He wrote me a letter beginning: "Dear Colonel: I write you because I am in trouble.

I have shot a lady in the eye.

But, Colonel, I was not shooting at the lady.

I was shooting at my wife," which he apparently regarded as a sufficient excuse as between men of the world.
I answered that I drew the line at shooting at ladies, and did not hear any more of the incident for several years.
Then, while I was President, a member of the regiment, Major Llewellyn, who was Federal District Attorney under me in New Mexico, wrote me a letter filled, as his letters usually were, with bits of interesting gossip about the comrades.

It ran in part as follows: "Since I last wrote you Comrade Ritchie has killed a man in Colorado.