President Cleveland saw fit to give the appointment to Lieutenant Summerhayes, making him a Captain and Quartermaster, and then, another vacancy occurring shortly after, he appointed Lieutenant John McEwen Hyde to be also a Captain and Quartermaster.
Lieutenant Hyde stood next in rank to my husband and had grown grey in the old Eighth Infantry.

So the regiment came in for its honor at last, and General Kautz, when the news of the second appointment reached him, exclaimed, "Well! well! does the President think my regiment a nursery for the Staff ?" The Eighth Foot and the Ninth Horse at Niobrara gave the new Captain and Quartermaster a rousing farewell, for now my husband was leaving his old regiment forever; and, while he appreciated fully the honor of his new staff position, he felt a sadness at breaking off the associations of so many years--a sadness which can scarcely be understood by the young officers of the present day, who are promoted from one regiment to another, and rarely remain long enough with one organization to know even the men of their own Company.
There were many champagne suppers, dinners and card-parties given for him, to make the good-bye something to be remembered, and at the end of a week's festivities, he departed by a night train from Valentine, thus eluding the hospitality of those generous but wild frontiersmen, who were waiting to give him what they call out there a "send-off." For Valentine was like all frontier towns; a row of stores and saloons.
The men who kept them were generous, if somewhat rough.

One of the officers of the post, having occasion to go to the railroad station one day at Valentine, saw the body of a man hanging to a telegraph pole a short distance up the track.

He said to the station man: "What does that mean ?" (nodding his head in the direction of the telegraph pole).
"Why, it means just this," said the station man, "the people who hung that man last night had the nerve to put him right in front of this place, by G--.

What would the passengers think of this town, sir, as they went by?
Why, the reputation of Valentine would be ruined! Yes, sir, we cut him down and moved him up a pole or two.