Early in its infancy, it was invaded by a band of crooks from the south, who started in on the bad man act, but Chief Justice Wood soon put them where the dogs couldn’t bite them with long sentences in jail or Stoney Mountain penitentiary. Those who didn’t come up before the Judge made a mad dash for liberty across the line. There were a couple of executions, but only one Winnipeg murder, and the Gribben murder, where a whiskey peddler along the line of railway construction shot a cabin boy of one of the river boats to death. Taking it all in all, life in Winnipeg was as safe as it is in Westmount to-day—but a dashed sight more exciting.
Down at Fisher’s Landing in Minnesota, immigrants who there transferred from train to boat were unmercifully fleeced by Farmer Brown, who, driving a sorry looking yoke of oxen and wearing a bucolic make-up, victimized the immigrants with sad, sad tales of sorrow and misfortune, and when their sympathies were aroused through his unfailing flow of tears, he would trim them to a standstill at three card monte, at which he was an adept. There were other sharpers, of course, as there always are where there is a movement of people, but they did nothing actually sensational.
Louis Thomas, an Indian, was found guilty of murdering a white man down near Morris, and was sentenced to death. A few days previous to the execution, a friend of mine who was a guard at the jail, which was then located at the bend on Main Street, near the city hall, tipped me off that the Indian wanted to see me. Although it was against the regulations, I managed to smuggle myself into his cell, and he told me the story of the crime. He had just got to the point of saying that two French-Canadians had taken the victim by the legs and thrown him into a well, when the sheriff appeared and ordered me out of the place and demanded my notes. Of course, I had to go, and backed out as dignified-like as I could, protesting that I was willing to give up my notes, until I reached the street door. Once outside the jail, I made a mad rush for the _Free Press_ office, wrote up my report of the day’s exciting event, and that evening there was so much indignation expressed around town that next morning the Government appointed Hon. D. M. Walker to investigate the affair, and I was allowed to be present. The Indian had given me a couple of pages of foolscap on which he said was scribbled a confession in the Iroquois language, but it could easily be seen that it was merely scribbling and nothing more. When Mr. Walker confronted the prisoner he retracted every blessed word he had told me, and when next I saw him on the scaffold, he looked at me in a most careless, half-amused way, and, waving his hand towards me, cheerily said with the greatest nonchalance: “Bon jour, boy, bon jour.” Five minutes later, he dropped into eternity.