These policemen were making a constant study of the unveneered humanity on the frontier and developed a keen perception of right and wrong, and had a rugged conviction that every one should get a square deal, but should realize that he must bear his own burden of responsibility. A fine instance of the Police opinion that men should get fair play is found in the report of Inspector A. M. Jarvis, who in 1901 was in command of the Dalton trail post in the Yukon country. He says, "The Dalton trail, which is the pioneer route to the 'inside,' is much in need of repairs. A vast area is tributary to this trail. From the Yukon River to the 141st parallel and as far north as the White River the Dalton trail is the main artery. Three years before the Klondike was heard of, Mr. Dalton blazed his route into the interior, acting as guide to the explorers into the country where he had done important work or trading in furs. When the rush into the gold-fields took place, he spent large sums in bridges and corduroy, especially between Dalton House and Five Fingers, which, now that the Yukon has the monopoly in freight and passengers, brings him no return. While the construction of this trail was a business venture, yet it remains a benefit to the country, and is of great value to the prospector. I should like to see Mr. Dalton recompensed for his unprofitable outlay." What came of this suggestion history does not record. The world is under immense obligation to adventurers who have blazed new trails to hidden natural resources. But the world is not always as fair as this Police Inspector in recognizing its obligation.
In his report in 1902 Commissioner Perry, in view perhaps of comments made by some who were ignorant of conditions, and such are occasionally found in public bodies, frankly says that the expenditure on the Mounted Police is large, but that when it is looked upon as a factor in the peaceful settlement of a vast territory, such expenditure is a splendid investment which will pay big dividends to the country for generations in the form of a contented, happy and prosperous population. The Commissioner's words are that "the benefits will be reaped by posterity when the Force has disappeared and its work is forgotten." It is hard to get these policemen to estimate their work highly enough. They have the usual British reticence intensified by definite practise of it, and that is why no man who has been a member of the Force will ever give a true history of its achievements. He is afraid to give the Force its due lest he should seem to be boastful when he records deeds that are stranger than fiction. And so when the Commissioner speaks of the Force disappearing and its work being forgotten we must enter a protest against this being read except in the light of the well-known habit of these men to keep religiously far away from the braggart spirit. The Force has undergone changes and may ultimately disappear in so far as the present form of organization is concerned, but those of us who have known the country and the men all through the years affirm without reservation that it can never be forgotten. The work of the corps has been so indelibly stamped upon the history of Canada that the record can never be erased as long as this country endures.
How, for instance, can any country forget a Force concerning one of whose members this same Commissioner Perry, proud always of his men, writes in the very next paragraph, "To one who is unacquainted with the country it is difficult to convey any adequate idea of the labour involved in policing such a vast region and carrying out the multifarious duties imposed on us. As an instance of this I may mention the work done by Corporal Field last winter. He is stationed at Fort Chippewyan, Athabasca. He was informed that a man had gone violently insane at Hay River, 350 miles from his post. He proceeded there with dog train, accompanied by the interpreter only and brought the unfortunate man, who was a raving maniac, back to Fort Chippewyan, and thence escorted him to Fort Saskatchewan, travelling a distance of 1,300 miles with dogs and occupying forty-four days on the journey. This is not an isolated instance. It represents the work of Inspector West and his men in the Northern Country."
All this is written by the Commissioner with the most admirable and characteristic police restraint. He gives the facts in outline and leaves the rest to the imagination of those who know the country. He says nothing about Corporal (later Inspector) Field having just come in from a long patrol, tired and entitled to a rest, albeit he was a noted trail-maker. Nor does he relate any details of the trip after the insane unfortunate. But those who have travelled the broken plain can see much between the lines of the simply worded report. We can see the vast white expanse of snow and ice wind swept at times by the fierce blizzards out of the north. We can see the return journey when the violent man would have to be watched day and night and yet given liberty enough at times to keep him from being chloroformed with the cold. A fine humane act was this and one that could only be done by a man who embodied in himself the coolness, courage and gentleness that form so splendid a combination. This and countless deeds of a like kind ensure the Mounted Police an enduring place in our Canadian temple of Fame.
