horseman, and had no lack of nerve, but I realized that he was over seventy years of age. The old gentleman said, There off! Instead of replying, I moved up to the front seat, and said to Taylor, Give me the leaders or the wheelers, whichever you think best. Wait a minute, sir, said he, I'll have one try. And with that he slackened up all the reins, and shouted to his horses, Whoa! There was no more surprised man in southern Alberta that day than Sir Roderick Cameron, K. T., when the maddened horses heard their master's voice, and, Whoa! came to a standstill, and allowed me to jump out and free the rain from the chestnut's tail. I have seen runaways. I was in one only myself, but I have never saw such a triumph of mind over matter as I saw on the occasion just ascribed. If the horses had not known the man, and had not answered his call as they did, it might have been kingdom come for some of us. We continued our journey, as if nothing had happened, and arrived at MacLeod in due time. There was nothing in the demeanour of my sub-togenarian companion to denote that his pulse had quickened, but mine had on his account, although I treated the matter as a common incident of prairie life. CHAPTER VIII. 1898–1902. Lethbridge and MacLeod. At MacLeod I had to live in the buildings known as the officer's mess-house, which happened to be bare of occupants, as all the MacLeod's officers were married. It was a comfortless, barn-like place, but I had to make the best of it, and was fortunate in being able to secure, as a special constable, a Chinaman of middle age, named Ling, who was quite a good cook, and very faithful and attentive to my wants. Particularly so, after I had, in one of my cold, blizzardly drives, picked up a bad attack of bronchitis, and was obliged to spend my weekend at MacLeod instead of in my comfortable home. Trains were running, but I had not time to go by train whenever it was possible to avoid it. My teams called at my door at five minutes to the hour, and as the clock struck the sleigh-bells began to jingle, and we were off. I knew that within four hours I should reach my destination, but with a train one might waste an appreciable slice of one's life in waiting about stations for overdue trains and the like. With a white mantle of snow covering the ground, and no trail visible, we had to be guided by distant landmarks. If they happened to be obscured, a compass came in handy. Of the bronchitis that I acquired in that winter of 1898 to 9, recurrences stayed with me, fitfully, to my great annoyance, for a period of about 12 years, and then I got rid of it for good. And all by a very simple method which I do not recommend to anyone whose bellows are not sound. I used odd times, preferably in the winter, or when a cold wind was blowing, to take a long, deep breath, give it time to distribute itself in the lungs where it could be felt, hold it there until the coolness had worn off, and then let it quietly emerge from mouth and nostrils. By the inhalation of the cold air in this process I unwittingly cured a weakness in the throat, which had at times, as Dr. Newburn knows, given me trouble. Ling remained with me until one fine day in the spring. He awoke me early, and said he had terrible pains in his inward parts, and would have to leave at once. The greater part of his life had been spent at sea, and I had an idea that the ocean was calling him. He had answered my purpose well, and I made no objection. It was not difficult to replace him, as the work was easy and the pay good. But I was not quite so complacent, subsequently in the case of a namesake of his, a young man whom I engaged for my family at Lethbridge. The worst feature of a Chinaman was that they would suddenly say that they wanted to leave. Quit, they called it, and off they would go at a minute's notice. This was generally after their month's wages had been paid. One afternoon I was in my Lethbridge office, and got a rush message from my house, which was only a few yards away. Ling says he is going to quit right away. Can you come? I was very much absorbed, in a troublesome case, and it made me as mad as a wet hen to have my attention diverted. But the lease said as soon as mended, and in I went to my kitchen. Well, Ling, you quit, eh? All light, a Chinaman pronounces his R as like L. All light. Goodbye, you get no money. Goodbye. You know Corporal Louis? I tell him to wait for you in town. He bling you up to guard loom. Goodbye. And back to my work I went. I found, when I went into dinner, that Ling had thought better of it. Corporal Louis, as the Chinaman called him, was Corporal Louis, on town duty, who was a terror to the evildoer, and I phoned him instructions, in case Ling should quit, to lay before a town J.P., complained under the master and servant ordinance against him for absenting himself from his employment without leave, and to act accordingly. One of the functions at MacLeod was an annual powwow, with the chief and representative head man of the Blood Indians. The Indians of the Canadian Northwest had a childlike faith in the honesty of purpose and sense of justice of the mounted police, who had never deceived them, and had always looked after the Indians' interests, and upheld them as well as they could. The Indians were in charge of a department of the government known, as the Indian department, which had sole and whole control of these wards of the nation, and their affairs. The Indians had the mounted police always with them, but the self-assertive officials of the Indian department they had not always. They had their local agents, of course, who were supreme, subject to the orders from the department, and were left no sort of discretion where dollars and cents were concerned. Poor devils, they had a hard row to hoe. Their armchair critics would come round and cut off a little bit here and a morsel there, until the poor local man, who had to do the actual economizing with Aborigines of whose language they were very imperfectly informed, did not know what they were at. And then the Redskins used to come to us to find out the why and the wherefore. