No curtains adorned the
little windows, front and rear. No rug or carpet vexed the warping
floor. Three chairs, kitchen pattern, stood against the pine partition
that shut off the sight, but by no means the hearing, of the three
clerks scratching at their flat-topped desks in the adjoining den.
Maps of the United States, of the Military Division of the Pacific,
and of the Territory, as far as known and surveyed, hung about the
wooden walls. Blue-prints and photographs of scout maps, made by their
predecessors of the ----th Cavalry in the days of the Crook campaigns,
were scattered with the order files about the table. But of pictures,
ornamentation, or relief of any kind the gloomy box was destitute as
the dun-colored flat of the parade. Official severity spoke in every
feature of the forbidding office as well as in those of the major
commanding.
There was striking contrast, too, between the man at the desk and the
man on the rack before him. Plume had led a life devoid of anxiety or
care. Soldiering he took serenely. He liked it, so long as no grave
hardship threatened. He had done reasonably good service at corps
headquarters during the Civil War; had been commissioned captain in
the regulars in '61, and held no vexatious command at any time
perhaps, until this that took him to far-away Arizona.
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