"Bonepile! Now what's happening down there? It doesn't sound like the new
operator, either."
The wire again clicked open, and slowly, in the same heavy hand, the
mystified and then amazed despatcher read:
"H-E-L-P--H-E-L-D U-P--A-F-T-E-R G-O-L-D--T-I-E-D T-O T-A-B-L-E--G-O-T
D-R-O-P O-N H-I-M--M-A-K-I-N-G H-I-M S-E-N-D--B."
The despatcher grasped his key. "Good boy! Good boy!" he hurled back.
"Keep it up for twenty-five minutes and we'll get help to you. There's an
extra engine at H, waiting for 92. I'll start her right down." And
therewith he whirled off into an urgent succession of "H's."
But through young Jennings' strange feat in telegraphy help was nearer
even than the unexpected succor from Hillside. Despite the sleeping
draught Burns had administered to Muskoka Jones, the unaccustomed
clicking of the telegraph instruments had begun to arouse the big cowman.
When finally, in climax, came the lightning whirr of the despatcher's
excited response, he gasped into consciousness, blinked, and suddenly
found himself sitting upright, staring open-mouthed at the spectacle
before him.
The next moment, with a shout, he was on his feet in the middle of the
floor, and the nerve-strung boy had fainted.
As the lad sank forward his "pistol" fell from his hand and rolled into
the light.
From Burns came an inarticulate cry, his jaw dropped, his eyes started in
his head. Muskoka halted in his stride, wet his lips and muttered
incredulous words of admiration and amazement. Then in a moment he had
cut Wilson free, and stretched him on the floor.
It was Iowa broke the silence. Rising, with compressed lips he held
toward Muskoka the butt of his pistol. "Here, shoot me--with my own gun!"
he said hoarsely. "I deserve it."
Muskoka considered. "No," he decided at length. "Leave your gun as a
present for the kid, and," turning and indicating the door, "git!"
Thus was it the young "dude" operator proved himself, and came into
possession of a handsome pearl-handled Colt's revolver--and, early the
following morning, from a "committee" of the Bar-O cowmen, headed by
Muskoka Jones, a fine high-crowned, silver-spangled Mexican sombrero, to
take the place of the hat they had destroyed, and "as a mark of esteem
for the pluckiest little operator ever sent to Bonepile."
More important still, however, the incident won Wilson immediate esteem
at division headquarters, where one of the first of the operators to
congratulate him was Alex Ward.