and successful career. Captain Wood had inspired
confidence in him as an Indian fighter--a confidence so strong that he
thought it might not be misplaced if it became confidence in him as a
doctor--and so Wood was summoned.

"They say they will have to cut off this leg, but they are not going
to do it," said the General. "I am going to leave it up to you. You'll
have to save it."

A few weeks later General Miles was up and about, and under his young
surgeon's care the wound healed and the leg was saved.

While stationed at Los Angeles headquarters {68} Wood found himself
with enough time for much hard sport. It was a satisfying kind of life
after the strenuous months of border service.

In 1888 he was ordered back to the border where he served with the
10th Cavalry in the Apache Kid outbreak. After a few months of active
service, he was ordered to Fort McDowell and then, in 1889, to
California again.

From California he was ordered to Fort McPherson, near Atlanta,
Georgia, where he again distinguished himself at football. He trained
the first team in the Georgia Institute of Technology, became its
Captain and during the two years of his Captaincy lost but one game
and defeated the champion team of the University of Georgia.

An incident has been told by his fellow players at Fort McPherson
which shows exceedingly well a certain Spartan side to Wood's nature.
One afternoon at a football game he received a deep cut over one eye.
He returned to his office after the game and, after coolly sterilizing
his instrument and washing the wound, stood before a mirror and calmly
took four stitches in his eyelid.

Such were the characteristics, such the {59} experience, of the young
man when in 1896 he was ordered to Washington--that morgue of the
government official--to become Assistant Attending Surgeon. The holder
of this position often shares with the Navy Surgeons the
responsibility of medical attention to the President, and in addition
he acts as medical adviser to army officers and their families and is
the official physician to the Secretary of War.

It was not an office that appealed to Captain Wood. It could not;
since he was a man essentially of out-of-doors, of action and of
administration. Yet he seems to have made such a success of the work
that he became the personal friend of both Cleveland and McKinley. His
relations with President Cleveland were of the most intimate sort,
resulting from mutual respect and