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."
"Two of the men tied my hands in front of me."