"At daylight the next morning all the men were up and the horses were given a good feed again. They had a hearty breakfast and were soon mounted and on their way to Fish Lake to pick up their pack horses and begin their search north towards Campbell’s Meadows. They travelled east along the wagon road which wound through the valley of Chapperon Creek on the north bank. Grasslands stretched out on both sides of the valley until they were met by the heavier timber of fir and pine in the higher elevations. Some of the fields they passed were flood irrigated by Chinese workers. The detail spread out so as to search the open gulleys and the creek bottom, searching through the dense stands of cottonwoods, willow and black birch clumps. By noon they could see the tranquil surface of Chapperon Lake shining and stretching into the distance. The spring sun was shining brightly and temperatures were climbing into the low 70s. The grass in the high country was turning green, and the fat white-faced heifers stood with their ears erect and facing forward, staring at the passing riders. Their spring calves gambolled at their sides. The leaves were budding out on all the trees and brush in the creek bottom. It was difficult for the senses of the riders not to get lulled by warm spring air and the bucolic surroundings, but they did their best to stay alert and, spreading out, kept a sharp lookout. They arrived at the shores of Chapperon Lake shortly before noon and decided to have an early lunch. They unsaddled and picketed and fed and watered their horses, then enjoyed a hot meal cooked up on the mobile kitchen supplied by the ranch. As they were cleaning up after their meal, Provincial Police Constable Fernie came riding up from the direction of the home ranch on an almost exhausted horse. Fernie introduced himself and reported that he had seen three men on the road with packs on their backs about five or six miles back towards the ranch. Fernie and the Mounties galloped back to where he had spotted the suspects. They started searching the road for tracks that Fernie could identify. The tracker found plenty of sign, but soon told the Mounties, “China boy work here.”
Fernie finally found a set of tracks with the tell-tale distinctive hobnailed pattern and a pair of slim smooth soled boots. Satisfied that they were now on the track of the robbers, Wilson sent Sergeant Thomas up a nearby hill to scan the country with his glasses, and sent Constable Tabuteau and Slim Jim Benyon back towards Chapperon Lake to see if they could pick up more tracks where the robbers had come out of the bush to the north. Fernie rode back to the ranch to see if he could get the bloodhounds that were supposed to be on their way. Wilson dispersed his remaining five men in a screen across the north slope of the valley between Chapperon Creek and the high country to see if they could catch up to the robbers. They slowly made their way south-west towards the home ranch located on the opposite side of the creek. Corporal Stewart drew close to where Chapperon Creek emptied into the Nicola River. Squinting into the early afternoon sun, he saw a curl of smoke drifting over the willow clumps and stubby birches in the creek bottom. He took off his Stetson and waved it at the two members who were closest to him. They, in turn, silently gained the attention of Wilson, and he and Shoebotham, Peters and Browning quickly but quietly joined Corporal Stewart.
They walked their horses across the open field to the edge of the brush in the creek bottom. The gentle swish of the horses’ hoofs muffled in the bunch grass and the creak of saddle leather were the only sounds they made in the soft spring air. The gurgle and splash of the stream in the midst of the spring freshet blurred any sound they might make. They were about a mile as the crow flies from the home ranch and on the north side of the Nicola River opposite the house." They dismounted, and as they approached what looked like an impenetrable thicket, they noticed a small entrance leading into the brush. The Mounties unfastened their holster flaps, but left their Colts still holstered. They walked into a small clearing with the road dry bed of a creek wandering through it and hailed anyone who could be about. They heard an answering shout, and down in the grass of the dry creek bed almost hidden from their view, they saw two men seated around a canvas wagon tarp and another lying on his side. As they approached, they could see the almost smokeless small fire burning beside them where they were boiling up a pot of Tetley’s tea. On the plates in front of them they had a meal of boiled rice and cooked beef strips. A Winchester 44:40 lay wrapped in a sack beside them in full view, and the butts of pistols stuck out from under the tarp in front of Edwards and Colquhoun.
Wilson waited until all the officers had drawn up to the clearing, Shoebotham standing a short distance off to the side. The officers saw that two of the men were wearing hobnailed boots, and the older man was wearing a smooth soled lighter pair. Wilson asked the three men where they were from. The older one, Edwards, answered that they were from Batchelor’s Meadows, over Grande Prairie way. “That would be north,” he coolly added.
Wilson asked him what they had been doing there.
“Prospecting a little,” said Edwards.
Wilson asked him how long it had been since they had left there.
“About two days,” replied Edwards.
Wilson then confronted the men with his suspicions. “Well, we are looking for the fellows who held up the CPR and you had better give a good account of yourselves.”
Edwards scoffed and asked the Mounties how they could think he was a train robber when he looked so much more like a prospector.
“No you do not,” disagreed Wilson, “and if it is found you are not the men, you will be brought back again to where you want to go, but just now the description given agrees with you, and you can consider yourselves under arrest for that offence.”
Dunn, to whom Wilson had not been paying much attention, suddenly threw his teacup aside and sprang to his feet. “Look out boys, it’s all up,” he shouted and darted off to the nearest willow clump, reaching behind him to the holster he had pushed around behind his back when he was lying on his side. He pulled a .44 Colt’s revolver from this belt holster and palmed his Luger from his shoulder holster. As he ran, weaving behind the willow clumps, he fired two quick shots back at the Mounties from his automatic before they could react. Wilson saw Dunn’s movement as if in slow motion, and saw and heard one of the shots fired at him almost pointblank. Shoebotham, Browning and Stewart drew their revolvers immediately and ran after Dunn, firing their double action Colts as fast as they could. Dunn made a difficult target, dodging behind the clumps of willow and birch, all the while firing his Luger back at them as fast as he could pull the trigger. The rapid rate of fire of Dunn’s pistols surprised the officers, and they were careful to take advantage of any cover that presented itself.
