POLICE AND GUNMEN
"The Mounted Police generally received word in advance when any particularly bad character was headed for the Yukon, and in all such cases he was met when he slipped off the boat. I remember particularly one case of the kind, as I happened to be on hand when the American gunman landed. He was a quiet enough looking individual and had no weapons of any kind in sight, but a close scrutiny revealed the fact that he had a particularly evil eye in his sandy-freckled face. One of the Mounties picked him out unerringly and tapped him on the shoulder.
"'Gat Gardiner?' he asked.
"'No,' said the newcomer. 'My name is Davidson.'
"'I happen to know you as Gat Gardiner,' insisted the policeman. 'Got any weapons on you?'
"'Leave go of me,' flared the so-called Davidson, all the veneer of civility gone. 'You got nothing on me. Let go, I say!'
"'I've got something on you,' declared the policeman, hauling a revolver from the hip pocket of the man. 'Carrying concealed weapons is against the law on this side the line. Back on the boat, you, and don't you dare put foot ashore or I'll have you in jail. You go back the way you came.'
"And Gardiner went. I saw him leaning over the rail when the boat started on the return trip and he shook his fist at the policeman on the wharf and emitted a string of vile oaths. But he never came back.
"When the notorious 'Soapy' Smith was killed at Skagway, Alaska, his gang of desperadoes was promptly broken up and word came to Dawson that some of them were headed for the Canadian side. They were gathered in as soon as they crossed the line, denuded of weapons, and sent back. Not one of the gang eluded the vigilance of the police.
"The law against carrying concealed weapons was a big factor in keeping the peace. Comparatively few men took advantage of their legal right to carry a revolver in sight. I remember seeing an open box in a pawnshop containing the most amazing collection of weapons I had ever set eyes on—revolvers with silver handles, pistols of carved ivory, antiquated breech-loaders, weapons of fantastic design, and, probably, of equally fantastic history, strange implements of death that had come from all climes and bespoke adventures on all the seven seas.
"'Where did you get the lot?' I asked the proprietor.
"'They all sell their shooting irons. No use for them here. I get 'em for practically nothing. Help yourself if you have any fancy that way. I'll make you a present of anything you want.'
"So much for the wild Yukon of the novelists! Instead of lurching into the dance hall and blazing away at the ceiling, picture the 'old-timer', the hardened miner of a hundred camps, planking down his pistols on the counter of the pawnshop and asking 'How much?' That's the truer picture."
As part of my boyhood education was derived from the study of American illustrated magazines, I was led by those periodicals to believe that the North American wilderness was inhabited by wild and woolly men bedecked with firearms, and ever since I have been on the lookout for just such characters. Now while I cannot speak for the Western States, I can at least speak for Canada; and I must now admit that, during my thirty-three years of contact with wilderness life, on one occasion—but on one only—I found that there was justification for describing the men of the northern wilderness as carrying firearms for protection. But does not the one exception prove the rule?
It happened near Stewart, on the borderline of Alaska, several years ago. I encountered a prospector who wanted to cross Portland Canal from Alaska to Canada, and as I was rowing over, I offered to take him across. When, however, he turned to pick up his pack I caught sight of something that fairly made me burst out laughing; for it was as funny a sight as though I had witnessed it on Piccadilly or Broadway. At first I thought he was a movie actor who, in some unaccountable way, had strayed from Los Angeles and become lost in the northern wilderness before he had had time to remove his ridiculous "make-up"; but a moment later he proved beyond doubt that he was not an actor, for he blushed scarlet when he observed that I was focussing a regular Mutt-and-Jeff dotted-line stare at a revolver that hung from his belt, and he faltered:
"But … Why the mirth?"
"Well, old man," I laughed again, "for over twenty-five years I have been roaming the Canadian wilderness from the borderline of Maine right up here to Alaska, and in all that time—with the exception of the Constables of the North-West Mounted Police—you are the first man, woman, or child, I have seen carrying a revolver. And I swear, old dear, that that's the truth. So now, do you wonder that I laugh?"