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, the politician or employee whose intellect is devoted to problems of economy will always gain a substantial hearing, and generally make his way. Economy is such a catchword that efficiency or even convenience of the public is a minor consideration. One such severe economist retired from the Indian department when the Liberals came into power in 1896, and was elected secretary of a Montreal club. I was in the company of a member of that club, somewhere in western Canada, when the announcement of the appointment was made in the papers, and after reading it my friend closed up the paper and said, That means three pieces of toast instead of four, for breakfast. The same severe spirit of economy manifested itself in 1908, wherein I became sixty years of age, and married a second wife, the dear mother of my children, having died in 1906. In the chorus of a modest little honeymoon we made our first stop at Banff, in the Rocky Mountains, where the Canadian Pacific has a very pretentious hotel. Our accommodation had been bespoken beforehand, so that we had no difficulty in that respect, but the place was swarming with German Jews and other tourists, and at dinner on the evening of our arrival I ordered some sherry. Two glasses were brought to us, and I at once disposed of mine. My wife, however, took only a sip of hers, and after a little while I noticed that her glass contained a good deal of sediment which had settled to the bottom. I pointed this out to her and sent for the head waiter who was shocked beyond measure at the occurrence. He carried off the glass, saying that he would look into this, and would bring us some more, but time went on, and he did not reappear. We went on with our dinner, and presently I coaxed a waiter into coming to me for a parley, and he, after considerable hesitation, said, Well, sir, that was the last bottle of sherry in the house, and you had the end of it. But, with an anxious glance around, don't give me away. I will not, I replied, Thank you for telling me. The head waiter did not enter the dining-room again that evening while I was in it, and I forgave him. Later at Lake Louise, west of Banff, we could not get any logger beer. The best substitute the waiter could give us was pints of stout, and we had therewith to be content. It is almost unthinkable, from a business money-making point of view, that a very large hotel system stretching across a continent should run even a risk of being reduced to such straits as I have described, but such are the effects of the spirit of economy when placed in the hands of its devotees. In the Crooked Lakes affair, herein described, page 140, the self-same economy was brought face to face with ultimate ratio. The management of the CPR system became aware of these shortcomings on the part of their staff, as I judged from a visit paid shortly after our return to our home at Calgary by an old Regina friend of mine who was in the CPR hotel business, dropping in to see me unexpectedly. At the time of his visit to me he was supposed, to some extent, to control the liquor supply of the hotel system, and I knew quite well that he had casually dropped in to see if I had anything to say on the subject. I, however, never said a word. I did not choose to backbite an unhappy manager when I shrewdly suspected that he was very little to blame. I seemed to have wandered away somehow from the blood Indians in their powwow. Their chief at that time was Red Crow, a fine old fellow, who said that the faith of his fathers was good enough for him and who lived up to it. There was no fork-tongue about the old Red Crow who realized that the Mounted Police always played the game, and frankly came to them to say what was on his mind. On the occasion of which I now write, he and his following came to talk about the Sundance, which the Indian department had prohibited. I may say here that I had a very strong objection to this dance, which, having once seen in the early days I never wanted to see again, it was a brutal and senseless proceeding from a white man's point of view. I saw a large ring enclosed, and partly covered, by boughs of trees and the like, in the centre of which was a tall pole, from the crest thereof, depended a number of ropes, according to the number of debutants. Each debutant was secured to the end of his rope by a skewer passed laterally through the flesh of each breast, and it developed upon him to dance at full pressure round this pole until he fainted from exhaustion, or until the continuous strain should compel the flesh of his breast to tear open and set him free. This process constituted the making of a brave. The unhappy brave had a whistle or something of the kind put into his mouth and round that pole the wretched creature jumped sideways, as in a giant stride, always at full tension, until I have said his flesh or his endurance gave out. The audience consisted of a circle of closely packed natives, with voice and tom-toms encouraging the representative to hold out to the end. This went on for hours, while the poor victims were struggling with pain, and with their painted faces were blowing their whistles