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 freigh