Retired RCMP Sergeant and author Charles Scheideman saw it all in his 28-year career as an RCMP officer in small-town British Columbia and the Kootenays yet somehow managed to retain his sense of humour.

That was no easy task when you consider what Scheideman had to deal with in those years, axe murders, devil worshippers, wife-beaters, naked “Sons of Freedom” and the like.

But in his soft cover book “Policing the Fringe – The Curious Life of a Small-Town Mountie,” Scheideman tells how he did it and it’s a hell of an entertaining read. The man deserves a medal.

If you want to meet a mountie that knew how to control suspects before Tasers were invented, Scheideman is doing a book tour and will be at the Cranbrook Public Library 2 p.m. May 14 and at Lotus Books at 3 p.m. He will read excerpts from his immensely informative and entertaining book and sign covers.

Entertaining? How about his story located just east Cranbrook — “Horse Kill at Frenchman’s Slough.” Seems two very sleepy hunters — a man and a woman — got up very early in the morning in the darkness before dawn and opened fire on what they thought were several elk below the road. After firing seven rounds at the “elk” below, they carefully picked their way down the steep bank only to discover these elk were branded and wearing leather halters.

The steps in the snow on the way down were “very close together,” but they were “very far apart” on the way back and the skid marks left in the snow as the hunters made their get-a-way showed they were driving a short wheelbase jeep with a different tread on one of the tires. The intrepid Mounties followed the vehicle tracks all the way into Cranbrook to a motel where the jeep was parked. The pair seemed agitated when questioned, and when asked if they were married, answered in the affirmative “but not to each other.” An admission to the horse kills followed shortly thereafter.

The anecdote is typical of the stories in the book, but they’re not all funny because it’s hard to see humour in incidents like a devil-worshipper lighting himself on fire, and burned to a crisp, dying a few hours later after he flagged down a horrified motorist who rushed him to hospital from the summit of Rogers Pass.

Axe murders in Nelson weren’t pleasant to deal with either. Nor was “Terrorism in the West Kootenay,” the title of another chapter dealing with the notorious Sons of Freedom Doukhobors in the West Kootenay in the 1950’s.

At a time when a recent RCMP survey showed 60 per cent of the members of the Force in B.C. considered quitting the past year, Scheideman’s 320- page book of amusing anecdotes and tragic stories is very timely. Asked about restoring the RCMP’s glorious reputation of the past, Scheideman said “it’s going to be a very slow process if they’re able to do it at all.”

He said the Force needs more leaders of the calibre of the legendary Sam Steele, whose leadership and integrity, prevented a war between American prospectors and the Ktunaxa during the Wild Horse Creek gold rush in the 1860’s and he also kept the peace during the Klondike gold rush in the Yukon.

“We need leaders like that but where do you find them?”