and trying to show that they were putting some heart into their performance. Then the braves, who had successfully passed through the ordeal in former years, would be recounting their stories of successful horse-thieving and scalp-taking expeditions, and would exhibit, all to the sound of the tom-tom, their search for and finding of the enemy's trail, the stealthy advance, the crash of the tomahawk into the victim, and then the triumphant war-wope. All such exhibitions as this could only have the effect of keeping alive the primeval homicidal and criminal instincts of the native, and my sympathies were wholly with the endeavours of the Indian department, but I never allowed my sympathies to show themselves. However, old Red Crow made a long speech to set forth the views of his followers, and here it was very helpful to have an interpreter like Harry Taylor, who could interpret finer shades of thought than could the ordinary man. My office at McLeod was unusually large, and with all the windows open, could accommodate quite a number of Indian visitors sitting cross-legged on the floor. When the old chap had done, he subsided into an office armchair, and within two minutes was sound asleep. The burden of his song was that the Bloods wanted to have a sun-dance, which was forbidden to them by the Indian department. He represented that the dance was a part of the Indian's religious belief, and was to them, as my interpreter explained, in some sort a sacrament. That was the sum total of the representations made by a great number of Indian orators who spread themselves during a long summer afternoon. In reply, apart from a long preamble and eulogistic comments upon the habits of the Indians generally, in my district I could only ask the question. When the Indian department says no, how is it possible for a humble individual of the Mounted Police, like myself, to say yes? Old Red Crow had by this time been awakened by his attendant squaws, and admitted that that was a difficulty which seemed to be insupperable. We all parted the best of friends, and an issue of tea and tobacco cemented the compact. In September 1898 I thought I was entitled to a holiday, seeing that I had not had one since my appointment in 1883. And I took my family to Victoria, B.C., for a month. The Canadian Pacific had always treated us liberally in the matter of travel, and gave us free transportation to and fro. In visiting a place some eight hundred miles distant, this was a very substantial concession. Our old friends, the Dudneys, were living in Victoria. He had served a term of five years as Lieutenant Governor of the Province of British Columbia, after giving up the portfolio of the Ministry of the Interior, and at his house we met admirable palacer, who was then in command of the Pacific Station. His flag-captain happened to be Captain T.A. Dare, an old shipmate of mine, who was a sub-lieutenant in the Warrior when I joined her in May, 1869. Since that year I had never come across him. While on the subject of H.M.S. Warrior, I may here say that I had the honour of being a shipmate also of the illustrious Field-Marshall, who commanded the British Army in the early stages of the war. I have not seen him since the ship, paid off in 1871. He was a mid-shipman in her. In 1910 Sir John French came to Calgary to inspect the militia during the month of June. And that happened to be the very month that I had selected to spend on the Pacific Coast, and I was not therefore privileged to see him. I left a note for him, offering my own trooper, Johnny, for his use in writing about the country. But he replied that his wants in that respect had been supplied from Winnipeg, and he could not naturally interfere with the arrangements that had been made for his convenience. Admiral Palacer was very kind and hospitable. He invited us to lunch in one day, and sent his galley to the wharf to take us off. We took our seats, and the co-son asked me to take the tiller while he pulled the stroke-or. We had a most enjoyable time, from the first to the last, and to me it was a great treat to be associated again with the inimitable spick-and-span Jack Tarr. I was particularly curious to know what my daughter thought of it all, and gave her plenty of time to digest all that she had seen before I asked her what had impressed her most. Oh, Father! she said, hesitatingly, I think the men and the boat. I had an idea that would probably be her reply. We had paid our visit to the coast a month too late in the year, and were all of us glad to be at home again when we resumed the even tenor of our respective ways until the mounted police were invited to volunteer for the Boer War, and to form a unit under Mr. Lawrence Hirschmer. Officers and men volunteered freely. For myself I officially reported that I was ashamed of not having joined the ranks, but that as I had joined the Queen's Service a year earlier than Sir Edward Hutton, the General commanding the Canadian forces, and had commanded a company of Royal Marines in the Naval Brigade under Commodore Hewitt, V.C., in Ashanti, in 1874, I did not feel called upon to serve with the relative rank of Captain in the Canadian Militia. This was the reason I gave officially, but apart from that it was to me unthinkable that I should go on active service under a man whom I considered to be unfit for the responsibility he was seeking, and so I stayed home. A very short interval in South Africa was sufficient to prove the truth of my contention, and Lieutenant Colonel Hirschmer was quietly laid on the shelf. On his return to Canada he found that his subordinate had served him in the same manner that