AN ENCOUNTER WITH TRAIN ROBBERS
My first attempt at holding an office had proved such a flat and dismal
failure that I thought I should never have the heart to apply for
another. I worked faithfully in the school for about a month, and then
the fever to try again took hold of me. I knew it would be of no use to
apply to my former superintendent, Mr. Brink, so I wrote to Mr. R. B.
Bunnell, Superintendent of Telegraph of the P. Q. & X. Railroad at
Kansas City, Missouri, saying I was an expert operator and desired a
position on his road. Mr. Bunnell must have been laboring under a
hypnotic spell, for by return mail he wrote, enclosing me a pass to
Alfreda, Kansas, and directing me to assume charge of the night office
at that point at the magnificent salary of $37.50 per month. This was a
slight decrease from my former salary, but I didn't care. I wanted a
chance to redeem myself and I felt confident I could be more successful
in my second attempt. So I packed my few belongings, bade good-bye to
the school forever, and away I went.
When I left "MN," I said nothing to any one about my destination, and I
did not know a thing about Alfreda, except that it was near the border
line between Kansas and Colorado. The brakeman on the train in talking
to me told me it was a very pleasant place; but when he said so I
fancied I could detect a sarcastic ring in his voice, and I was in no
doubt about it when I arrived and saw what a desolate, dreary place
Alfreda was. The only things in sight were a water-tank, a pump-house
and the telegraph office; and I wish you could have seen that office. It
was simply the bed of a box-car, taken off the trucks and set down with
one end towards the track. A small platform, two windows, a door, and
the signal board perched high on a pole completed the outfit.
I arrived at six-thirty in the morning and there wasn't a living soul in
sight. An hour later, a big broad shouldered Irishman who proved to be
the pumper, came ambling along on a railroad velocipede. He looked at me
for a minute, and after I had made myself known he grinned and said,
"Well, I hopes as how ye will loike the place. Burke, the man who was
here afore ye, got scared off by thramps, and I reckon he's not stopped
runnin' yit." Fine introduction wasn't it?
I found there was no day operator and the only house around was the
section house, two miles up the track. The operator and pumper boarded
there with the section boss; but the railroad company was magnanimous
enough to furnish a velocipede for their use in going to and from the
station. How I felt the first night, stuck away out there in that
box-car, two miles from the nearest house and twelve miles from the
nearest town, I must leave to the imagination. My heart sank and I had
many misgivings, in fact, I was scared to death, but I set my teeth hard
and determined to do my best, with the hope that I might be promoted to
a better office. I did win that promotion but I wouldn't go through my
experiences again for the whole road.
One night after I had been working there about a month, I went to my
office as usual at seven o'clock. It was a black night threatening a big
storm. The pumper had not gone home as yet and he remarked, that it was
"goin' to be a woild night," but he hoped "the whistlin' av the wind
would be after kaping me company," and with that he jumped on the
velocipede, and off he went.
I didn't much relish the idea of the storm, for I knew the reputation of
Kansas as a cyclone state, and my box-car office was not well adapted to
stand a hurricane. However, I went inside, and after lighting my lamps,
sat down and wrote letters and read, when I was not taking train orders.
This office was kept up solely because it was a convenient place to
deliver orders to freight trains at night when they stopped for water.
About twelve-thirty in the morning my door opened suddenly, and a man
stepped quickly in. I was startled because this was almost the only man
except the pumper and the train crews that had been there since I came.
Once in a while a stray tramp had gone through, but this man was not a
tramp. He wore a long overcoat, buttoned to his chin, with the collar
turned up. A slouch hat pulled well down over his eyes so far concealed
his face that his features were scarcely visible. He came over to my
desk and gruffly asked, "What time is there a passenger train east
to-night?"
I answered that one went through at half past one, the Overland Flyer,
but it did not stop at Alfreda. Quick as a flash he pulled a revolver
and poking it in my face, said, "Young man, you turn your red-light and
stop that train or I'll make a vacancy in this office mighty d----d
quick."
