Part 12 (2/2)

But in the early stages they were fanatics and used to go on pilgrimages, they said in search of Christ. Inspector Junget, Sergeant (now Inspector) Spalding and others of the Police had a lot of trouble in rounding them up, giving them food and preventing them from shocking communities by their parades. The Police used great tact and in the end succeeded in impressing these strange people with some sense of responsibility. In the midst of the difficulty a half-crazed man named Sharpe crossed from the States with some others. He said he was ”Christ”

going to ”G.o.d's people, the Doukhobors,” but as he was heavily armed and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to stop him, his claim was naturally rejected. Inspector Tucker and a detachment went to see Sharpe and reported that an arrest could not be made without shooting, so it was decided to wait and watch. Sharpe sent the following letter to Tucker: ”To save bloodshed use some judgment. I will not give up alive, so some of us would be shot. If I have to continue amongst sinful men I had rather die. No one can say that Jesus is the Christ only by the Holy Ghost. The spirit came to Christ in the form of a dove. It came to me in the form of a lion. When the Doukhobors receive me, then the Lord will prove me and your eyes can open wide.” But the Doukhobors were getting their eyes open and the Police, rather than kill anyone, pursued a waiting policy with close supervision. Finally Peter Veregen, the czaristic leader of the Doukhobors, warned the Doukhobors not to receive Sharpe. This nonplussed the fanatic, who had come possibly with an eye to business. He expressed disgust at the way the Doukhobors were in subjection to Veregen, ”But they must be the people of G.o.d,” he said, ”or they would not be in such subservience. Veregen has a fine graft and I would like to run the spiritual side of the business for him.”

However, the redoubtable Peter wanted no partner, so Sharpe and his following crossed back to the States, informing Constable King, who saw them safely across, that ”they would be back next spring.” However, they came not. The Doukhobors, particularly the new generation, have made much progress and have prospered in establis.h.i.+ng some useful industries.

But for several years they were a source of a good deal of anxiety to the red-coated riders, who wished to guide them to better conditions without harshness. Events have justified the att.i.tude of the Police.

Of course, these law-enforcers still had the ordinary cla.s.s of offenders to deal with, for crimes like horse-stealing and ”cattle-rustling” die hard. For instance, a man named Marker, then south of the line in North Dakota, who, having been allowed out on bail by the Canadian authorities, when he was under a charge of horse-stealing, lost no time in going across beyond the reach of the Mounted Police. Corporal Church, on detachment work, kept his eye on the border for a sight of Marker, who might come over to replenish his stock of horses. Church got word of his intention at a given time, and taking a man named Kelly with him he rode all night, and finding a companion of Marker's, he got the information that the horse-stealer would likely cross over some 20 miles westward. Their horses were pretty tired, but Church and his men kept on, and concealed themselves near a trail crossing the boundary about that distance away. In a few hours Marker and another man rode over and Corporal Church, galloping up to him, ordered him to halt. Marker wheeled, drew his revolver and made for the line. Kelly headed him off and Marker shot at him, but missed. Kelly then charged, knocking both Marker and his horse over. He quickly remounted and rode on, but Church intercepted him, telling him he would shoot if he did not stop. Marker attempted to shoot the constable, but his revolver missed fire. Church then shot Marker's horse and captured the horse-stealer before he got to the line. Church then hired a team to take the prisoner to the detachment headquarters. But when the wagon on a winding road seemed to be on the American side of the line, Marker threw himself from the conveyance and reaching a house at the spot, rushed in and slammed the door. Church reports: ”I forced the door open and was met by a blow in the eye from Marker, who had taken his spurs off and used same as a weapon. I grappled with him and threw him on the floor, and with a.s.sistance tied his hands and feet after a good rough and tumble sc.r.a.p.”

Church had done his duty surely, but whether lawyers and surveyors would prove that the arrest was made a few feet over the line or not we cannot say. The lads of the scarlet tunic always got their man, but the courts sometimes let him go again.

