"
I persisted in my refusal and was beginning to get hot under the collar,
but my bucolic friend also had a temper and showed it.
"D--n it," he said, "you send this message or there is going to be
trouble."
"Not much, I won't send your confounded old message. Get out of this
office: I'm going home."
Just then I heard an ominous click and in a second I was gazing down the
barrel of a .45, and he said,
"Now will you send it? You'd better or I'll send you to a home that will
be a permanent one."
A .45, especially when it is loaded, cocked and pointed at your head,
with a half drunken galoot's finger on the trigger, is a powerful
incentive to quick action.
"Give me your blamed old message, and I'll send it for you."
Now there wasn't a through wire to any place at the time, but I had
thought of a scheme to stave him off. I took his telegram, went over and
monkeyed around the switch board for a while, and then sat down to a
local instrument and went through the form of sending a message. My
whole salvation lay in the hope that he was not an operator and would
fail to discover my ruse.
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