ident Grover Cleveland expressed himself as hoping that
"nothing will be done with Geronimo which will prevent our treating
him as a prisoner of war, if we cannot hang him, which I would much
prefer."

At the end of the campaign General Miles set about reorganizing his
command. For several months Wood was engaged in practice maneuvers.
The General wished to expand his heliographic system of signaling, and
to that end commenced an extensive survey of the vast unpopulated
tracts of Arizona, which his troops might have to cover in time of
action. Wood was one of the General's chief assistants in this survey,
and in 1889, when he was ordered away, he probably knew as much of
Arizona and the southwestern life as any man ever stationed there.

The orders which took him from the border {56} country made him one of
the staff surgeons at Headquarters in Los Angeles. This post promised
to be inactive and uninteresting but Captain Wood managed to
distinguish himself in two respects, first as a surgeon and second as
an athlete. This period of his life varied from month to month in some
instances, but in the main it was the usual existence of an army
official in the capacity of military surgeon. It extended over a
period of eleven years, from 1887 to 1898. These were the eleven years
between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-seven--very critical years
in the existence of a man. It was during these years that he met Miss
Louise A. Condit Smith, a niece of Chief Justice Field, who afterwards
became his wife and began with him a singularly simple and homelike
family life that is the second of his vital interests in this world.
He has never allowed his family life to interfere with his service to
his country. And, paradoxical as it may seem, he has never allowed his
lifework for his state to interfere with the happy and even tenor of
his home existence. Children came in due course and the family unit
became complete--that quiet, straightforward {57} existence of the
family which is the characteristic of American life to-day, as it is
of any other well-organized civilized nation.

In the practice of his profession he was able to do a lasting service
to his commanding officer. General Miles suffered a grave accident to
his leg when a horse fell upon it. It was the opinion of the surgeon
who attended him that amputation would be necessary. But the General
was of no mind to beat a one-legged retreat in the midst of a highly
interesting