In support of the position taken by Superintendent Wood, already quoted in regard to the orderliness of the Yukon, it is interesting to quote from Inspector Wroughton, who was in command of the Dawson Division. He says, looking back over 1908, ”I am pleased to report that there has been very little crime in this district during the last eleven months and, I might say, none of a serious nature.” In the list of cases for gambling and such like one can gather from the names that the Mounted Police did not confine their efforts to suppressing gambling amongst aliens as some have done elsewhere. The majority of names mentioned are of our own race. The Mounted Police played no favourites.

In his report for 1910, Commissioner Perry makes the almost incredible statement that twenty-five new detachments have been established during the past year without any increase in the strength of the Force. The corps seems to have had all through the years an extraordinary elasticity. It seemed to be able to stretch itself over constantly growing areas of settlement and to meet the situation created by the increasing tide of immigration that was flowing over the great new West.

That could only be effected because of the superior quality of the individual men, their ability to act separately and upon individual initiative. They did not require to have ma.s.s formation to keep their courage up to the necessary pitch. And still better they had the training that would make them reliable in judgment when sudden and unexpected conditions arose. Perry's policy to have a goodly number of men always in training at headquarters so that unready recruits should not have to go out to face emergencies, was being approved by events as highly statesman-like. But he was right in constantly keeping before the Government the need for increasing the numbers of the Force, because, although the men were wonderfully efficient and could be trusted even in ”detachments of one,” the fact was that burdens were laid upon one man that should have been borne by two or three. To many a man the increase in the number of detachments meant doubling his hours in the saddle and lessening his hours for recuperation. One wonders that more men did not break down under the strain. But for their invariable high calibre this would have been the result. An indication of the way in which the arduous labours of the Police were appreciated is found in the 1909 report of the Commissioner of Agriculture in Saskatchewan, who speaks of the ”invaluable a.s.sistance given by the officers and men in enforcing the various ordinances of the department. In particular I refer to the Horse-breeders Ordinance, the Fire and Game Ordinances and the Public Health Act, the latter calling for vigilant work in patrolling foreign settlements quarantined for outbreaks of infectious and contagious diseases. Had it not been for the excellent service rendered to the department by this hard-working and highly-trained force of men, the spread of disease would probably have reached epidemic proportions.”

Speaking of the kind of men required to keep up the reputation of the Force, Commissioner Perry has this illuminating statement: ”We require sober, trustworthy men; those who are not, only remain in the Force until they are found out.”

During the year 1910, there were some notable changes in the Force.

Wood, who had served for thirteen years in the Yukon, ten of which as the highly efficient Officer Commanding, was promoted to be a.s.sistant Commissioner; Starnes, who had done difficult work in many places, latterly in the Hudson's Bay district, was promoted to the rank of Superintendent; Sergeants Sweetapple, Raven, Fitzgerald and Hertzog became Inspectors; while two excellent officers, Inspector John Taylor, son of Sir Thomas Taylor, Chief Justice of Manitoba, and Inspector Church, the famous riding master, were called by death.

Superintendent Cortlandt Starnes gives a rather chilling picture of the Mounted Police surroundings at Fort Churchill where the weather indicator was for months. .h.i.tting the bottom of the thermometer bulb, and where there was a general monotony in surroundings. He says, ”The place is a dreary one, and there is nothing in the way of recreation for the men except reading and no place to go except the Hudson's Bay post and the English Church mission on a Sunday.” This is a good tribute to the self-sacrifice of the missionary. Starnes goes on to say, ”There was a gramophone, but it is broken and out of order. The mess-room is a cold and forbidding place.” Starnes has a good appreciation of the value of some cheerful environment for his men, for he says, ”I have had some chairs put up instead of the long benches, and I have requisitioned for a few pictures to put on the walls. I would also like to have the tin plates and cups replaced by the ordinary white crockery, or crockery of a cheap standard pattern.” Starnes is not extravagant in his requisition. Canada is a rich country, and these men holding her lonely outposts deserve consideration, but some picayune arm-chair censor may cut things out, and so the Superintendent goes warily, but he will not desist altogether because he knows the place better than the censor, and he knows that his men should have some reasonable comforts. ”A small billiard table,” he says, ”and some additional books and magazines would be acceptable. The library is well patronized, but in a year's time the most of its books will have been read.” A year is quite a while to wait for a mail. It was at a post something like this one that one early Hudson's Bay Company official heard of the Battle of Waterloo a year after it happened. But he held a celebration even then, for were not these grim old traders men of British stock who were holding a new Empire for the British Crown? Of course, things were improving since the advent of the Mounted Police, for they had inst.i.tuted what Inspector Jennings facetiously called a ”rural mail delivery” through regions near the Pole. Jennings himself and his men had patrolled through snow and ice very extensively that year, and the sense of humour that could speak of this white wilderness as a ”rural route” would be a saving make-believe in the midst of Arctic blizzards. And the thought of bearing a loving missive to solitary men from friends thousands of miles distant, might well thrill the imagination of these knights of the modern day.

