he Sioux Indians south of the boundary
line in the region of Manitoba. There were recurrent "scares" and many
rumours of "Ghost dances" on our side of the line, in expectation, it
was said, of an incursion by the Sioux, who were reported to be stirring
up our Indians to commit depredations on the settlers. But the presence
and the constant patrols of Inspector J. A. McGibbon and his men in the
scarlet tunic soon restored the equilibrium of things and calmed the
fears of the settlers so that they went peacefully on with their work. A
literary outcome of the situation was the widely quoted and beneficially
humorous utterance of a punster on the staff of the Winnipeg Free Press,
who asserted that the Sioux (sue) scare was seizing a lot of fellows who
owed money.

The relations existing between the Mounted Police and the American
soldiery south of the line were always of the most cordial and fraternal
type. Superintendent A. W. Jarvis, who was in charge at Lethbridge in
the nineties, refers to this in one of his reports. He says, "Several
deserters from the American army arrived here in the spring, but only
one of them brought a horse. This was taken from him and was sent back
to the officer commanding at Fort Assiniboine. This was the only
opportunity I had to reciprocate the courtesy so freely extended to us
under similar circumstances by the American officers at that post. These
gentlemen have always shown themselves ready and willing to assist the
Mounted Police by any means in their power." Speaking of desertions it
was generally felt that a man who would desert was not really worth a
search. So far as the Mounted Police were concerned, there were not many
desertions, but there was probably more relief than otherwise when some
unworthy man took French leave and escaped. Such a man was not wanted.
The standing of the Force was to be maintained, and so the statement
once made by Commissioner Lawrence Herchmer became a classic: "I want to
see the Mounted Police Force to be the hardest to get into and the
easiest to get out of in the world."

There is a fine human picture in another clause of Superintendent A. W.
Jarvis' report already mentioned. He says: "On November 20 two boys,
aged 16 and 10 years respectively, sons of leading citizens of Medicine
Hat, were caught in a blizzard a few miles south of that town and frozen
to death. Two days later the Police Patrol from Bull's Head found the
bodies. Sergeant Mathewson rem