It appears that there were always some people who believed that all they had to do when any mishap occurred in their experience was to sit back and get the Police to put things right. This was a tribute to the way in which the Force had exercised paternal oversight in their districts. But it was carrying things rather too far and forgetting that the best help comes to those who help themselves. There was a good deal of horse-stealing and horse-straying in progress in 1902 and when their horse got out of sight some settlers imagined they were stolen when in reality they had only strayed. These people thought the Police should assume the task of securing the return of their herds and droves. This calls a mild protest from Inspector J. O. Wilson, when at Regina. Wilson says, "Settlers are still prone to report a horse stolen when it is missing without making any special effort to find it themselves. There is a case on record where a settler named Hansen, who for the past seven years has lost horses, now expects the Police to find them for him. Much time has been spent in fully investigating his complaints, but this gentleman is not yet satisfied and has written to say that he considers it the duty of the Police to hunt up lost horses." And then the Inspector indicates the lines along which the efforts of the Force are properly directed. "In connection with this," he says, "I beg to state that when horses are reported lost, descriptions are forwarded to all detachments and instructions issued that should they be seen or heard the owners are to be notified. A large number of horses have been returned to their owners in this way." But to leave their police duties and hunt the stray horses of careless settlers was a little too much to ask.
Up in the Yukon that year there were contrasting pictures of events in a country that could always be counted on for happenings of interest. There is a fine touch in a report from that tender-hearted officer, the late Inspector Horrigan. Two gallant Police Constables, Campbell and Heathcote, were drowned at the mouth of the Stickine River, where they were crossing in an old boat as no other was at hand. Campbell's body was not found, but Heathcote's was recovered and brought to the nearest point, Wrangel, in the United States, for interment. "I am informed that the funeral was one of the largest and most impressive ever held in Wrangel. The service was conducted by the Rev. Mr. Reirdon, of the Presbyterian Church, with a full choir. The edifice was crowded to the doors, and the majority followed the remains to the last resting place. I chanced to be in Wrangel on June 30, Memorial Day, and noticing a procession of children clothed in white, several veterans of the Civil War and a number of citizens, I followed them to the cemetery and witnessed a very touching sight. To my surprise I noticed that Constable Heathcote's was the first grave decorated with bouquets and sweet-smelling flowers by kind and loving hands. It mattered not to them what altar he knelt at or what flag he had served under. They knew him in life as a policeman, proud of his uniform and his country. In death they honoured his memory." This is well put by Horrigan, and the whole incident indicated the deep-seated attachment existing between the two great branches of the English-speaking race. Incidents like this go far to destroy the "ancient grudge" which some Americans have against Britain because a century and a half ago a foolish British King and a still more foolish set of advisers treated British subjects overseas in an absolutely un-British way.
And then in the same northern area we have in the report of that exact and capable Inspector, W. H. Routledge, another side of life in the account of a murder case which, in cold-blooded deliberateness and treachery, perhaps puts the O'Brien case into the shade. O'Brien was a very inhuman and brutal murderer, but he, though on the look-out for prey, seems to have somewhat accidentally fallen in at Fossal's road-house with the three men he murdered a few miles farther along the way. But there is no particular evidence that he had made special efforts to be their ostensibly friendly companion beyond the usual comradeship of mutual helpfulness on the trail. But in the case Routledge reports two men, La Belle and Fournier, seem to have gone to White Horse with the deliberate intention of ingratiating themselves with some of their fellow-countrymen by the use of their French mother tongue, joining them on the way down to Dawson, and then murdering them when they arrived at a convenient place. And so these two creatures found at White Horse, Leon Bouthilette, Guy Beaudien, and Alphonse Constantin from Beauce County, Quebec, who had recently come from the East, going to Dawson. La Belle and Fournier got passage with these men on a small boat, travelled with them, camped, ate, and slept with them till one night in camp on an island near Stewart River they murdered their three hosts, probably in sleep, and after rifling their pockets, and to hide their crime, they tied the bodies up, weighted with stones, and threw them in the river. Then they burned up all evidences of their crime, got in the boat and went to Dawson, from which place they proceeded farther, found another compatriot named Guilbault and murdered him on the way to Circle City, Alaska. Once again it was a case where the murderers left no possible witness to testify and considered they were safe. But they forgot they were in the Mounted Police country—in the land of the men in scarlet and gold who never let go till justice is done.
