Major Plume was seated at his desk, thoughtful and perplexed. Up at
regimental headquarters at Prescott Wren was held in high esteem, and
the major's brief telegraphic message had called forth anxious inquiry
and something akin to veiled disapprobation. Headquarters could not
see how it was possible for Wren to assault Lieutenant Blakely without
some grave reason. Had Plume investigated? No, but that was coming
now, he said to himself, as Wren entered and stood in silence before
him.
The little office had barely room for the desks of the commander and
his adjutant and the table on which were spread the files of general
orders from various superior headquarters--regimental, department,
division, the army, and the War Secretary. 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. Plume was a
gentlemanly fellow and no bad garrison soldier. He really shone on
parade and review at such fine stations as Leavenworth and Riley, but
had never had to bother with mountain scouting or long-distance Indian
chasing on the plains. He had a comfortable income outside his pay,
and when he was wedded, at the end of her fourth season in society, to
a prominent, if just a trifle passée belle, people thought him a
more than lucky man, until the regiment was sent to Arizona and he to
Sandy. Gossip said he went to General Sherman with appeal for some
detaining duty, whereupon that bluff and most outspoken warrior
exclaimed: "What, what, what! Not want to go with the regiment? Why,
here's Blakely begging to be relieved from Terry's staff because he's
mad to go." And this, said certain St. Louis commentators, settled it,
for Mrs. Plume declared for Arizona.