The Colonel Of The Red Huzzars — John Reed Scott

It was raining heavily and I fastened my overcoat to the neck as I came down the steps of the Government Building. Pushing through the crowds and clanging electric cars, at the Smithfield Street corner, I turned toward Penn Avenue and the Club, whose home is in a big, old-fashioned, grey-stone building-sole remnant of aristocracy in that section where, once, naught else had been. For three years I had been the engineer officer in charge of the Pittsburgh Harbor, and "the navigable rivers thereunto belonging"-as my friend, the District Judge, across the hall, would say-and my relief was due next week. Nor was I sorry. I was tired of dams and bridges and jobs, of levels and blue prints and mathematics. I wanted my sword and pistols-a horse between my legs-the smell of gunpowder in the air. I craved action-something more stirring than dirty banks and filthy water and coal-barges bound for Southern markets.