he had Colonel Irvine and had gained the commissionership of the Mounted Police by the exercise of political influence. I had no sympathy to spare for Lieutenant Colonel Hirschmer, who had camped on my trail for many a long year, and I can dismiss him from my reflections with the assertion that if his doing so had amused him it had not hurt me. The completion of the Crow's Nest Railway relieved me of my British Columbia responsibilities, and it was well that it was so, for I had plenty to do near home. I filled up the blanks in my command as much as possible by means of recruits, but these men had to be trained, and I had no one but myself to take the writing school at each post, so that I had few idle moments. In addition to this I formulated a new system of crime reports which was badly needed by the force at large. I did this at Mr. Commissioner Perry's request, and copies of my specimen reports were circulated for the guidance of officers commanding other divisions. This system has been in vogue ever since. A spell of bad weather was responsible for an untoward contra-tempts when the Governor-General and Lady Minto came west. They had been invited by Mr. Elliot Galt, President of the Coal Company, to pay him a visit, and to go out to a new settlement named McGrath, about twenty-two miles from Lethbridge. It was settled by Mormons, who had announced their intention of making the country blossom like the rose. Their excellencies were coming to us from the Pacific Coast, and Mr. Commissioner Perry and I met their train at Furny, which had been known as Coal Creek, when I had spent the night or two there in the Tote Road days. The new name was given to it, after that of the original settler. Our first objective was Lethbridge, where rain was threatening. The program for the morrow was this. Eighteen miles out from Lethbridge, on the southbound railway, was the village of Sterling, which was the name of its first Mormon bishop, and there we had placed a temporary camp of half a dozen men, with saddle-horses for the family, and sweet of Vice Regal Party, who might wish to ride, and light spring wagons for the convenience of others. It came on to rain heavily that night, and the next morning was so wet that I went to ask Mr. Galt what the program was to be. He replied, Oh, I think you'll find they'll go, and so it was. We all took the special train, which had been provided as far as Sterling, and there we naturally found everything sopping wet. It only remained to pack the ladies into a spring wagon, with oil-shoots, etc., the gentleman elected to ride, and we galloped over the twenty-mile prairie road to McGrath. We duly arrived at our destination in good spirits, and with good appetites, but a little later than we had intended. It was therefore somewhat disconcerting to find that the McGrath people had come to the conclusion that even English men and women would not be crazy enough to travel in such weather, and had eaten the luncheon provided for their guests. Their excellencies, as might be expected of English nobility, took the whole matter so good-naturedly and unconcernedly that the situation was in no way uncomfortable. It was not long, however, before a very nice, satisfying midday meal was served to make up for our long fast. In the unsatisfactory state of the weather there was little else to be done but to talk and speechify, and that came quite easy to Mormon Apostles, so that as soon as the weather cleared a little we started on our twenty-two mile run to Lethbridge. We had ahead of us a similar jaunt on the following day to the blood reserve from McCloud, and to facilitate this operation we loaded our horses into a boxcar and attached it to the Vicerigal train. We then went out to the blood reserve and had luncheon and saw what was to be seen, being guests there of Mr. W. Wilson, the Indian agent. Lady Minto told the Indians that she was descended from a famous Indian princess, Pocahontas. They were not at all impressed by the circumstance, and as a matter of fact did not believe the story. An Indian is loathed to believe what he cannot see. In the early days a bunch of them came to Regina. Colonel Irvine left Red Crow and some of them with me in my office, and took Crowfoot and the rest to his quarters. Then we set them talking to one another over the telephone, and their delight was great, but when they went home to their reserve and told their kith and kin of their experience they frankly thought that the travellers were telling them lies. On returning to McCloud her excellency was kind enough to ask me to join their family party at dinner in their car, and that was the last time I saw Lord Minto, whose visits were always welcome. He did pay a later visit to the North West for some duck shooting, but did not then come into Southern Alberta. Being Governor General of the Dominion he quietly effaced himself when the royal highnesses the Duke and Duchess of York visited the country. We then gathered up, from all surrounding districts, a force of about two hundred and fifty officers and men, formed them into a camp at Calgary, and had the honour of being there, reviewed by the heir to the British Crown. After the review the royal party went to a hill adjoining the city, where a large number of black fleet and other Indians were encamped. Mounted braves, in all the extravagances of their native costume, lined the road of approach on either side for about a mile, and at the summit their chiefs and headmen, under the aegis of the Indian department, were permitted to see and speak to their future king. This ceremony being completed their royal highnesses and suite took luncheon