This day after we had sat down to dinner some trash fell on the table and looking up we discovered him out on a limb above us. The women thought best to have the table removed. His home while on the road was in the feed box at the rear of the wagon where he was chained, and the first thing when released was to hunt the water and take a good bath and then he was ready to investigate everything around camp. He would roam around at his own sweet will until away in the night when he would return to his box where we always found him in the morning. We had to keep the commissary supplies well protected, for he was a born thief. We had a good supply of small game on the way particularly turkeys and prairie chickens. We found the young turkeys at this season of the year to be unusually fine. When we arrived at Oswego my wife went to visit friends in the country and I went on to the department headquarters at Leavenworth to report. When I got there the medical director was anxious that I should remain in the service and said that he would give me a good post and suggested Camp Limestone in Southeast Kansas in what was then known as the Cherokee neutral lands, about thirty miles south of Fort Scott. It would be close to the railroad and other conveniences and comforts of civilization, and he was sure I would like it, and he hoped there would be an examining board before long for promotions and I had better consider the matter. I asked for two weeks leave of absence to consider his proposition which was cheerfully granted, and I went back to Iowa and looked up the prospects and in ten days was back to continue in the service. My wife and I together went to our new station at Camp Limestone and arrived there September 9th, 1871. At that time the railroad was finished to Baxter Springs but there had been trouble with the settlers when crossing the Cherokee neutral lands, an area embracing Cherokee and Crawford counties and the southern tier of townships in Bourbon county. The land had been sold for the Indians by the government to James F. Joy, representing what was then known as the Kansas City, Fort Scott and Gulf railroad. The settlers thought they should have the right to homestead the land, and resisted the construction of the railroad, caught and whipped the engineers and threatened their lives and burned their instruments, the result being that troops were sent to protect the purchasers and their employees in the construction of the road.