"I was born in St. Louis; mother died when I was a kid, and Dad was such a drunken worthless old cuss and beat me so much, that I brought up in a foundling asylum. I come in here riding on the trucks of your mail train about three weeks ago, and the fellers up in the roundhouse have been lettin' me feed and snooze there. I know where all the crews live exceptin' some of your kid glove engineers wot pulls the fast trains, but I can soon find them out. Please give me the job, mister; I'm honest and I'll work hard."
Something in his blunt straightforward way appealed to me and I determined to try him. Handled right I imagined he would be a good man; handled wrong, he would probably become a bright and shining light of the genus hobo. So I hired him, telling him his salary would be forty dollars per month.
"Hully gee!" he exclaimed, "forty plunks a month! Well say! I won't do a ting wid all dat mun; I'll just buy a road. Thank you mister, I'll work so hard for you that you'll not be sorry you gave me the job. But don't you forget that I wants to learn the tick tick business."
That night at seven o'clock he went to work, and it didn't take long to see that he was as bright as a new dollar. He knew everything about the division, knew all the crews and where they lived. Days went by and still he held up his end and was a great favorite with all the force. There was a local instrument in the office, and one of the operators wrote the Morse alphabet for him, and ever after that he kept pegging away at the key. He practiced writing and it wasn't many weeks before he was getting to be something of an operator. I went out to the main line battery room one evening to give some instructions to the man in charge and there I discovered Master Dick with a battery syringe in one hand and a brush in the other deeply engrossed in monkeying with the jars.
"Look here, you young rascal," I said sharply, "what are you doing in here? First thing you know you will short circuit some of these batteries and then there'll be the de'il to pay: Don't you ever let me catch you out here again, or I'll fire you bodily."
"I hain't been doing nothin', Mister Bates, I just wanted to see what made the old thing go tick tick. Wot's all them glass jars for wid the green water and the tin in?"
I explained to him as well as I could the construction of the gravity battery. He had been forbidden to monkey with any of the instruments or the switch board in the main office, but his infernal inquisitiveness soon ran away with his sense, and it wasn't long before he was in trouble. He pulled a plug out of the switch board one evening, and Burke threatened to kill him. Another evening, he went into my office and monkeyed with an instrument that I kept there connected to the despatcher's wire, and left it open. There was no report from any of the offices on either side, and investigation soon revealed the culprit. The wire was open for ten minutes and Burke was as mad as a March hare, when he reported it to me the next morning. I sent for Master Dick and informed him that another such a report against him would cause his instant dismissal. He seemed penitent enough, but two nights afterwards he short circuited all the main line batteries by his foolishness, and raised Cain in the office for a while. The next morning his time was presented to him and he was told to get out. He pleaded hard but his offenses had been too numerous, and I had to let him go. I must confess, however, that we all missed him greatly, because, in spite of his troublesome nature, he was a prime favorite with all the force.
Our road ran through some wild unsettled country, and a few years previous, a Mr. Bob Forney and some distinguished gentlemen of the road, had paid us a visit, with the result that the express company lost about forty thousand dollars and their messenger his life. The country became too warm for them and they fled.
Our flyer left two nights after this, having on board about a hundred thousand dollars of government money, and I remarked to Bob Stanton, the conductor, that it was a fine chance for a hold up, but he laughed it off and said that civilization was too far advanced for that kind of work just now.
About nine o'clock I was sitting in the despatcher's office smoking a cigar before going home for the night, when all at once the despatcher's wire and the railroad line opened. Sicklen reported south of him and then took off his ground. Pretty soon the sounder began to open and close in a peculiar shaky manner, and then I heard the following: