The Law and the Lawless: Frontier Justice on the Canadian Prairies 1896-1935

CHAPTER

1

The Murder of Sergeant Wilde

Sergeant William Brock Wilde of the North West Mounted Police reined in his great black gelding, Major, and gazed over the mighty panorama of mountain and prairie in Southern Alberta. It was October 1896, and the tang of autumn was in the air. The groves of poplar were a brilliant yellow, and to the west, fresh snow sparkled on the rugged peaks of the Rockies. The lofty peaks rolled in purple convolutions down to the plain, masking the entrance to the Crowsnest Pass, twenty-five miles to the west. To the east, the reaches of grass-covered prairie swayed like a straw-coloured sea, stretching to the Blood and Peigan reserves and far beyond.

Touching his mount with his spurs, the sergeant followed the trail that dipped into a fold in the prairie that all but hid the pioneer settlement of Pincher Creek. As he jogged down the narrow main street between rows of shaggy cayuses tied to hitching rails, he acknowledged with a wave the raucous greetings of tweed-clad remittance men and long-limbed cowpokes. Halting before the log-walled barracks, he entered the guardroom and slammed his Stetson on a peg. Then he rolled a cigarette and turned to Constable Murison. Well, what’s new?

Circle-C reports another bunch of steers missing, the constable replied. They blame old Crow Eagle’s Peigans.

Crow Eagle! Wilde expelled a cloud of smoke. Why in hell, he growled, did I ever come to this God-forsaken spot to round up rustled stock? If only there was a little excitement to wake things up!

Little did Wilde realize that a few miles away, on the Blood Reserve, an event had occurred that would provide not only the sergeant but the NWMP with enough excitement to keep them active for many days.

A few days earlier, on the reserve, six Native girls had quirted their ponies across the grassland, looking for wood for the teepee fires. One of them, Troubles Shining, swung her pinto toward the Cochrane Ranch, leapt to the ground, climbed a fence, and pointed toward a tumbledown log shed. She was soon joined by Singing-On-The-Shore and the other girls. As they reached the shed and peered through the holes between the logs, Singing-On-The-Shore saw something that caused her to gasp. Lying outstretched on a pile of hay was the body of Medicine Pipe Stem, who was admired by every girl on the reserve. At first it looked as though he’d been indulging too liberally in the white man’s firewater. But a second glance told the horrified girl that the handsome, six-foot-tall young man of the Blood Lodges was dead.

Thoroughly frightened, the girls leapt on their horses and rode rapidly away, all promising one another to be silent. But gradually the moccasin telegraph carried the news from teepee to teepee and hut to hut until Medicine Pipe Stem’s death was known throughout the sprawling reserve.

On the evening of October 12, 1896—two days after the discovery of the dead man’s body—farm instructor Edward McNeill lit the coal-oil lamp in his office at the Blood Indian Agency and stepped over to the window to draw the blind. From out of the darkness blossomed a rose of flame accompanied by the spiteful crack of a rifle and tinkling of broken glass. A flowerpot on the windowsill exploded, scattering soil in all directions. Blinded by the spraying dirt, McNeill groaned and sank to the floor, clutching his bleeding left side.

Within a few minutes, Indian Agent Robert Wilson was administering to the wounded man what rudimentary knowledge he possessed. For God’s sake, McNeill, he stammered. What happened?

Damned if I know, groaned McNeill, his face contorted with pain. I just can’t figure it out. I was standing at the window when all hell suddenly broke loose.

A check showed that the bullet had been fired from out on the prairie. After striking the flowerpot and seriously wounding McNeill, it passed through the rear wall of the office, struck a window casing, and fell to the floor. A Winchester .44, said Wilson as he examined it closely. "Could have come from any one of a hundred rifles around here. If it hadn’t been for that flowerpot deflecting the bullet, Mac, you’d be a dead man now!’’

Hardly had McNeill been made comfortable and the flow of blood stopped when trader Joe Makin galloped up. Medicine Pipe Stem’s dead! he said excitedly. I’ve just found his body. My wife heard about some women finding a Native guy lying on a pile of hay in a shack near the Cochrane Ranch. Figurin’ it was some young buck sleeping off a load of hootch, I moseyed over and found him. Pipe was stretched out with his head on a beaded vest, dead as a doornail.

Thanks! Wilson wearily mopped his brow. Confused, and not a little alarmed, he promptly got in touch with Superintendent Sam Steele, the Officer Commanding of D Division of the NWMP at Fort Macleod.