CHAPTER XV

GLORY AND TRAGEDY IN THE NORTH

In the recent Great War a somewhat casual visitor was present when a vagrant sh.e.l.l smashed the refreshment dug-out where a young Red Cross man was handling some comforts for the khaki-clad boys near the front line. And when the alarmed visitor explained to the dispenser of refreshments, ”I would not stay here for a hundred dollars a day,” the answer came back swiftly but kindly, ”Neither would I.” He was not there for the hope of gain, but out of a sense of duty and adventure so strong that both danger and remuneration were forgotten.

There was a good deal of this spirit manifest in Mounted Police history from the beginning. Not the pittance in the way of pay drew men to the corps, but the love of the adventurous and the desire to do work in the out-of-the-way places, where new trails had to be blazed beyond the accustomed sky-line. This was especially true of the men who served and volunteered to serve again in the vast s.p.a.ces of the white and frozen North. Not for a hundred a day would they have so risked their lives, as others risk them still in that region. It was because the jurisdiction of their country's flag had to be a.s.serted, and because lonely outposts and scattered groups of sometimes starving natives challenged the best that was in them, that these uniformed crusaders went out again and again on their hazardous patrols.

And so, when in 1911 Inspector Fitzgerald, Constables Kinney, Taylor and Special Constable Carter, four men of the finest type and the most thorough experience in those desperate, trackless and frozen areas, men cast in so fine a mould that some of them were to be selected for the King's Coronation, perished on a patrol from Hersch.e.l.l Island to Fort Macpherson and Dawson City, Canada was stabbed broad awake to what the men of the Force had been doing for their country in those Arctic lands.

It seems as if such catastrophes are periodically required to make a selfish world aware of what some men are enduring in order that others may live in comfort and ease. But the world does not always receive such lessons in the right spirit. The tendency is rather to raise a protest against the authorities who permit men so to sacrifice themselves. Thus, when those four gallant men fell in the Northern wilderness, the first note from the press seemed to indicate that this patrol was an exceptional occurrence, and that it should not have been allowed to take place in view of the possible sacrifice it might involve. This gave Commissioner Perry, than whom no one was more deeply distressed and grieved at the tragic event, an opportunity to remind the country that such patrols had been for years a common and every-day event in the work of his men in the North. From year to year, under the Polar sky, in scores of different directions, the Police had carried on this work, performing definite duties, carrying mails, visiting camps of Indians and Esquimaux who were the wards of the nation, maintaining law and order beyond the confines of civilization and generally exercising a wholesome oversight in the loneliest s.p.a.ces in the world. ”This is dangerous work,” wrote the Commissioner; ”in our rigorous winter climate and in spite of every precaution, a tragedy may occur at any time. It does not deter our men from seeking service there, and it is to the North many prefer to go.” The spirit of adventure was in the blood of these men, and the tragic possibilities which no one foresaw as well as they did themselves erected no barrier which could discourage them in their endeavours. If there was the constant looming up of danger through the ”white death” fog, there was also the glory of adventure under the flas.h.i.+ng splendour of the aurora borealis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: R.N.W.M.P. BARRACKS, CHURCHILL, HUDSON BAY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: POLICE WITH DOGS AND EQUIPMENT ON SPLIT LAKE. N.W.T.]

