e that, or
he would not have been up to the Mounted Police standard in resource and
inventive capacity. So, as the river was impassable in the ordinary way,
Clisby commandeered a railway hand-car, and possibly nailed an extra
plank or two upon it. Then he got his troop-horse to climb up and stand
upon it, while this strong-armed constable took hold of the
"pump-handle" and worked his way across the trestle railway bridge many
feet above the surging river. One can easily see what a desperate risk
this was to take in cold blood. The big bronco had been broken enough
for use on the solid earth by an expert. But to venture into the air
with a semi-wild horse, which by any movement of fright at the unusual
experience might upset the whole outfit into the river, was about as
daring an experiment as anyone could try. But the strange transport got
safely over, and Clisby, shaking out that bronco into a long gallop,
found his man in the home of a settler, engaged in filing off the
leg-iron in order to be able to get away more swiftly. Of course the
prisoner was gathered in, as was also the settler who had loaned the
file and was standing by watching the interesting process. The peculiar
thing was that when the settler, who had given the escaping prisoner the
file and stood by to see him use it to make his escape more certain, was
brought up before two magistrates for helping a prisoner to elude his
sentence, these sapient administrators of law dismissed the charge. This
miscarriage of justice so disgusted both the constable and his
superintendent that in, contemplation of it they seemed to forget the
astonishing feat with the hand-car. But we dig it up proudly from the
old report. It is in keeping with this desire on the part of the Mounted
Police to see justice meted out to the guilty for the protection of
society that we find them impatient with legal technicalities which
freed the guilty, or the views of any legally constituted body which
headed off further investigation into what was possibly serious crime.
And this remark is made at this point, because I come across a report in
which a Mounted Police Superintendent, while not openly complaining,
thinks it worth while to call attention to a Coroner's jury which, after
inquest in the case of a man who had been found dead with his neck
broken, brings in the unexpected verdict that the man died by the
visitation of God. The fact that the Superintendent simply states the
matter w