Lovers of the Horse 63 



Bisho]) Stringer, who was on mission duty in the Northwest, sjx)ke of the Monnted 

 Police as foUows: "We are ijetting more particuhir as to wliom we welc(;me to the great 

 north now. 'I"hi- tough finds his row a hard one to live, and this in a great measure is 

 due to the excellent management of tlie R.N.W.M.P., whose work in the wild sections 

 of the northland cannot he over-estimated It isn't the numbers of them, nor is it 

 the force of their authority; it is a subtle something which enters the mind of the 

 wrong-doer whenever he meets the eye of the man wearing the red jacket. Why, an 

 ordinary constable wearing no badge of office Ijeyond his small l)adge and red coat, 

 strikes terror to the heart of the roughest. It is the dignity and determination of the 

 Police, and the splendid esprit de corps of the force. The Mounted Police, it may l)e 

 asserted, have been the safety and pride of the whole north country." 



In short, the Mounted Police have brought Britisli law into Western Canada and 

 established it there. The settler nowadays, even in the Last West, doesn't even 

 carrv a hunting-knife, where once no man dared to travel without a regular arsenal. 



The Indians, too, have fallen into line. Many of them are engaged as laborers 

 in the construction of the new Govermnent transcontinental line, the (irand Trunk 

 Pacific, where once they did everything in their ])()wer to hinder any new work 

 instituted by the paleface. 



The mounted ])oliceman has done it all by his ])atience and fearless, unflinching 

 courage, his readiness to do the thing which came to his hand and do it well. He 

 has been policeman, magistrate, soldier, letter-carrier, executioner, detective — anything 

 that is in the day's work. 



There has never been a lynching in Canada ; never anything like the wars with 

 the Indians that the United States has wagcfl, and never a train rol)l)erv such as 

 figure even yet in the headlines of American newspapers. 



A favorite story out ^^est is that of the troop of American cavalry who escorted 

 a whole tribe of Indians to the Canadian border line, where they were met by one 

 solitarv mounted |)oliceman. .V (•ou|>le more appeared on the scene shoitly and the 

 troop of American cavalrymen sat there and watched the three go otf with their band 

 of bad Indians. 



How greatly the Indians have come to respect the justice and impartiahly of 

 British law is shown by the fact that an Indian who had escaped after being given a 

 fair trial and adjudged guilty, was handed over to the authorities again by his own 

 tril)e because they were convinced that his trial had been just. 



At the recent Tercentenary celebrations, a ]>rominent official said: "They are 

 the finest thing in the way of trained men whom this country has produced — modern 

 centaurs. Men with the iron wrist, who ride as straight as knights." But nothing 

 can be said, nothing written, to eml)ody the spirit of the force as did that message 

 found scrawled on the orders of a policeman who ])erished in a blizzard while making 

 his wav with dispatches to a distant |)ost In his dying houi'. witli numbed hand, he 

 wrote: "Lost; liorse dead. Am trying to push ahead. Have done my best." 



