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Updated: May 23, 2025
Anyway I didn't intend to take any chance, so I sent a message to Sicklen telling him to notify the sheriff of all the facts and ask him to send out a posse on the flyer, and, also, for him to get the day man to go out and patch the lines up until a line man could get there in the morning.
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.
At Sicklen he had been put off by a heartless brakeman and had started to walk to Ashton. It was evening and he became tired. After walking as far as the north end of the cut he laid down and went to sleep behind a pile of old ties. He was awakened by the sound of voices near by, and listening intently, he learned that the men were outlaws and intended to hold up the flyer that night.
Burke began to call, but Sicklen made no answer. He called for forty-five minutes at a stretch, 22 all the time waiting at Bakersville. He stopped for five minutes and then went at it again. In ten minutes Sicklen answered. Burke started to give the order, but Ferral broke and gave the "OS" report that 17 had just gone by.
A young man named Charles Ferral was the night man at Sicklen, and his ability as an operator was only exceeded by his inability to tell the truth when he was in a tight place. I was too old an operator to be fooled by any such a yarn as this; and besides, the conductor of No. 17 reported to me that he had found Ferral stretched out on the table asleep, when he stopped there for water.
The night following his return to his station, I was kept at the office until late, and about eleven o'clock No. 22 appeared at Bakersville, and wanted to run to Ashton for No. 17. They were both running a little late, and as 17 had a heavy train of coal and system empties, I told Burke to let them go. But the only station at which we could then get an order to 17 was Sicklen, Ferral's station.
About twenty minutes afterwards the flyer left Sicklen nicely fixed with a strong posse, and an order to approach the cut with caution. It was only three miles from Sicklen to the cut, and I knew it would be but a matter of a short while until something was heard.
Pretty soon the sounder began to open and close in a peculiar shaky manner, and then I heard the following: "To 'DS, gang of robbers goin' to hold up the flyer in Ashley's cut to-night. They will place rails and ties on the track to wreck train if they don't heed signal. Warn train to watch out and bring gang out from Sicklen. This is Dick Durstine."
Will have him sent in from Sicklen on 22 in the morning. "Stanton, Conductor." The next morning when 22 pulled in I went down and there, laid out on a litter in the baggage car, was Dick Durstine, my former call boy, weak, pale, and just living.
In the meantime, Ashton, the first office south of Sicklen, had reported on the commercial line that the despatcher's wire was open north of him. That would place it near the cut in all probability.
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