he stood trial and was acquitted, but the affair did not sit well in Washington, D.C., and in April 1931 the commissioner of Indian Affairs summarily fired him. Hart, who was stationed at Plummer, Idaho, overseeing the Coeur d’Alene Reservation at the time, contested the dismissal, claiming the real reason for his firing was a dispute he was having with the reservation superintendent, a man named Byron A. Sharp. Hart had accused Sharp of a number of questionable actions, including improper advances to an attractive young Sioux Indian girl in his office. Hart demanded a hearing into Sharp’s dismissal, but to no avail.

Like many Western lawmen of former days, he quickly found employment as a range detective and stock inspector for a cattlemen’s association and during the nextfour years tracked down rustlers working the grasslands of Nebraska and the Dakotas. In October 1935 officials of the Department of the Interior, well aware of his record of dedicated service as an Indian agent, relented and reinstated him as a special agent assigned to the Winnebago and Omaha reservations. The job lasted only a few months, however, and the following year Hart was back in Homer, out of work and broke.

About this time he suffered another calamity. Relatives of one of the men the agent had killed tracked down Hart, ambushed him and beat him brutally with brass knuckles. He lost the sight of one eye.

The country remained in the depths of the Great Depression, and jobs were scarce. Hart’s friends got him reappointed town marshal and