Fort Robinson, on the White River, is backed by yellow bluffs that break
out of the foot-hills in turret and toadstool shapes, with stunt pines
starving between their torrid bastions. In front of the fort the land
slants away into the flat unfeatured desert, and in summer the sky is a
blue-steel covet that each day shuts the sun and the earth and mankind
into one box together, while it lifts at night to let in the cool of the
stars. The White River, which is not wide, runs in a curve, and around
this curve below the fort some distance was the agency, and beyond it
a stockade, inside which in those days dwelt the settlers. All this was
strung out on one side of the White River, outside of the curve; and at
a point near the agency a foot-bridge of two cottonwood trunks crossed
to the concave of the river's bend--a bottom of some extent, filled with
growing cottonwoods, and the tepees of many Sioux families. Along the
river and on the plain other tepees stood.
One morning, after Lieutenant Balwin had become established at Fort
Robinson, he was talking with his friend Lieutenant Powell, when Cutler
knocked at the wire door. The wagon-master was a privileged character,
and he sat down and commented irrelevantly upon the lieutenant's
pictures, Indian curiosities, and other well-meant attempts to conceal
the walk:
“What's the trouble, Cutler?”
“Don't know as there's any trouble.”
“Come to your point, man; you're not a scout now.”
“Toussaint's here.”
“What! in camp?”
“Hiding with the Sioux. Two Knives heard about it.” (Two Knives was a
friendly Indian.) “He's laying for me,” Cutler added.
“You've seen him?”
“No. I want to quit my job and go after him.”
“Nonsense!” said Powell.
“You can't, Cutler,” said Balwin. “I can't spare you.”
“You'll be having to fill my place, then, I guess.”
“You mean to go without permission?” said Powell, sternly.
“Lord, no! He'll shoot me. That's all.”
The two lieutenants pondered.
“And it's to-day,” continued Cutler, plaintively, “that he should be
gettin' hanged in Cheyenne.”
Still the lieutenants pondered, while the wagon-master inspected a
photograph of Marie Rose as Marguerite.
“I have it!” exclaimed Powell. “Let's kill him.”
“How about the commanding officer?”
“He'd back us--but we'll tell him afterwards. Cutler, can you find
Toussaint?”
“If I get the time.”
“Very well, you're off duty till you do. Then report to me at once.”
Just after guard-mounting two days later, Cutler came in without
knocking. Toussaint was found. He was down on the river now, beyond the
stockade. In ten minutes the wagon-master and the two lieutenants were
rattling down to the agency in an ambulance, behind four tall blue
government mules. These were handily driven by a seventeen-year-old boy
whom Balwin had picked up, liking his sterling American ways. He had
come West to be a cow-boy, but a chance of helping to impress Red Cloud
had seemed still dearer to his heart. They drew up at the agency store,
and all went in, leaving the boy nearly out of his mind with curiosity,
and pretending to be absorbed with the reins. Presently they came out,
Balwin with field-glasses.
“Now,” said he, “where?”
“You see the stockade, sir?”
“Well?” said Powell, sticking his chin on Cutler's shoulder to look
along his arm as he pouted. But the scout proposed to be deliberate.
“Now the gate of the stockade is this way, ain't it?”
“Well, well?”
“You start there and follow the fence to the corner--the left corner,
towards the river. Then you follow the side that's nearest the river
down to the other corner. Now that corner is about a hundred yards from
the bank. You take a bee-line to the bank and go down stream, maybe
thirty yards. No; it'll be forty yards, I guess. There's a lone
pine-tree right agin the edge.” The wagon-master stopped.
“I see all that,” said Lieutenant Balwin, screwing the field-glasses.
“There's a buck and a squaw lying under the tree.”
“Naw, sir,” drawled Cutler, “that ain't no buck. That's him lying in his
Injun blanket and chinnin' a squaw.”
“Why, that man's an Indian, Cutler. I tell you I can see his braids.”
“Oh, he's rigged up Injun fashion, fust rate, sir. But them braids of
his ain't his'n. False hair.”