A few hours later, Constable Murison and Police Sergeant W.D. Anderson, guided by the Native police scout Falling Pine, arrived at the deserted cattle shed. Examination of the body disclosed no sign of violence, although there was dried blood on his shirt, and blood had run from his nose and mouth. They moved the body to the police detachment at Big Bend. At an autopsy a few days later, Dr. Haultain discovered that Medicine Pipe Stem had been murdered. A bullet had entered his left eye and killed him instantly.

It looks to me, Superintendent Steele later summarized to Inspector A.M. Jarvis, as though there’s some woman behind this business. Right now we’re sitting on a powder keg with all these disgruntled Native people penned on reserves. We’ve simply got to get the murderer as quickly as we can and show these people we’re standing for no nonsense. He heaved his thickset figure from the chair. I’m leaving this whole investigation to you. Check up with Indian Agent Wilson and see what’s behind the attempt to kill McNeill.

Convinced there was some connection between the killing of Medicine Pipe Stem and the attempt on McNeill’s life, Jarvis proceeded methodically to comb the reserve and grill everyone on it. The dead man, he learned, had been missed by relatives for quite a few days, though none knew anything of his movements.

Frustrated, and realizing that any delay in arresting the killer would have a serious effect on the Force’s prestige, Jarvis turned to the Blood Indian police scouts. Summoning Chief Scout Green Grass, Many Tail Feathers, and Falling Pine, he turned them loose with liberal directions to listen to lodge-fire gossip and report any clues they might stumble across.

Then, suddenly, the stalemate was broken. From Ann Healy, a mixed-race girl, the inspector learned that a couple of weeks earlier, Bad Young Man—more popularly known as Charcoal, a quick-tempered and athletic young brave—had returned unexpectedly to his teepee to find his latest wife, Pretty Wolverine, in a clump of poplars engaged in an amorous dalliance with Medicine Pipe Stem. Though chased away from the vicinity, the insistent young man, with the connivance of Pretty Wolverine, had continued his illicit lovemaking when Charcoal was busy haying for the NWMP. He was caught a second time and threatened with vengeance. On the day of Medicine Pipe Stem’s disappearance, Ann Healy related, Charcoal had ordered his wife to help tramp down hay in the rack. Pretty Wolverine had other ideas. I’m sick in the head, she told him. I can’t go.

Charcoal had forced his wife to accompany him and was keeping an alert eye on his rival. Wielding a scythe in the shadow of a willow clump, he watched Medicine Pipe Stem manoeuvre toward the deep grass and suddenly disappear. About the same time, Pretty Wolverine also disappeared. Worming stealthily through the buffalo grass, Charcoal spotted the pair’s horses grazing nearby. He trailed Medicine Pipe to the cattle shed and a few moments later was peering through a crack in the logs. Within, as he’d expected, he saw his wife in an amorous tryst with Medicine Pipe Stem. Beside himself with anger, Charcoal had dragged her back to his lodge. And nobody had seen Medicine Pipe Stem since. Such was the gist of Ann Healy’s story.

Exultant though he was at this lead, Jarvis was still perplexed as his horse trotted toward the agency. What possible connection could there be between Charcoal’s probable slaying of the man who’d played fast and loose with one of his wives and the attempted murder of McNeill? With his mind in turmoil, he reached the Blood Agency to find Falling Pine awaiting him.

The scout expelled a puff of acrid kinnikinnick smoke and nodded gravely. Charcoal, him crazy, he said, his eyes fixed on Jarvis. Then, in the sonorous Blackfoot tongue, he told the first chapter in a drama that sent the Mounted Police on one of the most gruelling chases in their history and brought tragedy and terror to the Prairies.

Shortly after his talk with the inspector, Falling Pine had ridden back to his teepee. After dark, he’d been awakened by the snorting of horses. A moment later, a shadowy figure slunk into his lodge carrying a gun. Stirring up the embers of the lodge fire so that they threw a flickering light, he recognized Charcoal. I’m in trouble, Charcoal told him as he hungrily devoured the antelope meat set before him. I’ve killed that dog Medicine Pipe Stem. Now I’m going to leave the reserve and hunt a living in the mountains . . . and I’ll shoot any red-coated Shimaganis [policeman] dog who tries to follow me!

"The Shimaganis have already found the body of Medicine Pipe