Policing the plains

by R. G. MacBeth

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

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

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

The question of pay for their men was a constant anxiety for the officers, who were themselves receiving a mere pittance in comparison with the salaries paid to men of equal education and experience in other departments of the civil service. So we find, in 1904, that fine officer, Superintendent Wood, in the Yukon making reference to the fact that though an increase of pay had been granted to others the pay of the Police had remained practically the same since their organization. Wood feels that it is humiliating for the men. "A constable's life," he writes, "is not altogether an enviable one. He is liable to be exposed to the inclemencies of the weather at all seasons of the year, and is at times called upon to risk his life in the performance of his duty. He is under much closer and severer restraint than private individuals." This is putting it all very mildly, as was the manner of the Police when they were speaking of themselves. Then Wood goes on to say, "It is of importance that a member of the Force should be made to feel that his position is an honourable one, and that he is entitled by virtue of his office or calling to the respect of the community at large. This state of things could be arrived at if he felt that his position was equal to those in other walks of life, and that his services were rated equally as high. But the mere fact of his receiving 50 cents to 75 cents a day with his food and clothes while carpenters, blacksmiths and labourers on the outside receive five times as much and in the Yukon ten times as much, is enough to instill a feeling of inferiority so far as his calling is concerned." This is an important view. And Wood in the same report emphasizes his argument, though he does not refer to it in that connection, that the Police are expected to do work as mail-carriers, postmasters and such like, outside proper police duty, because the country could not get civilians to do it at the remuneration offered. The whole thing troubles Wood, who was of a sensitive temperament and very anxious to retain high-class men in the Force. And so he refers to it again in the following year and says that a constable who was a skilled mechanic and was saving the country great expense by looking after the manufacture of stove pipes, tinware, etc., had been offered as much an hour by town merchants as he was getting in a day in the corps on the scale allowed by the Police Act. And Wood, who feels keenly for the men, says, "Our poor circumstances are so generally known that it has become usual to send members of the Force complimentary tickets for entertainments and reduce the fees in clubs and societies for them." Probably what was in the minds of those who sent tickets and reduced fees was that it was an honour to have with them the men in scarlet and gold who made human life and property safe on the frontier and whose standards of manners and education made them most desirable company. But the comparative poverty was there amidst abounding chances to be rich in the gold country and elsewhere in a new land. Men who served through the dangerous formative periods of Western history died poor in worldly goods. It is a fine thing to know that all through the years these men out of the sheer love of adventure and their high ideals of devotion to duty did such service, but the facts should not be lost sight of when the pensions of the "old guard" survivors are being considered from time to time.

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

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

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

CORONATION CONTINGENT. LONDON. 1911.