at the barracks as guests of the officers of the mounted police. The mess room of E. division was a capacious and handy room for the purpose, and the walls were decorated with a large number of well-preserved animals' heads, which had been lent to us for the purpose by owners scattered over a great extent of territory. His royal highness was observed to take particular notice of these heads with the eye of a sportsman. The officers had all been presented to their royal highnesses before luncheon, and after that function a smart travelling escort under command of the late Inspector Montague Baker conducted the royal visitors to their train. We had already entrained an escort for duty on the Pacific coast, and of this, as being by many years senior superintendent of the force, it was my birthright to go in command. But I had got mixed up with a criminal prosecution in Montana, which was to be tried in great falls within a few days, and as it was necessary that I should attend the trial, I was per force compelled to abandon the trip to the coast. Soon after the occurrences just described, his royal highness was graciously pleased to ordain that the force should be known as the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. The necessity for my attendance at great falls had occurred in this wise. A Swedish settler in southern Alberta had had twenty-seven head of horses stolen from him by an American citizen, and I had for months been engaged in working up the case, so as to bring the thief and his co-agitors to justice. This could easily be done, as the state law was in force in Montana, making it felonious to take into that state property which had been stolen in another country. The Montana authorities and I used to work this to our mutual advantage, as we had a similar law on our side. The twenty-seven horses had been stolen in Canada and taken into Montana, where they had all been disposed of to different customers. The United States collector of customs at that time was Mr. David Brown, to whom I am under obligation for many international courtesies. And he and his chief deputy, Mr. Ernest Ringwald, were at all times anxious to help me to keep our mutual frontier free from crooks of all kinds. They took up this horse-thieving instance with great earnestness. They found out where the thief had disposed of each animal and had obtained a promise from each purchaser that if necessary he would give up his property to the original owner. There could be no greater expression of goodwill than such a course as this, and it was obviously my duty to live up to it. These attentions, be it observed, were mainly of a personal and reciprocal nature, and had been of prolonged and steady growth. My sweetest friend was a capable, hardworking man, who had a wife as hardworking as himself. The government paid his expenses to great falls, and I duly accompanied him there. I was in dread, lest he should not keep sober enough to appear as a witness. But he gave excellent evidence at the trial. What seemed to impress the jury, a good deal, was what a reporter called his audible thinking. He began by holding up his left hand and by ticking it off finger by finger with appropriate commentaries as each horse floated past his mind's eye, and then he resorted to the other hand, and so on, obviously in dead earnest, and thinking out each item with childlike simplicity. The judge, good judge too, charged the jury very shortly, and they retired to consider their verdict and sentence. I learned then, for the first time, that in case of conviction, the jury had the right to assess the punishment, if it was their will to exercise that right. This jury brought in a verdict of guilty and a sentence of ten years in the penitentiary. I had, when the jury retired, gone out into the street to have a cigarette, and had lighted a second one when a newspaper reporter passed me with a rush, gasping as he went. It transpired that, after the jury had fulfilled their part of the program, the prisoner had asked to be taken to the lavatory. While there he swallowed a pellet of cyanide of potassium, which he was said to have kept in his waistcoat pocket, and then told his guard what he had done. The resources of medical science were, of course, immediately available, and were successfully applied. The prisoner, however, happened to have a foster-father who was unusually well to do, and who was very much wrapped up in the boy whom he had adopted. He left no stone unturned to obtain the young man's release, and succeeded after he had undergone four years at the penitentiary. Not long after these occurrences I undertook the prosecution of a case of wholesale cattle smuggling, the particulars of which are fully described in the chapter under that heading. As a result of my successful engineering of a round up party, terminating in the capture of five hundred and ninety-six head of cattle, smuggled into Canada by bosom friends of an influential member of the Dominion Cabinet, I was ordered to be transferred to Maple Creek, a very small municipality in the province, then known as Asinaboya, but since then rechristened Saskatchewan. A prominent member of the Lethbridge Liberal Association came to ask me the question, Can't you do something to stop this? Meaning the move. I said, I should prefer that you do not interfere. The minister in question was then in the plenitude of his power, and did as he liked, but there came a day, a year or so later, when he was hurled from his seat by an exposé in the Calgary eye-opener, and took refuge in the tall timber. The end of it all was that my wife and I transferred ourselves, our lairs