y 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.

Sharon's Choice

Under Providence, a man may achieve the making of many things--ships,
books, fortunes, himself even, quite often enough to encourage
others; but let him beware of creating a town. Towns mostly happen. No
real-estate operator decided that Rome should be. Sharon was an intended
town; a one man's piece of deliberate manufacture; his whim, his pet,
his monument, his device for immortally continuing above ground. He
planned its avenues, gave it his middle name, fed it with his railroad.
But he had reckoned without the inhabitants (to say nothing of nature),
and one day they displeased him. Whenever you wish, you can see Sharon
and what it has come to as I saw it when, as a visitor without local
prejudices, they asked me to serve with the telegraph-operato