And when Commissioner Perry wrote in his report as above quoted, he was able to support his statement by actual facts from that very same year.

He said: ”All over the North-land members of this Force are carrying out these difficult journeys. Attached to this report you will find many reports of equally dangerous patrols. Sergeant Hayter, 700 miles return journey from Fullerton along the West Coast of Hudson Bay to Rankin Inlet, to meet Sergeant Borden, who went up from Fort Churchill, carrying mail and taking a census of the Esquimaux; Sergeant Walker from Fort Churchill to York Factory and return; Sergeant Nicholls from Norway House to Fort Churchill and return to Gimli; Sergeant Edgenton from Split Lake to Fort Churchill, arriving with dogs abandoned by the way, and three days without food; Sergeant Munday from the Pas to Lac de Brochet and return, 900 miles in fifty-one days; and Sergeant MacLeod from Fort Vermilion across the Caribou Mountains to Great Slave Lake.”

This is a most formidable list, and to anyone who knows the country and the climate it affords the imagination a moving panorama, in which constant danger and almost incredible endurance are portrayed. All this forcibly reminded Canada of the devotion of her sons in the Northern hinterland, and that was the purpose of it being definitely stated. And it gives us a sort of veneration for the memory of the four men of the Fitzgerald patrol whose magnificent strength, after having been tried and proven on many similar journeys for years, succ.u.mbed before a combination of intolerable cold, blizzard-swept trails, unfamiliar river pa.s.ses, shortage of provisions and starving train-dogs. For it was the death of these men that brought home to the people the astonis.h.i.+ng achievements and heroisms of Canadian chivalry on the frontiers.

Fitzgerald himself, as we have already seen, had been famous for years as an intrepid patrol man, and had been promoted to the rank of Inspector for his services. All the others, Kinney, Taylor and ex-Constable Carter, had been more than once mentioned in dispatches.

This is a legitimate expression, because in reality the Mounted Police were always on active service, and their merits were made known in the reports of their superior officers.

Strangely enough, from the human viewpoint, it was at Fitzgerald's own request that he was selected by the Commissioner in 1910 to take command of the Mackenzie River district. It was only the year before that he, then a staff-sergeant, had handed over that district to Inspector Jennings, but after receiving his promotion, Fitzgerald heard the insistent call of the great familiar North so overwhelmingly that he asked to be sent back into the white wastes again. And further, to vindicate some divine purpose running through it all, he suggested the patrol in that direction himself. The patrol had always been from ”Dawson to Fort Macpherson and Hersch.e.l.l,” but Fitzgerald asked to have its order reversed, and offered to go from Hersch.e.l.l Island to Macpherson and Dawson, from which latter point he could get into touch by wire with headquarters at Regina and report on his district. To this the Commissioner agreed, and so notified the Comptroller at Ottawa, as well as the officer commanding at Dawson, who was told to expect the patrol from Macpherson about the end of January.

When the patrol started from Fort Macpherson everything seemed favourable for a mid-winter trip. The men were all in fit condition, thoroughly acquainted with conditions of winter travel, and so keen to make a record journey that they did not burden themselves with more food than necessary for themselves and their dogs, of which they had fifteen for their three trains. The sequel proved that had they been able to keep the route they would have made Dawson in good shape. The trouble came upon them when neither map nor compa.s.s or any previous knowledge availed them in the maze of rivers and mountains that lay in their way.

Taylor and Kinney had never been over the route, Fitzgerald had been over it once on another trail from the Dawson end. Carter had been over the new trail once a few years previously, but he, too, had come over it from Dawson to Macpherson, and a route with its piloting marks of bluffs and trees or banks by the way-side looks quite different when traversed the opposite way. Carter was a powerful, experienced and thoroughly reliable man, who had seen much service in the Force. Though not in the corps at the time of the patrol, he had been confident of his ability to guide the party to Dawson, and Fitzgerald had taken him on in that capacity.

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