e presence of government.

Then there were the Indians, who saw in the advent of the railway the
necessary disappearance of big game from the plains, which would become
the habitat of the settler. More than once there were Indians who would
have blocked the way of the railway builders or would even have swooped
down in the night and torn up the rails, but for the restraining
presence of authority. And besides all these, there were some amongst
the huge gangs of navvies and general track-makers who had alien tastes
and habits, who required to be, on occasion, reminded that, while in a
British country no law-abiding man should be coerced into working
against his will if he was not satisfied with conditions, he must
respect the rights of human life and must not destroy the property of
others. All these cases and conditions became actualities in the West,
and with all these the Mounted Police dealt as occasions arose, in such
a way as to enable the march of civilization to proceed unchecked and
unafraid.

For the settlers who made the continuance of the railway possible, the
Mounted Policeman was a sort of guardian angel, and the well-known
painting by Paul Wickson which hangs in the Premier's office at Ottawa
shows how the patrol went about asking the homesteader if he had any
complaints. Only those perhaps who have lived on these far-sundered
homesteads know how much this meant to these lonely men and their
isolated families. Fighting prairie fires, when the mad battalions of
flame wheeled with the gale and charged at the humble dwelling or the
precious hay or wheat-stacks of the settler, was the willingly assumed
duty of many a rider of the plains. One recalls the case of Constable
Conradi, who, while on patrol one fall day when the dry grass was as
inflammable as tinder, asked a settler if there was any homesteader
living in the direction where a fire was rushing. The settler said yes,
that there was a man named Young, his wife and children, that way, but
it would be impossible to reach them through the fiery wall that was so
plainly visible. "Impossible or not," says the constable, "I am going to
try," and putting spurs to his horse he was soon lost to sight in the
rolling smoke. The horse was so badly burned that he had to be shot, but
Conradi saved the family. He found Mr. Young, the settler, exhausted.
They both fought the fierce blaze, and when hope of saving the home was
gone, the constable, plunging through the