[Illustration: "Two of the men tied my hands in front of me."]
The longer I gazed down the barrel of that revolver the bigger it grew,
and it looked to me as if it was loaded with buck-shot to the muzzle.
When it had grown to about the size of a gatling gun (and it didn't take
long to do it), I concluded that "discretion was the better part of
valor," and reached up and turned my red-light. Meanwhile the door
opened again, and three more men came in. They were masked and the
minute I saw them I knew they were going to make an attempt to hold up
the Overland Flyer. Often this train carried large amounts of bullion
and currency east, and I supposed they had heard that there was a
shipment to go through that night.
I was standing with my back to the table, and just then I heard the
despatcher say that the Flyer was thirty minutes late from the west. I
put my hands quietly behind me and let the right rest on the key. I then
carefully opened the key and had just begun to speak to the despatcher
when one of the men suspected me and said to the leader, "Bill, watch
that little cuss. He's monkeying with the instrument and may give them
warning."
I stopped, closed the key, and was trying to look unconcerned, when
"Bill," said that "to stop all chances of further trouble," they would
bind and gag me. Thereupon two of the men tied my hands in front of me,
bound my legs securely, and thrust a villainously dirty gag in my mouth.
When this was done, "Bill" said, "Throw him across those blamed
instruments so they will keep quiet." They flung me upon the table,
face downwards, so that the relay was just under my stomach, and of
course my weight against the armature of the relay stopped the clicking
of the sounder. As luck would have it, my left hand was in such a
position that it just touched the key, and I found I could move the hand
slightly. So I opened the key and pretended to be struggling quite a
little. The leader came over and giving me a good stiff punch in the
ribs, said with an oath, "You keep quiet or we'll find a way to make
you." I became passive again, and then when the men were engaged in
earnest conversation, I began to telegraph softly to the despatcher. The
relay being shut off by my weight, there was no noise from the sounder,
and I sent so slowly that the key was noiseless. Of course I did not
know on whom I was breaking in, but I kept on. I told the exact state of
affairs, and asked him to either tell the Flyer not to heed my red-light
and go through, or, better still, to send an armed posse from Kingsbury,
twelve miles up the road. I repeated the message twice, so that he would
be sure to hear it, and then trusted to luck.
The cords and gags were beginning to hurt, and my anxiety was very
great. The minutes dragged slowly by, and I thought that hour would
never end; but it did end at last, and all of a sudden I heard the long
calliope whistle of the engine on the Flyer as she came down the grade.
This was followed by two short blasts, that showed she had seen my
red-light and was going to stop. "My God!" I thought. "Has she been
warned?" So soon as the train whistled the men went out leaving me
helpless on the table. I heard the whistle of the air brakes and knew
the train must be slowing up. My anxiety was intense. Presently I heard
her stop at the tank, and then, in about a second, I listened to the
liveliest fusillade that I had ever heard in my life. It was sweet music
to my ears I can tell you, for it indicated to me, what proved to be a
fact, that a posse were on board and that the robbers were foiled. One
of them was shot, and two were captured, but "Bill," the leader,
escaped. They had their horses hitched to the telegraph poles, and as
"Bill" went running by the office I heard him say, "I'll fix that d--d
operator, anyhow." Then, BANG! crash, went the glass in the window, and
a bullet buried itself in the table, not two inches from my head. I was
not exactly killed, but I was frightened so badly, and the strain had
been so great, that when the trainmen came in to release me, I at once
lost consciousness. When I came to, I was surrounded by a sympathetic
crowd of passengers and trainmen, and a doctor, who happened to be on
the train, was pouring something down my throat that soon made me feel
better.
As soon as I had recovered myself sufficiently, I telegraphed the
despatcher what had happened, and the chief, who in the meantime had
been sent for, told me to close up my office, and come east on the
flyer, to report for duty in the morning in his office as copy operator.
That is how I won my promotion.