r across the bridge, the desperado
fighting like a demon, and a scarlet woman following them with cries and
curses. Fury and Fane were in the rear trying to hold back the gang of
some three hundred men. Steele called on Johnston to come with him to
read the Riot Act and then rushed out, got a rifle from one of the
guard, and ignoring his fevered condition ran across the bridge,
covering the crowd with the rifle and saying he would shoot the first
man who dared to cross. The crowd could hardly believe their eyes when
they saw Steele and shouted, "Even his death-bed does not scare him." In
the meantime the desperate prisoner was struggling fiercely with the men
who had him, but when on the bridge Walters raised his powerful fist and
struck him over the temple, and with Craig trailed him like a rag into
the barracks. As the woman passed screaming, "You red-coated devil,"
Steele shouted, "Take her along too." Then Johnston read the Riot Act
and Steele made a straight statement that the Police, though few, would
not flinch and that if he saw more than twelve rioters together he would
open fire and mow them down. And the eight Mounted Police stood there
under Sergeant Fury with magazines charged, ready to act when ordered.
The riot collapsed right there, the ringleaders were sentenced next day
and there was no more trouble. The roughs at the Beaver had tried the
game of rioting with the wrong men.

And in order to show that the Police took no sides, but sought to hold
the balance level in these matters, we might recall an instance related
by Superintendent J. H. McIlree, where men had been hired by contractors
on the understanding that when a section of the railway was finished to
Calgary, these men would be paid off and sent back to their homes in the
East. However, the contractors, when they came to that point, would not
provide transportation to the East, but wished to send them farther
West. The men refused, and after a few days took possession of a train
of empty cars going eastward. The Police could not allow this
commandeering of the property of the railway company for the failure of
certain contractors, and so they caused the men to leave the train, but
these same Police, once they discovered the real situation, made it so
hot for those contractors that they were glad to yield and give the men
what they had agreed. So all along the line, from the time it crossed
the Red River in 1881 till it reached the Pacific five ye