saw a Calgary hailstorm. George Berney was running the hay-rack (which consists of an immense crate on wheels, so that it can be loaded and handled by one man) and I was raking, when, looking up, I saw terrible blue-black clouds rolling up the valley towards us, for all the world like Atlantic rollers. I shouted to George, lifted the rake, and headed for the house, about a mile away. By the time we had the horses safely in the stable and got over to the shack, the storm reached us. I have never seen its equal before or since. We could hear the roar of the hail long before it reached us, and when it did reach the clapboard roof it was deafening. One stone we measured was eight and a half inches in circumference, and seemed composed of about a dozen smaller ones congealed together. We had about twenty chickens killed; and some people lost heavily, losing even colts, calves, and pigs. The oat-crop, which was being harvested at the time, was so cut to bits and driven into the ground that not even straw was saved.
My first experience in Calgary was with the mounted police, for as we stopped at the station three policemen boarded our tourist sleeping-car, and while one stood guard at each door, the third walked over to one of the seats, lifted the spring cushion, and pulled out from the recess underneath a 2½-gallon keg of whisky. He asked the porter if it was his, and then asked every passenger, but all denied any knowledge of it. It was then taken outside, the head knocked out, and the whisky emptied on the ground. Of course the police had received previous notice from some one, possibly the very man who had sold it and knew its destination.
This prohibition of whisky, combined with the mounted police, has kept the North-West Territories from becoming, like Montana and Texas, a land full of “gun-plays” and “bad-men.” Not but what there has been whisky smuggled in in carloads of kerosene cans; there have also been “gun-plays” and “bad-men,” but they are the exception and not the rule, as further south. How easily a “bad-man” is made the following will show. A young fellow, well known and well liked round Calgary, got on a spree, and, after mounting his horse, proceeded yelling down the street. A city policeman (distinct from the mounted police) tried to arrest him. The puncher (cowboy) took down his rope, and galloping past the officer, roped him, and dragged him down the street at the end of the rope; finally he dropped the rope and rode off, leaving the officer seriously hurt. So far, only a Western version of what the university students used to do to the English police. But the sequel was different. The young fellow, instead of coming in the next morning, giving himself up, and taking his medicine, took to the hills, and it was up to the mounted police to bring him in. The open-house system I have mentioned before made it easy for him to live. But living in the hills and being hunted is demoralising, and the next thing was a “hold-up” of the Edmonton stage, for funds to leave the country, in which a man was killed. A reward was then offered for him, and people were warned not to harbour him. He was finally killed one night in town, shot from behind as he stood against the lighted window of a saloon looking in. Whether he was killed for the reward—which the killer was afterwards afraid to claim because of the young man’s friends—or whether it was a private grudge, no one ever knew, as the man who did it never came forward; or possibly he was killed for the money he took off the stage.
There is something peculiar about the air of the West which makes a man take readily to a gun and wish to be a law unto himself; but it is a strange fact that the worst “gun-men” the West has produced were easterners, and generally city-bred. Though in this case the mounted police had no success, they are generally on the spot when needed, as I saw on the Calgary racecourse one day. One of the onlookers called one of the jockeys a thief, and accused him of pulling a horse in the race. He had hardly finished speaking when the jockey, riding close up to the fence, slipped his stirrup-strap, and cut him over the head with the stirrup. They were both punchers, and their friends took it up, and two or three guns were drawn. But before anything occurred three mounted police rode up; one arrested the jockey, and the sight of the others soon restored peace.
The doctor for the Sarci Indian reservation, near Calgary, was Mr. Berney’s son-in-law. During the Riel rebellion the Sarci head chief promised that none of his bucks should go out; but, unfortunately, he fell sick, and the young bucks began to get restive, though as long as he was alive they did not dare to disobey the old chief. Dr. George told me he never had a case in his life where so much depended on his keeping his patient alive. However, the old man pulled through, and only a few stragglers joined the rebellion; had he died, Calgary would have been in the greatest danger. These Indians are a lazy, dirty lot, but have wonderful natural endurance. A mounted policeman told me of a chase an Indian on foot led him and a mounted comrade. They ran him eight miles before they captured him, and only twice did they get within roping distance of him, when he dodged like a rabbit. After leading them over the roughest ground he could find, he finally circled to where there was a herd of Indian ponies grazing, as his last chance. But one of the policemen headed off and stampeded the ponies, while the other, getting within striking distance, knocked the Indian down. The Blackfeet, though, are the only really troublesome Indians, as they are such inveterate thieves. A homesteader on the head of Sheep Creek came home one night to find his door-lock broken and all the food in the house carried off. While investigating, he found in a “draw” close to the house a camp of eight Blackfeet bucks enjoying his provisions. He kept his temper, and picking up what he could carry, took it up to the house. About his third trip he found out that the Indians were playing with him, for as fast as he could carry the stuff up they were carrying it back to the tepee. Then he lost his temper, and instead of going over to the nearest police scout and reporting the matter, he thought he would play a lone hand and scare the Indians. He pulled out his pistol, and throwing back the flap of the tepee, fired in two or three shots, without being very particular whether he hit any one or not. Unfortunately he killed one of them, and the others ran, being unarmed except for their knives. As soon as he realised what he had done, he caught his horse, came into town, and gave himself up. The police hustled him off to Regina, and that night his house was burned and his stock killed.
Of course the Calgary I am speaking about was Calgary of 1891, a town of about 5000 people; now it is a city of nearly 20,000, and the surrounding country is fast becoming a farming instead of a ranching section. Large irrigation works have been completed, and land is too valuable for grazing. The Indians mentioned here are very different from those to be seen in the States—for instance, at Pipestone, Minnesota. There the Indians used to hold their “truce of God” and smoked the pipe of peace, and they still frequent those rocks and hawk the pipes and other curios of soap-stone. But how changed from the braves of Ruxton and Cooper and Reid! The proud Pawnee now looks more like the degraded “digger Indians” of Mayne Reid! In the Dominion, however, the Indians have not been crushed as in the States; they were still formidable at the time of the Riel revolt some twenty years ago, and they can hold their own even now.now.
CHAPTER III
Road-agents—“Roping” contests—Broncho-busting—Strathclair—A blizzard—Lumber camps.
Montana, just across the line from Fort McLeod, was for years an example of what the North-West Territories might have been if it had not been for the mounted police and prohibition. There, in its earlier days, gun-men and even road-agents flourished, and killings were of everyday occurrence. In fact, at one time in Virginia City the sheriff, Plummer, was at the head of a band of organised road-agents which terrorised the country. Finally, the people rose in desperation, and following the example of California, formed a society of Vigilantes, and hanged all the bad-men, including the sheriff. Most of these men when cornered died like curs, but there were individuals, like George Sears, who at least knew how to die. When he was taken to the place of execution, he asked for time to pray, which was allowed him. Afterwards he made a short speech, in which he said he deserved his fate, but his contempt of death showed when requested to climb up the ladder which was to serve as a drop. He said, “Gentlemen, please excuse my awkwardness, as I have not had any experience. Am I to jump off or just slide off?”
In Montana, Indian Territory, and Texas, great roping contests
