The Sutler's store at Fort Stanton was up-stream some distance and just around the point of a little canon that led down to the river. A path from the corner of the parade ground led up to the store but there was only a narrow space between the point of the canon and the ditch that supplied the post with water. There was also a bridge across the ditch at the Sutler's store, for the convenience of getting in and taking out goods. One dark night I had been up to the store and started home, and after going a short distance, I concluded I had crossed the ditch on the bridge, instead of going along the narrow strip between the ditch and canon. To save time and retracing of steps I concluded to jump into the ditch. I knew it was wide and required a good jump but I found that instead of jumping the ditch, I had jumped off the bluff into the canon. Fortunately it had been made a dumping ground for chips and trash from the wood-yard, and I landed on this trash and rolled the balance of the way to the bottom of the canon among the rocks, probably twenty-five or thirty feet. My first thought was that I was seriously hurt, but after groaning a while and finding no bones broken, I got up and felt my way out at the top of the canon near the Sutler's store. I was very sore for a few days but no serious injuries resulted. In March of this year Captain Fechet (pronounced Fe-sha, accent on the last syllable), with his troop of cavalry, was ordered to go over on the Jornada del Muerto, and try to find a shorter route across that desert from Fort Stanton to Fort Selden, and I was sent along. We took the usual route to Fort McRae, where I again met Dr. Lyons, the post surgeon, whom I had visited at this point when I was post surgeon at Fort Craig in 1869. We found the doctor at dinner when we arrived. The cloth was spread at one end of the table and just beyond the cloth, at the farther end, was a human skull, with the necessary instruments, which the doctor had been dissecting. It struck me as a rather strange mixture of diet and scientific investigation. It is hardly necessary to say that the doctor was not a married man, for no woman would stand for that sort of table decoration, but would probably prefer a bunch of flowers as a center-piece for the table. Some unfortunate had been fished out of the river, and no relations having been found, the body was considered of service for a better knowledge of anatomy.