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.

In the early part of my career, when I was working days at X----, in
Nebraska, at Sweeping Water there was a chap called Ned Kingsbury
holding down the night job, and as wild a youngster as ever hit the
road. One night when I was sitting up a little late I heard the
despatcher give Ned an order for a train that ordinarily would not stop
there. Ned repeated it back all right enough, and then gave the signal,
"6," which meant that he had turned his red-light to the track and would
hold it there until the order was delivered and understood. So far, so
good. But the reckless little devil had forgotten to turn his red-board
and proceeded to write to some of his numerous girls, and the first
thing he knew that freight train went smashing by at a thirty-five mile
clip, and Mr. Ned knew he was up against it.

In some states a railroader guilty of criminal negligence is sent up
for a term of from one to ten years. The smash up that resulted from
Ned's carelessness was a catastrophe of the fatal kind; one engineer was
killed, and a fireman and brakeman or two laid up for months. He fully
realized the magnitude of his offence and promptly skipped away from the
wrath that was sure to follow, and nothing more was heard of him in that
section of the country.

This all happened a number of years before I went to work in Fort Worth,
and one morning I was doing a little "scooping," by working days, and
sat down to send on the "DA" quad. I worked hard for about two hours on
the polar side, and was sending to some cracker jack, who signed "KY."
Shortly after that I changed over to the receiving side and "KY" did the
sending to me. I had been taking about ten messages and the conviction
w