The lieutenants passed each other the fieldglasses three times, and
glared at the lone pine and the two figures in blankets. The boy on the
ambulance was unable to pretend any longer, and leaned off his seat till
he nearly fell.
“Well,” said Balwin, “I never saw anything look more like a buck Sioux.
Look at his paint. Take the glasses yourself, Cutler.”
But Cutler refused. “He's like an Injun,” he said. “But that's just what
he wants to be.” The scout's conviction bore down their doubt.
They were persuaded. “You can't come with us, Cutler,” said Powell. “You
must wait for us here.”
“I know, sir; he'd spot us, sure. But it ain't right. I started this
whole business with my poker scheme at that cabin, and I ought to stay
with it clear through.”
The officers went into the agency store and took down two rifles hanging
at the entrance, always ready for use. “We're going to kill a man,” they
explained, and the owner was entirely satisfied. They left the rueful
Cutler inside, and proceeded to the gate of the stockade, turning there
to the right, away from the river, and following the paling round the
corner down to the farther right-hand corner. Looking from behind it,
the lone pine-tree stood near, and plain against the sky. The striped
figures lay still in their blankets, talking, with their faces to the
river. Here and there across the stream the smoke-stained peak of a
tepee showed among the green leaves.
“Did you ever see a more genuine Indian?” inquired Baldwin.
“We must let her rip now, anyhow,” said Powell, and they stepped out
into the open. They walked towards the pine till it was a hundred yards
from them, and the two beneath it lay talking all the while. Balwin
covered the man with his rifle and called. The man turned his head, and
seeing the rifle, sat up in his blanket. The squaw sat up also. Again
the officer called, keeping his rifle steadily pointed, and the man
dived like a frog over the bank. Like magic his blanket had left his
limbs and painted body naked, except for the breech-clout. Balwin's
tardy bullet threw earth over the squaw, who went flapping and
screeching down the river. Balwin and Powell ran to the edge, which
dropped six abrupt feet of clay to a trail, then shelved into the swift
little stream. The red figure was making up the trail to the foot-bridge
that led to the Indian houses, and both officers fired. The man
continued his limber flight, and they jumped down and followed, firing.
They heard a yell on the plain above, and an answer to it, and then
confused yells above and below, gathering all the while. The figure ran
on above the river trail below the bank, and their bullets whizzed after
it.
“Indian!” asserted Balwin, panting.
“Ran away, though,” said Powell.
“So'd you run. Think any Sioux'd stay when an army officer comes gunning
for him?”
“Shoot!” said Powell. “'S getting near bridge,” and they went on,
running and firing. The yells all over the plain were thickening. The
air seemed like a substance of solid flashing sound. The naked runner
came round the river curve into view of the people at the agency store.
“Where's a rifle?” said Cutler to the agent.
“Officers got 'em,” the agent explained.
“Well, I can't stand this,” said the scout, and away he went.
“That man's crazy,” said the agent.
“You bet he ain't!” remarked the ambulance boy.
Cutler was much nearer to the bridge than was the man in the
breech-clout, and reaching the bank, he took half a minute's keen
pleasure in watching the race come up the trail. When the figure
was within ten yards Cutler slowly drew an ivory-handled pistol. The
lieutenants below saw the man leap to the middle of the bridge, sway
suddenly with arms thrown up, and topple into White River. The current
swept the body down, and as it came it alternately lifted and turned and
sank as the stream played with it. Sometimes it struck submerged stumps
or shallows, and bounded half out of water, then drew under with nothing
but the back of the head in sight, turning round and round. The din of
Indians increased, and from the tepees in the cottonwoods the red Sioux
began to boil, swarming on the opposite bank, but uncertain what had
happened. The man rolling in the water was close to the officers.
“It's not our man,” said Balwin. “Did you or I hit him?”
“We're gone, anyhow,” said Powell, quietly. “Look!”
