A .45, especially when it is loaded, cocked and pointed at your head, with a half drunken galoot's finger on the trigger, is a powerful incentive to quick action.
"Give me your blamed old message, and I'll send it for you."
Now there wasn't a through wire to any place at the time, but I had thought of a scheme to stave him off. I took his telegram, went over and monkeyed around the switch board for a while, and then sat down to a local instrument and went through the form of sending a message. My whole salvation lay in the hope that he was not an operator and would fail to discover my ruse. I glanced at him furtively out of the corner of my eye, and there he stood, pistol in hand, grinning like a monkey and swaying to and fro like a reed in the wind. I didn't know what that grin portended for me, but after I had gone through the form of sending the telegram, I hung it up on the hook, and turned around with,
"There, I hope you are satisfied now. Your blamed old message has been sent."
"Satisfied! Why certainly I'm satisfied. I just wanted to show you that the Western Union Company wasn't the whole push. Come on over to the White Elephant with me and we'll have a drink together, just to show there's no hard feelings between us," and with that he put away his pistol and we went out. On the way over to the Elephant he said,
"Say, kid, did you think I'd shoot if you hadn't sent the message?"
"Well," I replied, "I wasn't taking any chances on the matter."
Then he laughed loud enough to be heard a block away and said, "Why, that pistol hasn't been loaded for six months, I was just running a bluff on you, and you bit like a fish."
Good joke, wasn't it? We had our drink, and his message was sent by one of the day force, at eight-twelve A. M.
The Morse telegraphic alphabet is exactly the same the world over, and yet each operator has a peculiarity to his sending, or "stuff," as it is called, that makes it easy to recognize an old friend, even though his name be changed.