It was from these men that letters came with a stereotyped opening which always caused my heart to sink—­“Dear Colonel:  I write you because I am in trouble.”  The trouble might take almost any form.  One correspondent continued:  “I did not take the horse, but they say I did.”  Another complained that his mother-in-law had put him in jail for bigamy.  In the case of another the incident was more markworthy.  I will call him Gritto.  He wrote me a letter beginning:  “Dear Colonel:  I write you because I am in trouble.  I have shot a lady in the eye.  But, Colonel, I was not shooting at the lady.  I was shooting at my wife,” which he apparently regarded as a sufficient excuse as between men of the world.  I answered that I drew the line at shooting at ladies, and did not hear any more of the incident for several years.

Then, while I was President, a member of the regiment, Major Llewellyn, who was Federal District Attorney under me in New Mexico, wrote me a letter filled, as his letters usually were, with bits of interesting gossip about the comrades.  It ran in part as follows:  “Since I last wrote you Comrade Ritchie has killed a man in Colorado.  I understand that the comrade was playing a poker game, and the man sat into the game and used such language that Comrade Ritchie had to shoot.  Comrade Webb has killed two men in Beaver, Arizona.  Comrade Webb is in the Forest Service, and the killing was in the line of professional duty.  I was out at the penitentiary the other day and saw Comrade Gritto, who, you may remember, was put there for shooting his sister-in-law [this was the first information I had had as to the identity of the lady who was shot in the eye].  Since he was in there Comrade Boyne has run off to old Mexico with his (Gritto’s) wife, and the people of Grant County think he ought to be let out.”  Evidently the sporting instincts of the people of Grant County had been roused, and they felt that, as Comrade Boyne had had a fair start, the other comrade should be let out in order to see what would happen.

The men of the regiment always enthusiastically helped me when I was running for office.  On one occasion Buck Taylor, of Texas, accompanied me on a trip and made a speech for me.  The crowd took to his speech from the beginning and so did I, until the peroration, which ran as follows:  “My fellow-citizens, vote for my Colonel! vote for my Colonel! and he will lead you, as he led us, like sheep to the slaughter!” This hardly seemed a tribute to my military skill; but it delighted the crowd, and as far as I could tell did me nothing but good.