"On the 17th instant I, Corporal Hogg, was called to the hotel to quiet a disturbance." Hogg put the state of disorder mildly. He proceeds: "I found the room full of cowboys and one, Monaghan or 'Cowboy Jack,' was carrying a gun and pointed it at me, against sections 105 and 109 of the Criminal Code." It was taking long chances, but the Mounted Police generally waited for the other man to start things. In this case they were started right there and then. For the Corporal goes on to say, "We struggled." This is terse, but it involved much more than was said, as will later appear. "Finally," proceeds the Corporal, "I got him handcuffed behind and put him inside. His head being in bad shape I had to engage the services of a doctor who dressed his wound and pronounced it as nothing serious. To the doctor Monaghan said that if I hadn't grabbed his gun there would have been another death in Canadian history. All of which I have the honour to report.
"(S.) C. HOGG, Corporal."
The Officer who received this report puts on the finishing touch by a memorandum upon it to this effect: "During the arrest of Monaghan the following property was damaged: Door broken, screen smashed up, chair broken, field jacket belonging to Corporal Hogg damaged, wall bespattered." It looks as if Monaghan's ancestors may have hailed from Donnybrook, and it must be admitted that he lived up to the traditions of Fair day in that region. But he had never met a North-West Mounted Policeman before and would probably be wiser in the future in regard to raising a "disturbance" when one of them was at hand.
Another evening a "bad man" from Idaho "blew in" to Weyburn. He was a sort of travelling arsenal and got very bold when he got into an unarmed Canadian town. He began shooting holes in verandahs, and if any one went to look out of a window the Idaho desperado threatened to "make him into a sieve." A prominent citizen was made to hold out his hat as a target for this pistol artist. This citizen remonstrated and warned the Idaho man that there was a Mounted Policeman not many miles away who would probably hear of the situation and come over. This enraged the "gun-man," who offered to bet that no Mounted Policeman could arrest him, adding, "if he comes to butt in to my game I will eat his liver cold." A telephone message was sent to Corporal Lett. It took some time to ride in, but Lett located the Idaho citizen terrorizing a bar-room. Lett walked in and the Idaho man had his gun up in a second. No one knew just how it happened, but Lett sprang at the desperado. There was a grapple and a fall, but when they got up Lett had the Idaho "gun" in his hand. The rest was simple. The gun-man had to hold out his hands for the "bracelets." Whether he paid the bet or not no one has recorded, but Lett got an extra stripe for his daring.
This recalls another real incident which my friend, Robert Stead, the well-known writer, has put into verse under the title, "A Squad of One," though he gives fictitious names. A certain Sergeant Blue of the Mounted Police who was alone at a prairie post got a letter from a United States Marshal asking him to find and arrest two men who had committed murder and escaped to our side of the line. There was always cordial reciprocity between the police officials along the boundary, and so the Marshal warns the Sergeant to send out his strongest squad of men to make the arrest of these fellows, for he said:
"They's as full of sin as a barrel of booze and as quick as a cat, with a gun,
So if you happen to hit their trail be sure to start the fun."
The Sergeant was alone, but started out next morning clad as a farm labourer, called at the farm suspected, found the men with shooting-irons, but got them talking and then got them separated and bagged them both at "the nose of a forty-four." And when he got back to his lonely post he wrote and mailed the following note:
"To U.S. Marshal of County Blank, Greetings I give to you:
My squad has just brought in your men and the squad was,
Sergeant Blue."
Of a different variety but with the same brand of cool courage is an old friend Donald McRae, still speaking with the Gaelic accent and now living in Vancouver, who when I saw him first wore the scarlet and gold in Steele's command. We were in action and McRae was shot rather severely in the advanced skirmish line. The ambulance men were on hand in a few minutes, but McRae refused to leave his position. He said he had half his cartridges left and would not budge till he used them. He stayed there till he used them, and years afterwards our gallant old Commander, General Strange, grizzled soldier of the Mutiny, met McRae on the coast and said jocularly to some in the company, that he had seen lots of service but that this Mounted Policeman was "the stubbornest man he had ever met." General Strange had Scottish ancestors and while quite stern about it at the time of the incident probably rejoiced in secret at McRae's tenacity.
These stories have been thrown in to indicate that all over the country the Police in their determination not to allow lawlessness of any kind to get a hold on the country, were doing remarkable exploits without advertising. But we exhume them from old documents to show how these things were done. And so as we resume our story we find Superintendent Wood in 1905 up in Dawson busy with the finger-print system in which he, as before mentioned, was a pioneer believer. Thus when a cabin had been robbed of a gold watch and other valuables, Wood was satisfied, without any other clue to the thief, when he found a finger-print on a lamp-chimney which the man had to light in order to see what he could annex. Then Wood proceeded to hunt for a criminal of the thief class, for he says, "It is well known that the criminal class at large are segregated into groups according to the line to which their abilities are applied." By following this idea he settled on a group of five who would likely do that sort of thing. Four of them did not answer to the finger-print test, but the fifth showed a facsimile of the print on the lamp-chimney. He was the man. So the Police were making it daily more impossible for criminals to ply their trade even in the remotest points.
In those days in quite another direction and with the purpose of inquiring into the possibilities of the Hudson Bay and Arctic regions, Inspector J. D. Moodie was engaging in his explorations, and his reports, with those of Starnes, Beyts, Pelletier, Howard, French, Sellers, Rowley and others, are being consulted anew in view of the project of railways to the great bays of the North. Some of these famous patrols we shall discuss later.