and penets to Maple Creek, where it happened that our eldest son was successfully practicing medicine. We were Darby and Joan, so to speak, for our two daughters were happily married, and of our other two sons one was dying of consumption in California, and one was in the bank of Montreal, in British Columbia. The people of Lethbridge gave effect to their sentiments in the following resolution, in an illuminated form, which unexpectedly reached me soon after I had established myself in my new post. Two, Captain R. B. Dean, Superintendent, Northwest Mounted Police. The Lethbridge Town Council and Board of Trade, representing the town of Lethbridge and surrounding district sincerely regret your recent removal from this district. You have had charge of all the police matters in the large territory adjoining the Montana boundary for the past fourteen years, practically since Lethbridge came into existence. For several years your department has almost annually disturbed us with threatening rumors of your removal, to other points of the Northwest, and on each occasion every effort at our command was put forth to retain you. The government of a country is much stronger than a small portion of that country, and recognizing that truth on this last occasion when you were called away, we decided to lodge our usual protest and then quietly submit. The Northwest Mounted Police Force is a credit to Canada, and in our opinion that force is deeply indebted to you, as wherever you are stationed, law and order will be firmly established and the police respected. It is unnecessary to recount your services to this district. Being a soldier and a gentleman, you did your duty. We know you always performed it with honour to your country and credit to yourself. Your work has not been in vain. The universal regret throughout the district, occasioned by your departure, is evident of the esteem and respect in which you are held by the general public. And after so many years of service, it is certainly indicative of a record of which any public man should be proud. Please assure your estimable wife that she has carried away the deepest regard of our people, and we trust you will both look back with pleasure upon your many years residence in Lethbridge. We ask you to accept the accompanying present as a slight token of the warm appreciation that prevails throughout the district for Mrs. Dean and yourself. Dated at Lethbridge in the District of Alberta, this fifteenth day of October 1902. The municipality of the town of Lethbridge, S. D. William Oliver, Mayor, S. D. C. B. Bowman, Secretary Treasurer. The Lethbridge and District Board of Trade, S. D. M. Barford, President, S. D. C. B. Bowman, Secretary Treasurer. The accompanying present consisted of a handsome gold watch, chain and locket. The locket I gave to my wife, the watch and chain I have used ever since. The Western Stockrowers Association was also pleased to send me a momento in the subjoined form. President W. F. Cochran, McLeod. First Vice President, D. Wormock Livingston. Western Stockrowers Association, Secretary Treasurer, R. G. Matthews, McLeod. Second Vice President, Henry Smith High River. Office of the Secretary Treasurer, McLeod Alberta, 10th October 1902. Superintendent R. B. Dean, Commander, Northwest Mounted Police, Maple Creek. Dear Sir, at a meeting of the Executive Committee of this Association, held in McLeod on the eighth instant. The following resolution, a copy of which I was instructed to forward to you, was unanimously adopted. That is, Moved by Howell Harris. Seconded by A. R. Springett. This committee, recognizing the energy and ability shown by Captain Dean, Northwest Mounted Police, in the discharge of his duties as Superintendent of the Lethbridge District, desires to record its appreciation of the services rendered, the livestock interests of Southern Alberta. I have much pleasure in carrying out my instructions. Yours very truly. Signed R. G. Matthews, Secretary. It is needless for me to say that such remembrances as these cannot fail to be dear to the heart of a public servant. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Mounted Police Life in Canada This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Mounted Police Life in Canada by Captain Burton Dean Chapter 9 1902 to 6 Maple Creek I spent four years at Maple Creek. It was a funny little Methodist-ridden place, containing from four to five hundred people. I was there called upon to resume my clerical duties, which had fallen into abeyance during a term of years. The Church of England had a church there, and a limited vicarage, which some hard-working devotees of the village and its surroundings had managed to raise money enough to build. It was a poor enough living for the incumbent, who had to administer one or two outside parishes, and when he was called away on sundry Sundays, during the year he fell back upon me to hold the fort in the creek. I was very willing to do what I could in that respect, and although I never presumed to fail the absent gentleman's pulpit, I read the service and gave contributors an opportunity of placing their offerings in the plate. A person has been called an incumbent, a padre, a sky-pilot, and I do not know how many more names, but as far as my knowledge goes, it remained for a cowboy of the Western Perry to christen him, the devil dodger. The barracks at Maple Creek were about two and a half miles from the embryo town, and I am quite free to confess that I sometimes found it hard to put in the time. I used to ride two and three horses a day for the sake of keeping them exercised, and I have now and again ridden into