A dozen rifles were pointing at their heads on the bank above. The
Indians still hesitated, for there was Two Knives telling them these
officers were not enemies, and had hurt no Sioux. Suddenly Cutler pushed
among the rifles, dashing up the nearest two with his arm, and their
explosion rang in the ears of the lieutenants. Powell stood grinning at
the general complication of matters that had passed beyond his control,
and Balwin made a grab as the head of the man in the river washed by.
The false braid came off in his hand!
“Quick!” shouted Cutler from the bank. “Shove him up here!”
Two Knives redoubled his harangue, and the Indians stood puzzled, while
the lieutenants pulled Toussaint out, not dead, but shot through the
hip. They dragged him over the clay and hoisted him, till Cutler caught
hold and jerked him to the level, as a new noise of rattling descended
on the crowd, and the four blue mules wheeled up and halted. The boy had
done it himself. Massing the officers' need, he had pelted down among
the Sioux, heedless of their yells, and keeping his gray eyes on his
team. In got the three, pushing Toussaint in front, and scoured away for
the post as the squaw arrived to shriek the truth to her tribe--what Red
Cloud's relation had been the victim.
Cutler sat smiling as the ambulance swung along. “I told you I belonged
in this here affair,” he said. And when they reached the fort he was
saying it still, occasionally.
Captain Brent considered it neatly done. “But that boy put the finishing
touches,” he said. “Let's have him in.”
The boy was had in, and ate a dinner with the officers in glum
embarrassment, smoking a cigar after it without joy. Toussaint was given
into the doctor's hands, and his wounds carefully dressed.
“This will probably cost an Indian outbreak,” said Captain Brent,
looking down at the plain. Blanketed riders galloped over it, and
yelling filled the air. But Toussaint was not destined to cause this
further harm. An unexpected influence intervened.
All afternoon the cries and galloping went on, and next morning (worse
sign) there seemed to be no Indians in the world. The horizon was
empty, the air was silent, the smoking tepees were vanished from the
cottonwoods, and where those in the plain had been lay the lodge-poles,
and the fires were circles of white, cold ashes. By noon an interpreter
came from Red Cloud. Red Cloud would like to have Toussaint. If the
white man was not willing, it should be war.
Captain Brent told the story of Loomis and Kelley. “Say to Red Cloud,”
he ended, “that when a white man does such things among us, he is
killed. Ask Red Cloud if Toussaint should live. If he thinks yes, let
him come and take Toussaint.”
The next day with ceremony and feathers of state, Red Cloud came,
bringing his interpreter, and after listening until every word had been
told him again, requested to see the half-breed. He was taken to the
hospital. A sentry stood on post outside the tent, and inside lay
Toussaint, with whom Cutler and the ambulance-boy were playing
whiskey-poker. While the patient was waiting to be hanged, he might as
well enjoy himself within reason. Such was Cutler's frontier philosophy.
We should always do what we can for the sick. At sight of Red Cloud
looming in the doorway, gorgeous and grim as Fate, the game was
suspended. The Indian took no notice of the white men, and walked to the
bed. Toussaint clutched at his relation's fringe, but Red Cloud looked
at him. Then the mongrel strain of blood told, and the half-breed poured
out a chattering appeal, while Red Cloud by the bedside waited till it
had spent itself. Then he grunted, and left the room. He had not spoken,
and his crest of long feathers as it turned the corner was the last
vision of him that the card-players had.
Red Cloud came back to the officers, and in their presence formally
spoke to his interpreter, who delivered the message: “Red Cloud says
Toussaint heap no good. No Injun, anyhow. He not want him. White man
hunt pretty hard for him. Can keep him.”
Thus was Toussaint twice sentenced. He improved under treatment, played
many games of whiskey-poker, and was conveyed to Cheyenne and hanged.
These things happened in the early seventies; but there are Sioux
still living who remember the two lieutenants, and how they pulled the
half-breed out of White River by his false hair. It makes them laugh to
this day. Almost any Indian is full of talk when he chooses, and when he
gets hold of a joke he never lets go.