Fifteen to twenty shots were fired by Dunn and the officers in a very short time, and the smoke from the gunpowder drifted in the air. Peters and Wilson covered Edwards and Colquhoun as they sat by the tarp, and the sound of shots continued from the brush close by where Dunn was putting up a desperate attempt to escape.
Edwards moved his hand towards the butt of the .38 Smith and Wesson he had captured from express clerk Mitchell two years before, grasped it, and started to pull it out from under the tarp. Corporal Peters, watching him closely, leaned over, and putting his hand on the pistol, he looked Edwards in the eye and said in a low, threatening voice, “If you draw that I will blow your brains out.”
Peters, well over six feet in height and the possessor of an intimidating demeanour, held his service revolver point blank on the old man. Edwards quickly made some mental calculations and decided he should hold his hands straight up in the air.
From the corner of his eye, Peters caught glimpses of Shorty Dunn dodging behind clumps of brush, firing as fast as he could. He drew Edwards’ .38 with his right hand and, with his own Colt in his left hand, keeping his eye on Edwards all the while, he snapped off three quick shots at Dunn with the Smith and Wesson.
Back in the brush, it was so thick Browning could hardly make Dunn out as he ran back and forth between the willows. The three Mounties shot through the willow clumps and in the direction they thought the robber’s shots were coming from. Browning ran around the side of a willow clump and saw Dunn swing his pistol towards him. Browning fired, and Dunn fired back. Browning thought he had missed and fired quickly again. Dunn fell to the side and crashed through the brush, falling into a long ditch full of soft mud and water. Browning ran around to the edge of the drop, and saw Dunn on his back in the mud and the water, his hands in the air, still clutching his two pistols.
He looked up and saw Browning coming towards him, pistol extended at arm’s length. “Don’t,” he yelled, “I am all in. I’ve been hit. I’m shot.”
Shoebotham had been running around in a half circle sweep in an attempt to cut off the fleeing Dunn. He heard the shots cease and Dunn’s shouting and headed towards his partner. He bolted through the underbrush and with a shout sailed through the air to land in the same ditch as Shorty Dunn. Browning, covering Dunn, heard the shout and thought that another of the suspects had made a break for it. Crouching, he swung and covered the struggling figure and almost fired at Shoebotham until he noticed the arm and hand of his friend Shoebotham sticking up out of the mud and water holding a New Service revolver. They heard Sergeant Wilson shouting loudly to them from where he was covering the other prisoners, “Don’t cease firing until he throws out his guns.”
When Wilson heard Shoebotham give his startled shout as hewent over the bank, Wilson looked at Peters and said, “I’m afraid Shoebotham has got winged.” Browning removed the pistols from Dunn’s hands, and made his way back to Wilson to get help to extricate Shoebotham and Dunn from the mud. Dunn was up to his waist in mud and water, and Shoebotham had fallen headlong into the murky mess. As Browning approached Wilson and Peters covering Edwards and Colquhoun, Wilson said to Browning, “You had better see about Shoebotham. I’m afraid he has got winged.” Browning reassured him that the only injury Shoebotham had suffered was to his dignity. He retrieved a rope from one of their horses and tied it around Shoebotham’s waist to pull him out. The same was done to Dunn, and together, the Mountie and the bandit looked “more like mud turtles than human beings, however outside of having his eyes, ears, hair etc. filled with slimy mud, Shoebotham was entirely unhurt.”
The mud was soon washed off both the Mountie and the outlaw.
Stewart covered Dunn with his revolver and told him to walk ahead of him back to the tarp. As Dunn painfully limped over the uneven ground, he surprised the policeman by laughing out loud and saying, “I know I am all done in.”
Browning approached Dunn as he made his way towards the rest of the group. He said, “I’m sorry I had to wing you, but you asked for it.”
Dunn replied, “I wish you had put it through my guts.”
The Mounties sat Dunn down in the new green grass up against a cottonwood, and Browning tore a strip off the bottom of his own shirt to bind up Dunn’s wound as best he could. It was plain to see that the bullet had penetrated right through the fleshy part of Dunn’s calf, making a serious and painful wound. Wilson told Dunn he had done a very foolish thing for starting the shootout and that he very well could have been shot in the head rather than the leg. Dunn laughed and said, “I wish to Christ you had put it through my head, but (then) you couldn’t blame me, could you?”
Wilson asked the gunman, “Why did you start firing when you saw you were surrounded like that?”
Dunn quickly answered, “I thought I would stampede the outfit, and give the boys a chance to get their guns.””
- Peter Grauer, Interred With Their Bones: Bill Miner in Canada, 1903-1907. Kamloops: Tillicum, 2006. p. 236-241
[The arrest of famed train robber Bill Miner and his accomplices by the North West Mounted Police in 1906. Not a fan of Grauer's true crime approach to this story, but he can write well enough and this account struck me for whatever reason. It helps that the party of police were photographed later in Kamloops.]
Photo is Mary Spencer group portrait of R.N.W.M.P. Sitting, left to right, Constable James H. Tabuteau, Sergeant John J. Wilson, and Corporal C.R. Peters. Standing, left to right, Sergeant Percy G. Thomas, Guide Samuel “Slim Jim” Benyon, Sergeant T.M. “Shoey” Shoebotham, Corporal James C. Stewart and Constable John T. Browning. Kamloops Museum and Archives
