On the face of it, the politician should have found it easy to crush the policeman, for he enjoyed wide power.
That power was now let loose.
Welland chose his time admirably. A restless, frightened country found in the Prophet's first tirade only an echo of their own sentiments. What more natural than that the Eastern papers should gradually follow suit? What more natural than that paternal M.P.'s, animated by only the purest motives, should in their turn rise to their feet in the Dominion House and ask the Right Hon. This and the Hon. That whether, in view of the so-and-so in the Territories, they did not think, etc., etc., etc.? These things fanned the flames. In due course it became evident that public opinion, as a whole, believed that the Mounted Police were lamentably failing. Thence it was an easy step to the day when wise-acres in every part of the Dominion showered the hunters with advice and criticism. And gradually the matter crystallised into one indisputable fact: that if Mr. Whitewash Bill was not taken, and taken soon, someone would have to resign.
That someone was Superintendent Adair.
Led by the big ranchers—Jim Jackson could not control them—the people and the papers did their best to assist the hunt by hounding on the Police in general and the commander of the Broncho district in particular. 'What are the Police doing?' shrieked the papers. They censured Hector's dispositions, recommending marvellous sweepings and watchings, as if the hunt had an army at its command or was playing blind-man's buff in a nursery rather than a perilous game of you or me over an area as large as Scotland. When he exercised patience, they demanded vigorous action. When he gave them vigorous action, they talked of needless loss of life.
So they hounded him. Yet the hounding did no good. What is the use of lashing a dog when he is definitely checked on a lost scent?
Behind it all, carefully encouraging the detractors, stood the disinterested but righteously indignant Mr. Molyneux.
On the other hand, one paper alone maintained a violent counter-offensive—the Branding-Iron. Tom Williams believed in plain words, thrown straight. He threw them. At a critical stage, unfortunately, Mr. Molyneux sued Mr. Williams for libel. Pending trial, the judge ordered the Branding-Iron to leave the politician alone. Justice was thus deprived of a powerful ally. Injustice ranted on.
In the midst of this storm, apparently sublimely indifferent either to friend or foe, invulnerable, immovable, acting only as he thought best and not as others thought, cunning when he thought it wisest to be cunning, reckless when, in his view, the need arose, the leader of the hunt, 'Spirit-of-Iron,' stood up alone, 'four-square'—as Williams put it—'to every wind that blew.'
Whitewash Bill?—merely the pawn in this great contest between Right and Wrong!