The Black Cat, Vol. I, No. 7, April 1896

by Various

The man at Solitaria got to thinking it over—he had a great deal of time to do this—and he made up his mind that matters were going all wrong. In the first place, he thought he ought to be allowed more than twenty-five dollars a month for his services, and that, considering he had been running Solitaria alone for fifteen years, they ought to give him an assistant to talk to—to talk to and to allow him an occasional chance to sleep. These were, of course, entirely personal matters. But finally he made up his mind the whole thing was run wrong. It stood to reason; they never gave it any rest. Day after day and night after night they had sent freight trains and express trains, and express trains and freight trains chasing each other along the road till they had got it so it was all going to break down pretty soon,—the road, and the cars, and the men, and he himself—especially he himself; he saw that plainly. They were all going to stop short, one of these days, and fly to pieces.

Now, take himself, for instance: was it right that they should have kept running their trains by his door twenty-four hours out of the day, and 365 days a year, for fifteen years, disturbing him and depriving him of what little sleep belonged to him? Yet all night long they persisted in sending their freights jarring and clanking by and their express trains shrieking and making up time along the level grade. He got so he knew those whistles by name—he could hear them shriek for miles and miles in either direction—coming nearer and nearer, till the train rushed by in a cloud of yellow light. Then the next one came. It was bad enough at that, but when they got to calling him names it was more than he could bear.

Besides, there was the electricity those trains kept making and storing up in his station, faster than he could ever hope to get rid of it. It was taking his life away. He went out and watched the wheels of the freight trains crunching, and grinding, and squealing by, and he could see it just rolling off and running into the station. Then nights it came stealing over him, and numbing him, just as soon as he tried to get a little sleep, which, heaven knew, he was entitled to. Anybody knows that trains running by like that, day and night, store up more electricity in a station than a man can bear, especially if he is all alone. But they paid no attention to that. He often thought he would write to the division superintendent, who had been a telegraph operator himself, and ought to think of such things, and tell him to stop it. But this plan he never carried out; he had asked for things before.

Now, whatever might be said, no one could accuse the Man at Solitaria of not giving the matter sufficient thought. For months during the summer he sat out on the platform of his box, in the baking sun daytimes, and through the close, airless Indiana nights, looking down the tracks between train times, and considering the question. He saw clearly they did not recognize the power and importance of the man they were wronging. He knew perfectly well, for instance, that any time he chose he could turn the switch to the side-track and stand an express train on its head in the ditch. That would be fascinating, certainly. Indeed, he considered the proposal seriously for a number of weeks, and figured carefully on what train he would better take; but finally thought better of this plan, too. It would only stop one train, which wasn’t what he wanted at all. The Man at Solitaria felt the responsibility of his position; he decided to run the whole railroad himself.

Of course, he recognized that there would be opposition to this scheme on the part of the president and directors of the road, and the division superintendent,—especially the superintendent,—the Man knew the division superintendent. But that railroad must be run right. As a first step in that direction the Man saved up money and laid in a large supply of canned meats; he also secured two forty-four caliber revolvers and half a dozen boxes of cartridges.

Of course, the management of the Great Western Railroad didn’t know what was going on in the mind of the Man—especially as he carried on most of his communication with human beings by telegraph. It didn’t care much, either, as long as he kept awake eighteen hours a day and watched the side-track and told them how it was occupied. Consequently, no one knew of his intention of operating the road, and no one knew or probably ever will know why he chose such an unpleasant day for starting it.

It wasn’t unpleasant in the sense that it was rainy—it was merely hot. Along down the track the heat rose in great zigzags, where the yellow sun beat down and baked a crust over the surface of Indiana. There was not a breeze in the air, not a sound except the occasional call of a quail from some distant rail fence, or the cry of a seventeen-year locust in a dead tree. On the sunny side of the station at Solitaria the thermometer took its stand at 118 degrees, and refused to be moved, and the air was a semi-solid mass of cinders.

The Man at Solitaria made up his mind he would shut down his railroad at six o’clock. He laid in a good supply of water and loaded up his revolvers; then he shut up the station and made a kind of barricade of old ties around his telegraph instrument, and sat down inside and waited.

No. 64, the fast freight from the West, was due at 6.10 o’clock to draw up on the siding. No. 24, the fast express from the East, was due at 6.17. At 6.03 the Man telegraphed the station east that the freight was on the side-track and the main line was clear. The freight was not yet in sight. At 6.13 it reached the station, hurrying to make up lost time, and ran off the track; some one had turned the switch half way. The big engine jumped the rails, crashed up on the station platform, and stopped, without being overturned; three cars went off with it. The brakemen came running up along the train, and the engineer and fireman climbed down out of the cab, swearing and looking for the operator. Just then the express could be heard rushing along from the east, and two brakemen started up the track to head it off, on the dead run. At 6.16 the train appeared in sight. When she came around the curve and saw the freight she just stiffened right out and slid. It wasn’t quite soon enough, however. She struck the freight cars just before she came to a stop, smashing a cylinder and nearly jerking the heads off the passengers. All the windows and doors of the coaches flew open with a slam, and the train hands and passengers began to swarm out like hornets out of a hornets’ nest. The trainmen started forward on the run to see what was the matter and to look up the operator and find out what he was trying to do.

The Man opened a window in front of the station, with a revolver in his hand, and told them that what he was trying to do was none of their business. He was operating this damned road now, and he wanted them to understand it. Besides, he didn’t want them on his platform. By way of emphasis, he fired a couple of shots as close to their feet as he could without hitting them. They got off, and he shut down the window with a bang. Somebody went around and tried a window in the rear, and he fired two shots through the glass. It was just as well they didn’t try it again, for he would have nailed them the next time.