When I had received "30" I would cut out the instruments and go home.
One morning, about two-thirty I had said "G. N." to Galveston, cut out the instruments, put out the lights in the operating room, and started to go home through the receiving room and I was about to put out the last light there, when the outer door opened and in staggered a half drunken ranchman who said,
"Hold on there, young fellow, I want to send a message to St. Louis."
"I'm sorry, but it's too late to send it now. All the instruments are cut out and we wont have St. Louis until eight o'clock in the morning. Come around then and some of the day force will send it for you."
"But," he said in a maudlin voice, "I've got nineteen cars of cattle out here that are going up there to-morrow and I want to notify my agents."
I persisted in my refusal and was beginning to get hot under the collar, but my bucolic friend also had a temper and showed it.
"D—n it," he said, "you send this message or there is going to be trouble."
"Not much, I won't send your confounded old message. Get out of this office: I'm going home."
Just then I heard an ominous click and in a second I was gazing down the barrel of a .45, and he said,
"Now will you send it? You'd better or I'll send you to a home that will be a permanent one."