This sketch originally was intended to accompany a poem of the same title written by Frank B. Linderman, a friend of Russell. The poem reads in part: “Old Cyuse Bill were tea’d up right / In Shorty’s place the other night, / And backin’ up agin the bar / He hooked his spur on the foot rail, thar / And moralized on general things, / From hosses down to queens and kings.” The figure in Russell’s drawing also seems to bear a close resemblance to Russell’s fictional cowboy raconteur, Rawhide Rawlins. Russell also illustrated the first published volume of Linderman’s Indian Why stories (1916), which repeated native tales of creation and myth.