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King stood at the little telegraph window, looking at the despatcher who was to send it, and thought of this. Depressed and intent as he was, the whimsicality of the situation struck him. What could he say?
But, about two weeks later he came up to "DS," and looked so woebegone, and pleaded so hard to be taken back, that I remitted the remainder of his punishment. He was greatly chagrined when he learned that he had trebled his own sentence. He was never remiss again. Go over to the despatcher's office any night and you will see him, bright and alert, sitting opposite the despatcher doing the copying.
While he lay casting up his chances, and discharging his revolver at intervals to make a showing, the fire of the Indians slackened. This, Bucks felt, boded no good, and reckless of his store of cartridges he continued to blaze away whenever he could see a bush moving. It was at this moment that he heard the despatcher calling him, and a message followed. "If you are alive, answer me."
"Let me help you, Garry," suggested Blood, in an undertone. The despatcher turned shaking from his chair and his superintendent slipped behind him into it. His crippled right hand glided instantly over the key, and the Rucker call, even, sharp, and compelling, followed by the quick, clear nineteen the call that gags and binds the whole division the despatchers' call clicked from his fingers.
I said it was on account of ill health, but the last thing that cussed first trick despatcher said to me was, "Never mind, you old spoon, you'll get over this attack in a very short while." I landed in St. Louis one bright morning and went up to the office of the chief despatcher of the Q. M. & S., and applied for an office on his division.
Before the despatcher comes the operator, and the old Biblical saying, "Many are called but few are chosen," is well illustrated by the small number of good despatchers that are found; it is easy enough to find excellent operators, but a first-class despatcher is a rarity among them. I learned telegraphy some fifteen or sixteen years ago at a school away out in western Kansas.
I didn't get a scratch. As I stood watching the wrecked cars burn, I heard the conductor say, "he wished to God he had an operator with him." I told him I was an operator and offered my services. He said there was a pocket instrument in the baggage car, and asked me if I would cut in on the wire and tell the despatcher of the wreck.
His work is never done; he works early and late, and even at night when he goes home utterly tired out from his long day, he is liable to be called up to go out on a wrecking outfit, or to perform some special duty. As soon as anything goes wrong on a division the first cry is, "Send for the chief despatcher."
Dunning, to emphasize, without a further word, his disgust for the situation and his contempt for the management, tore into scraps the pass that had been given him, threw the scraps on the floor, took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it; insolence could do no more. McCloud looked over at the despatcher. "No, I am not going West, Rooney.
The despatcher answered that No. 11, the local freight, was then due at Goose Creek and would pick him up and carry him to Julesburg if he felt in danger. Bucks turned with relief to the east window and saw down the valley the smoke of the freight already in sight. Never had a freight train looked so good to his eyes as it did at that moment.
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