Policing the plains : $b being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted PoliceMacBeth, R. G. (Roderick George)
History
Policing the plains : $b being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted Police
MacBeth, R. G. (Roderick George)
Northwest, Canadian -- History; Royal Canadian Mounted Police
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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