the town to see if I could find someone to exchange a word with. I had a friend in the manager of the merchant's bank named E. W. McMullen, and while he was there I was sure of finding somebody, but after he was promoted to a larger branch I have often ridden home disappointed. It was a stock country, and there were no idle men in it. What police business there was was mainly in connection with theft of cattle and horses, and the smuggling of animals on the hoof across the imaginary boundary line. The feed on the American side of that line had become depleted, and American owners were in the habit of ranging their cattle and sheep on the Canadian side, where they would fatten them for the Chicago market. The Canadian customs protested that for this privilege duty should be paid on these animals, and a special officer of customs was appointed to protect Canadian interests in this behalf. To carry out his instructions he was naturally wholly and solely dependent on the mounted police, and we worked with him very cordially, for he, the late Mr. F. Stumbdon, always played the game. He was assigned the duty immediately after my successful seizure of smuggled cattle, and seemed to be in communication with the Premier because he told me one day that he had received a letter wherein Sir Wilford said he was very glad to find that his relations with the mounted police were so happy. The Department of Customs, however, did not always play the game. They did not do it with me, and today they owe me four hundred and thirty dollars on account of the Spencer seizure in 1902. When Mr. J. Buranot was sent from Ottawa in that year to cooperate with me in the matter, particulars of which had been reported through the ordinary official police channels, he brought with him and showed me the then prevailing customs regulation in print. To that effect, in case of a seizure of smuggled goods, one half of the value thereof became the property of the Crown. The other half was to be divided between the informant and the customs officer making the seizure. The amount of the penalty, in that case, approved by the Exchequer Court, and on appeal by the Supreme Court of Canada, was six thousand dollars. Buranot was therefore entitled to fifteen hundred and I as the informant, who had by my own unassisted efforts worked up the case and carried it successfully through two courts of law, was entitled to a like sum. Whatever may have been done since, the case was unique in customs annals at that time. After the Supreme Court had affirmed the judgment of the Exchequer Court, refusing to set aside the penalty of six thousand dollars, I received on November twenty-fifth, 1907, five and a half years after the seizure had been made, a customs check for five hundred and fifty dollars. I represented that considerably more money was due to me on this account, and on February fourth, 1908, received another check for five hundred and seventy-five dollars, making a total of one thousand seventy, and leaving due a balance of four hundred and thirty dollars. By advice of the legal advisor of the Merchants Bank at Calgary I accepted the check under protest. It was sent to me through the collectors of customs at Calgary by an inspector of customs at Toronto. I told him the circumstances, and he said that a somewhat similar fate had befallen him, as in a seizure which he had made he had been paid only a percentage of what was due to him. The inspector of customs at Toronto, who sent me the five hundred and seventy-five dollar check, told me to apply to the collector at Calgary and to give him a receipt, and also said that he did not know who the informer was. It was never clear to me why he should know, or why he should have had anything to do with the matter in which the province of Ontario could not possibly be concerned, for it appertained exclusively to the northwest territories. I then made inquiries from the result of which I gathered the conclusion that was known as the inside service of the customs department expected to levy a toll upon the work of the outside service, that is to say the outside people did the work and the inside people surreptitiously shared the rake off. Against this there seemed to be no appeal. I wrote a letter of protest addressed to Sir Wilfred Laurier, the prime minister, and sent it through the commissioner of the Mounted Police. Whatever was done with the letter I can only say that I never received even the passing civility of a reply to it, and I presume that it never reached Sir Wilfred's hands. It was opened to me, of course, to pull political strings, but I thought that would be two small potatoes. At Maple Creek I was responsible for the protection of about two hundred miles of the main line of the Canadian Pacific railway. I studied very deeply the possibility of a train being held up and robbed within the limits of my district. Arrangements had therefore to be made to meet such a contingency, and more than once I talked to the commissioner about it, but the details would neither interest the public nor be good for the public service. Suffice it to say that if such a thing had happened in my district and I had not been able to account for the thieves I should have considered it an indelible disgrace upon my name. More than that the public among whom I lived and worked would have thought so too. Although my division numbered something less than fifty officers, noncommissioned officers, and men, someone would have been sure to ask what the mounted police were maintained in the country for. In 1906 a Canadian Pacific train was held up and robbed in British Columbia, and at the request of the