ned this way wore a very dilapidated and sorry
appearance." But the Police, I suppose, helped them out of their
troubles, for these red-coated giants did not lose their humanitarian
disposition even amidst the follies of the foolish. And the Police knew
well the strain under which these deluded and disappointed people often
found themselves, for Wood tells us of the Police at Dawson and White
Horse having as many as forty lunatics committed to their care in a
single year. This involved heavy and anxious work, and the
Superintendent shows the spirit in which it was done when he laments the
lack of suitable accommodation and fears lest some of these unfortunates
may hurt themselves in the unsuitable quarters provided.

Speaking of the humanitarian disposition of the Police, one finds many
incidents to show how they resented offences against the helpless, and
how relentlessly they brought the perpetrators of such offences to book.
In the same year, 1904, of which we have been writing, Sergeant Field,
of Fort Chippewyan, to whose rescue of a lunatic we have already
referred, got word that an Indian had, at Black Lake, 250 miles away
from the Fort, deserted two little children, two and three years of age
and that these two children according to the testimony of other Indians
had been devoured by wolves. Part of the clothing had been found and all
around the blood-stained ground was trampled by wolves. The Indian was
at Fond-du-Lac, but could not be advantageously arrested unless Field
could get some evidence from others who were not there. So Field bided
his time till all the Indians were at Fond-du-Lac in the summer. Some
eight months had gone by, but Field did not forget. Fond-du-Lac was
several hundred miles from Fort Chippewyan, but Field got there at the
proper moment, arrested the Indian, took the witnesses along and started
for Edmonton, where the Indian was tried and given a term in the
penitentiary. It had cost Sergeant Field a strenuous trip by trail,
river and train of nearly eighteen hundred miles, but he had by his
action told the Indians of the whole region to deal properly with their
children and their old people.

A very remarkable case in 1904 was that in which after an extraordinary
display of mastery over difficulties, the Police under Staff-Sergeant
K. F. Anderson (now Inspector) brought one Charles King to justice for
the murder of his partner Edward Hayward, near Lesser Slave Lake in
Northern Alberta.