The Police at White Horse had the number of the boat, 3744, and the names of all the men in it. Other boats, starting from White Horse about the same time, arrived in Dawson. But boat 3744 and its occupants, though seen by several on the way, dropped out of sight at Stewart River and was not seen again till Constable Egan discovered it empty at Klondike city.
The body of a man who had been killed by bullets was found in the river, and there was a small key tag with the name "Bouthilette, Beauce, P.Q." on it. This gave the Police a clue, and it was followed with characteristic energy and skill. A web of circumstantial evidence had again to be woven. Later on another body was found and Surgeons Madore and Thompson were satisfied that another death by violence had occurred. The body corresponded with the description given of Guy Beaudien. Constable Burns, of the Dawson Division, who could speak French like a native, haunted the mines and creeks in plain clothes, unearthed Fournier, who was identified by one Mack, who had seen him at White Horse, as one of the men in boat 3744. Detective Constable Welsh, Sergeant Smith, Corporal Piper, Constables Burke and Falconer with others were on the scent. Welsh went to Skagway and found the sailing list of the boat Amur on which the murdered men had come from Seattle. To that point and others he went, and then acting on information from Constable Burns, who had combed the French Colony for evidence, Welsh went on through six different States and finally caught and arrested La Belle in Nevada. La Belle said enough to indicate the whereabouts of the murder event and Welsh wired this information. Corporal Piper and Constable Woodill and the Dawson photographer went, located the "Murder Island," gathered some incriminating articles and took photographs from every angle. Then the work went on and the Police accumulated such an unbreakable chain-mail web of evidence starting with a man who had come with the murdered men from Montreal to White Horse, continuing with others who had seen all the parties on boat 3744 and then with men who had seen articles and money on La Belle and Fournier which they knew to have been the property of the murdered parties, that these cold-blooded monsters practically confessed, each throwing the blame on the other. They were committed for trial, found guilty by judge and jury, and paid the extreme penalty for their horrible crime.
Down on the prairie the Police were equally intent on duty and equally successful in serving notice on all and sundry that tampering with human life and prosperity would not be tolerated. And every one who came into the Canadian West was wise if he governed himself accordingly. An accomplished young forger and potentially worse, by the name of Ernest Cashel, barely twenty-two, drifted up to Calgary from the State of Wyoming and proceeded to test the calibre of Canadian authority. He was arrested, but escaped from the city authorities. Then the Mounted Police, whose officer commanding at Calgary was Superintendent Sanders, D.S.O., were called upon and discovered that Cashel had stolen a pony at Lacombe to help in his escape. Shortly afterwards D. A. Thomas, north of Red Deer, notified the Police that a relative, J. R. Belt, had disappeared from the latter's ranch east of Lacombe. Constable McLeod investigated and discovered that when Belt was last seen a young man, who gave himself the name of Elseworth, was staying with him. The description indicated that Elseworth and Cashel were one and the same. Belt's horse, saddle, shot gun, clothes and money, including a $50.00 gold bill, had vanished. It looked like a murder case, and so Superintendent Sanders put our old friend Constable Pennycuick, who had unearthed O'Brien in the Yukon, on the trail of Cashel. Every detachment of the Police was put on the scent. In a while a man, answering Cashel's description, stole a diamond ring up in the edge of the mountains and, despite great cunning, was arrested by Constable Blyth at Anthracite. He was wearing some clothes like Belt's and had the diamond ring. Then Constable Pennycuick, hearing that Cashel had been staying at a half-breed camp near Calgary, went there and got some clothing Cashel had left there. Part of it was the rest of Belt's corduroy suit. Pennycuick also got track of the $50.00 gold bill which had been seen by some of the half-breeds with Cashel. Pennycuick traced Cashel's route from Belt's to near Calgary with Belt's clothes, horse, saddle and the aforesaid $50.00 gold certificate. But thus far there was no evidence that Belt was not alive somewhere, and so Cashel was tried for stealing and sentenced to the penitentiary. Two months later the river gave up its dead, and the body was identified by certain marks and by an iron clamp on the heel of the boot. Bullet holes in the body of the same calibre as the revolver and rifle carried by Cashel completed the evidence. He was brought back from the penitentiary, charged with murder, and after a trial in which he was brilliantly defended by Mr. Nolan of Calgary, was sentenced to be hanged.