British Colombian government a posse of mounted police were rushed into the mountains where they captured the robbers, the ring leader, a hardened old ruffian named Bill Miner, was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, but was permitted to escape from the penitentiary at New Westminster B.C. What we have, we hold, did not apply in that discreditable instance. When, if ever, the mounted police are withdrawn from duty in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the public not only of those provinces, but the travelling public of the Dominion must make up its mind to face the probability of train robbery. The mounted police system appears to be doomed to extinction in Saskatchewan, as had it not been for the outbreak of the war, that province would have denounced the existing agreement with the Dominion on April 1st, 1915. As the headquarters of the force are in Saskatchewan, and as the Alberta government have intimated their desire to continue the present arrangement, there are indications that new barracks will be built at Calgary on some land which is still the property of the Dominion government on the banks of the Bow River. These changes were foreshadowed in 1905 when the provincial autonomy celebrations were held at Regina and Edmonton, respectively. A couple of squadrons of mounted police attended, and as they travelled from one capital to another it was openly remarked amongst themselves that, we are going to attend our own funeral and are going to make as brilliant a flash in the pan as we can. In the spring of 1904 a syndicate of cattlemen imported from the east a number of stalkers, as they are called, that is young cattle, which they turn out on the range to grow. It happened that after these poor creatures had been turned loose the weather became very bad, a snowstorm which subsequently turned to rain set in and soaked and chilled the poor animals through and through. A range-bred yearling will to some extent know how to rustle for itself, but these imported beasts knew nothing of the conditions of life on the bald-headed prairie, and they consequently died by the score of exposure and starvation. I never had any sympathy with the syndicate for they deserved to lose the money which they plentifully lost and were lucky to escape being prosecuted for cruelty to animals, because that was what their greedy policy amounted to. It transpired as time went on that some of the young pilgrims were in process of being stolen by sundry ranchers, and into that complaint it became my duty severely to inquire. In two cases the theft by a prominent and well-to-do rancher of the neighborhood was abundantly proved, and the judge at the trial, Chief Justice A. L. Sifton, awarded a sentence of two years in the Manitoba Penitentiary. The verdict was hardly expected by the general community, and came as a kind of shock to its nerves. The first comment that came to my ears after pronouncement of the sentence was a conversation between two ranchers as follows. Well, Joe, what do you think of this? It would have done more good Pete if it had happened fifteen years ago. That epitomized the general opinion of the neighboring stock-owners who had lost, here a calf, there a calf, here and there a calf, and had never been able to obtain redress. The convict, in this instance, was a pillar of a non-conformist church, and a man of means who was very assiduous in his religious attendance and duties. After a few months' confinement in the Penitentiary he was suddenly released by order of the Minister of Justice, and took up his former abode as if nothing had happened. The train that conveyed him westward towards his home carried also the Chief Justice who had tried and sentenced him, and of the latter queried a passenger. Do you know that Blank is in the train going home? He says he is not on ticket of leave, and seems to have been given a pardon. Have you heard anything about it? No, said the Chief Justice, and what's more I don't believe it. The passenger statement was, however, true enough. The convict had simply been released, and the local authorities had no information on the subject. It had, for some time, been no secret that the Minister of the Non-Conforming Church in question had been very active in making supplication to the government to quash the righteous sentence, and the result showed that he had not labored in vain. It was a very different proposition, however, a few months later, when the same Reverend Gentleman came to us to complain that his son, a young man who had recently started a ranch of his own, had had some dozen bags of oats stolen from his stable while the owner was absent. The theft was traced to another young rancher who was trying to earn a living for himself, and then nothing would content the Minister of the Gospel but his pound of flesh. He insisted on prosecuting the thief who was convicted in a court of summary jurisdiction and sentenced to imprisonment. It makes all the difference of whose ox is gored. In 1906 I was officially asked, if I would go to Calgary, the command of which post had been vacant for some months, and on my replying in the affirmative I was transferred thither. It was whispered to me, with how much truth I know not, that the Minister of the Interior, too wet, honourable John Oliver, was responsible for this amelioration in my condition. He had said that he would not stand by and see an officer persecuted for having done his duty, and, being in the Cabinet, it was within his power to rectify a wrong if he chose to do so. Anyway, to Calgary I went, and my Maple Creek friends on the eve of my departure very kindly presented