as stationed there to impress Red Cloud, and had
written to headquarters that this chief did not seem impressed very
deeply, and that the lives of the settlers were insecure. Reinforcements
were accordingly sent to him. On the evening before these soldiers left
Laramie, news came from the south. Toussaint had escaped from jail. The
country was full of roving, dubious Indians, and with the authentic news
went a rumor that the jailer had received various messages. These were
to the effect that the Sioux nation did not desire Toussaint to be
killed by the white man, that Toussaint's mother was the sister of Red
Cloud, and that many friends of Toussaint often passed the jailer's
house. Perhaps he did get such messages. They are not a nice sort to
receive. However all this may have been, the prisoner was gone.

III

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 s