From Sanders I reported to Fort Fetterman, where my regiment established headquarters, after the return of Colonel Carrington's expedition, abandoning the posts of Reno, Philip Kearny, and F. C. Smith. The regular route to Fort Fetterman _via_ Fort Laramie was twice the distance across the mountains, so I took no wagon transportation, but only the men carrying rations. We had a very difficult march, but succeeded in arriving long before the wagons carrying our baggage _via_ Laramie. I remained at Fetterman during the winter of '67, but in the spring went to Fort Sedgwick, where Colonel Carrington had a large post of seven companies, most of them of his own regiment. These isolated posts were thoroughly cut off from civilization. I remember a humorous incident that occurred there one day. There being no chaplain or civil authorities for hundreds of miles in any direction, their functions were necessarily sometimes performed by the adjutants of the military posts. One day the adjutant, Lieutenant Carroll Potter, invited Captain Morris and me to go with him across the Platte River to Julesburg, where he said he was going to perform a marriage. When the ambulance drove up to Potter's porch, Morris and I heard him call "Lizzie, Lizzie, bring me the prayer book." His wife brought the prayer book, and he put it in his coat, asking, "Have you turned down a leaf?" "Yes, Carroll, I have." Arriving at the town, we were escorted to a small building where we found about twenty persons congregated to witness the ceremony. Drawing the prayer book from his pocket and opening it at a turned-down page, Potter started out on the service in a vigorous, solemn and authoritative tone, as follows: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." By this time his voice began to fall, and he said: "Hold on. I think I've got the wrong place!" Remembering his wife had turned down a leaf for him to read the burial service a short time before, he turned quickly to the proper service and finished the ceremony, with many apologies. MARRIAGE Up to this date I had had no thought of marriage and, consequently, had made nothing of what little opportunity there was to associate with female society. Now, realizing that I was to settle down in a quiet way as a captain of infantry, I began to think that it was time to marry, if I ever intended to do so. I resolved to take a leave for the purpose of looking for a "household mate."