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.
